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Information value

Characteristic Name: Information value
Dimension: Usability and Interpretability
Description: Quality information should provide a business value to the organization
Granularity: Information object
Implementation Type: Process-based approach
Characteristic Type: Usage

Verification Metric:

The number of tasks failed or under performed due to the lack of business value delivered by the information
The number of complaints received due to the lack of business value delivered by the information

GuidelinesExamplesDefinitons

The implementation guidelines are guidelines to follow in regard to the characteristic. The scenarios are examples of the implementation

Guidelines: Scenario:
Continuously asses the relevance and the usefulness of existing data to the organisational goals (Strategic level). (1)What is the cost of poor quality customer data to the organisation in concern?
(2) What revenue can be generated from data?
Continuously asses the usefulness of information based on the tasks at hand (Operational level) (1) Can we predict our future market share from the existing market information?
Monitor and Measure if the intended goal of the data presentation/Interpretation is achieved (1) Employee efficiency data is displayed in a dash board to motivate employees. The effectiveness of this display can be measured by examining the efficiency gain of each employee.
(2) Has the given sales forecast for the last three years been reasonably accurate compared to actuals.

Validation Metric:

How mature is the process to maintain the business value of information

These are examples of how the characteristic might occur in a database.

Example: Source:
Consider a database containing orders from customers. A practice for handling complaints and returns is to create an “adjustment” order for backing out the original order and then writing a new order for the corrected information if applicable. This procedure assigns new order numbers to the adjustment and replacement orders. For the accounting department, this is a high-quality database. All of the numbers come out in the wash. For a business analyst trying to determine trends in growth of orders by region, this is a poor-quality database. If the business analyst assumes that each order number represents a distinct order, his analysis will be all wrong. Someone needs to explain the practice and the methods necessary to unravel the data to get to the real numbers (if that is even possible after the fact). J. E. Olson, “Data Quality: The Accuracy Dimension”, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 9 January 2003.

The Definitions are examples of the characteristic that appear in the sources provided.

Definition: Source:
1) A measure of the degree to which data will produce the desired business transaction or outcome.

2) A measure of the perception of and confidence in the quality of the data; the importance, value, and relevance of the data to business needs.

D. McGilvray, “Executing Data Quality Projects: Ten Steps to Quality Data and Trusted Information”, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2008.
As a data quality-oriented organization matures, the agreement of usage will move from a small set of “early adopters” to gradually encompass more and more of the enterprise, Ubiquity measures the degree to which different departments in an organization use shared reference data. LOSHIN, D. 2001. Enterprise knowledge management: The data quality approach, Morgan Kaufmann Pub.
Data are beneficial and provide advantages for their use. WANG, R. Y. & STRONG, D. M. 1996. Beyond accuracy: What data quality means to data consumers. Journal of management information systems, 5-33.

 

Data access control

Characteristic Name: Data access control
Dimension: Availability and Accessability
Description: The access to the data should be controlled to ensure it is secure against damage or unauthorised access.
Granularity: Information object
Implementation Type: Process-based approach
Characteristic Type: Usage

Verification Metric:

The number of tasks failed or under performed due to lack of data access control
The number of complaints received due to lack of data access control

GuidelinesExamplesDefinitons

The implementation guidelines are guidelines to follow in regard to the characteristic. The scenarios are examples of the implementation

Guidelines: Scenario:
Periodically evaluate the security needs considering the criticality of data (Value, confidentiality, privacy needs etc.) and accessibility requirements of data and then update the information security policy consistently. (1) Employee salary is a confidential data and hence need security against unauthorised access.
(2) Master data has a high economic value to the organisation and hence need security against unauthorised access and change
Continuously evaluate the risks threats and identify the vulnerabilities for data and update the information security policy (1) The frequency of security assessment for data associated with online transactions was increased due to the high volume of online transactions.
Implementation of access controls for each critical information as prescribed by the information security policy. (1) An Employee’s salary data can be viewed only by his or her superiors.
(2) Master data can be created and updated only by the authorised executives.
(3) Login credentials are required for system access
Data is stored in secured locations and appropriate backups are taken (1) Databases are stored in a special server and backups are taken regularly (2) Documents are saved using a content management system in a file server
Restrict the accessibility of information using software based mechanism (1) Data encryption (2) Firewalls
Restrict the accessibility of information using hardware based mechanism (1) Security tokens

Validation Metric:

How mature is the process of ensuring data access control

These are examples of how the characteristic might occur in a database.

Example: Source:
if the official version of the minutes of a meeting is filed by the records manager and thus protected from change, the unauthorised version will not form part of the official record. K. Smith, “Public Sector Records Management: A Practical Guide”, Ashgate, 2007.

The Definitions are examples of the characteristic that appear in the sources provided.

Definition: Source:
Is the information protected against loss or unauthorized access? EPPLER, M. J. 2006. Managing information quality: increasing the value of information in knowledge-intensive products and processes, Springer.
Data is appropriately protected from damage or abuse (including unauthorized access, use, or distribution). PRICE, R. J. & SHANKS, G. Empirical refinement of a semiotic information quality framework. System Sciences, 2005. HICSS'05. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on, 2005. IEEE, 216a-216a.
The extent to which information is protected from harm in the context of a particular activity. STVILIA, B., GASSER, L., TWIDALE, M. B. & SMITH, L. C. 2007. A framework for information quality assessment. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58, 1720-1733.
Access to data can be restricted and hence kept secure. WANG, R. Y. & STRONG, D. M. 1996. Beyond accuracy: What data quality means to data consumers. Journal of management information systems, 5-33.