Data Quality Assessment and Improvement Strategies

This paper provides methodologies for assessing the capabilities of an Information System (IS) to manage data quality and provides “real” methodologies in order to maintain higher levels of data quality. While it is generally believed that achieving 100% data quality is either mythical or too expensive, the objective is to achieve an average of 85% data quality or better; frequently in industry considered an acceptable or reasonable level.
Surprisingly, there has been a lot of discussion in the Information Technology (IT) about data quality and there have been significant writings on the theoretical approaches, but there has been little in the way of practical application to achieve data quality throughout a system or system of systems. This paper intends to bring into practice many of the theories and in many cases even expand beyond those theories; thereby creating a systematic approach that can more easily be used by others in their goals of achieving data quality.
This systems approach will provide an ability to assess the data quality of a system, ways to improve data quality, and thoughts of what can be done with the “old” data/system.