=Paper= {{Paper |id=Vol-1135/paper12 |storemode=property |title=Assessment and Improvement of Information Quality through Information Management Process Concept |pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1135/paper12.pdf |volume=Vol-1135 |dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/quatic/CaballeroP04 }} ==Assessment and Improvement of Information Quality through Information Management Process Concept== https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1135/paper12.pdf
                                                                                                                                                  1




   Assessment and Improvement of Information
    Quality through Information Management
                Process Concept
                                                   Ismael Caballero, Mario Piattini


      Abstract — It is a well known fact that information is one of the most important assets for today’s enterprises since it is the basis for
      organizational decisions. However, as information is produced from data, both data and information quality must be assured.
      Although many researches have proposed technical and managerial solutions to some specific information quality problems, an
      integrative framework which brings together these kinds of solutions is still lacking. Our proposal consists of a framework for
      assessing and improving information quality through the concept of Information Management Process (IMP). An IMP is assessed
      according to an information quality maturity model by using an assessment and improvement methodology. The framework provides
      a consistent roadway for coordinating efforts and resources to manage information quality with a strategic perspective. As an
      application example, a study case has been included in the paper.

      Index Terms — Information Quality, Information Quality Management, Information Quality Assessment

                                           —————————— ‹ ——————————

1 INTRODUCTION

A     s [39] states, information can be obtained as the result
      of a data manufacturing process, where data must be
      considered as non-ideal raw material for this process.
                                                                            problem by the entire organization. It is a matter for the
                                                                            quality management team, encouraged by organization
                                                                            heads, who must implement several quality management
Data is said to be non- ideal due to different and specific                 concepts like information quality policy, information strat-
potholes related to special characteristics of data: multiple               egy, information quality planning, information quality con-
sources of data can generate different values; systematic                   trol and information quality assurance through organiza-
errors can generate information losses; a large amount of                   tion [16, 17], implying all the workers and trying to coordi-
data can be unmanageable for an application in a reason-                    nate efforts and commitments in order to control and im-
able time; distributed and heterogeneous systems can gen-                   prove information quality issues [29].
erate inconsistent formats, values or definitions, … [37].                  Unfortunately, there is not an integrative framework that
These potholes are all sources of ongoing information qual-                 guides organizations to achieving information quality goals
ity problems, like unused data, barriers to data accessibility              through management by implementing the above-
or data utilization difficulty. The need to consider data and               mentioned concepts [14, 23]. In spite of the fact that some
information as one of the most important assets for organi-                 researches have provided several information quality
zations [19] (and therefore one of the most precious re-                    measurements and/or assessment methodologies [7 19, 30,
sources [30]) has been demonstrated since it is the basis for               33, 40], none of them are focused on group efforts or com-
tactical, strategic or operational decisions [33, 36]. Poor data            mitments extending to the entire organization in both ana-
and information quality will have a negative impact on the                  lytic and pragmatic ways [9]. What is required is to know
global efficiency of organizations [33].                                    how an organization works, and to develop the ability to
Fortunately, more and more organizations have at last real-                 identify major problems or standardize an information
ized the importance of information quality and they try to                  quality culture by implying both leaders and infrastructure
implement some of the frameworks proposed by research-                      [15, 20] in technical and management tasks.
ers [1, 7, 13, 19, 23, 28, 30, 33, 36, 38, 40] for improving spe-           In an effort to fill this void, we propose an integrative
cific information quality issues, although many of these                    framework in which information is considered as a product
organizations do not yet have the right techniques, tools                   (what allows the user to take an engineering point of view
and practices to achieve a high information quality level                   of information quality [4, 23]) and taking into account the
[25]. One of the reasons for this fact, is that information                 Software Process definition given by [12] (what allows the
quality problems are not usually understood as a global                     identification of who is doing what, when, using which
                                                                            resources and how), a perception of both Information Man-
                    ————————————————
                                                                            agement and Information Quality Management activities
• Ismael Caballero is with the ALARCOS Research Group. Escuela Superior
  de Informática (UCLM).Paseo de la Universidad, 4, 13071, Ciudad Real
                                                                            can be created as an Information Management Process
  (Spain). E-mail: Ismael.Caballero@uclm.es                                 (IMP). An IMP is intended to model what how information
• Mario Piattini is with the ALARCOS Research Group. Escuela Superior de    quality might be managed by drawing the relationship
  Informática (UCLM).Paseo de la Universidad, 4, 13071, Ciudad Real         among the main components of the Information Systems.
  (Spain). E-mail: Mario.Piattini@uclm.es
                                                                            Having in mind this perception, entire organizational in-
2                                                                                                     QUATIC’2004 PROCEEDINGS



formation quality can be managed by assessing and im-           information quality in organizations. By optimizing the
proving each IMP in organization taking into account that       most important and critical IMPs, an organization can reach
several IMP can share several resources. It is true there are   a satisfactory information quality state.
several frameworks for assessing and improving software         The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: section
processes such as CMM (Capability M [20, 31], CMMI [35],        2 describes CALDEA; section 3 presents a brief summary of
ISO 9001 [5], BootStrap [3] and SPICE [21]; but none of         EVAMECAL. Section 4 shows the results of applying
them have focused on information quality nor have they          EVAMECAL to a specific kind of organization. Lastly, some
even taken it into account.                                     conclusions and futures lines of research related to the
In [9] four conditions for a good information quality           model are explained.
framework are established :
1. it should provide a systematic and concise set of crite-
     ria according to which information can be evaluated.
                                                                2   CALDEA: AN INFORMATION QUALITY MODEL
2. it should provide a scheme to analyze and solve infor-           BASED ON MATURITY LEVELS
     mation quality problems.                                   CALDEA defines five information quality maturity levels
3. it should provide the basis for information quality          for an IMP: Initial, Definition, Integration, Quantitative
     measurement and proactive management.                      Management and Optimizing. The levels are ordered by
4. it should provide the research community with a con-         taking into account several information quality goals and
     ceptual map that can be used to structure a variety of     their relative importance, providing a systematic and con-
     approaches, theories, and information quality related      cise set of criteria according to which information can be
     phenomena.                                                 evaluated. Thus, at higher levels where more information
Our proposal defines two main components:                       quality issues are assured, it would be possible to state that
• An information quality model based on maturity                more organizational requirements are satisfied. It is also
     staged levels, known as CALDEA, which main aim is          possible to affirm that the higher the information quality
     to coordinate the relationships among the IMP’s com-       maturity levels an organization has reached for its most
     ponents by creating several growing maturity levels        important IMPs, the more competitive this organization can
     with growing information quality goals and require-        be due to the absence of information quality problems. The
     ments. For each level, several Key Processes Areas         levels are drawn like the staged ones of CMMI, because it
     (KPA) are described proposed. These KPAs are fo-           appears to be easier to work with a well-defined sequence
     cused on management and technical issues. For each         of improvements (which cover from basic management
     KPA, some tools, techniques, standards, and practices      project fundamentals to complex data quality management
     and metrics as required, are proposed, but not im-         issues). As previously explained, for each level, CALDEA
     posed, although due to length restrictions they are not    addresses specific KPAs, which meet specific information
     included in this paper.                                    quality goals. These KPAs are focused on not only technical
•     An assessment and improvement methodology,                but also managerial issues, providing the basis for informa-
     known as EVAMECAL, in the style of CBA-IPI [6],            tion quality measurement and management and integrating
     SCAMPI [34] or SPICE [22] which consists of a set of       both aspects in order to compensate the lack of integrative
     steps that provides a basis for data/information quality   frameworks mentioned in the introductory section. Each
     measurement and proactive management. The main             KPA has been divided into activities and tasks, which can
     element is a set of questionnaires for assessment and a    be satisfied by using several techniques, practices and tools
     rule system for identifying the path to improvement        in order to transform a set of incoming products into other
     based on the results of this assessment.                   outgoing ones. In order to make the framework as univer-
   This structure satisfy the [9]’s four conditions: as CAL-    sal and general as possible, none of the techniques, prac-
DEA is structured in maturity levels with KPAs, a system-       tices and tools are mandatory as previously mentioned, but
atic and concise set of criteria for information quality as-    organizations must choose the best suited to each KPA on
sessment is provided, satisfying the first condition. By de-    their own. We should emphasize that the chosen KPAs are
fining KPAs for each level, some of which are focused on        based on CMMI’s KPAs [35] and the chosen activities and
management issues, the basis for proactive management           tasks on our experiences with industrial and scientific ini-
and measurements is provided, satisfying the third condi-       tiatives regarding information quality, which have been the
tion. And finally, by being structured in such staged levels    main rationale for their choice. Anyway, the contents of this
describing KPAs and proposing (not imposing) tools, tech-       research paper are in continuous progress in order to
niques, and standards, a conceptual map has been provided       achieve theoretical validation. In the other hand and, due to
for the research community in order to address a variety of     paper length restrictions, neither techniques nor tools will
approaches, theories and information quality related phe-       be looked at in detail
nomena, satisfying the fourth condition. On the other hand,
EVAMECAL provides a schema for analyzing and solving            2.1 Initial Level
information quality problems, satisfying the second condi-      An IMP is said to be at Initial Level when no efforts are
tion.                                                           made in order to achieve any information quality goals.
    The main idea of the framework is to use EVAMECAL
for assessing and improving an IMP using CALDEA’s lev-          2.2 Definition Level
els as reference in the guidance of the optimization of the     An IMP is said to be at Definition Level or Defined when it
CABALLERO AND PIATTINI: ASSESSMENT AND IMPROVEMENT OF INFORMATION QUALITY THROUGH IMP CONCEPT                                 3



has been defined and planned. This implies identifying all           dated to correct defects and/or discord with the USR-
its components and their relationship to the requirements.           IMP, USR-IQ and the organizational information
To achieve this goal, the following KPAs need to be satis-           quality policies.
fied:                                                              • (RM) Risk and Poor Information Quality Impact
    • (IQATM) Information Quality Assurance Team                     Management. Authors like [7] affirm that it is neces-
      Management. The aim of this KPA is to form a team              sary to determine the impact of risks due to the poor
      composed of people having direct responsibility for            quality of information in the IMP in order to limit
      information and for its integrity. This team will en-          them at organizational level.
      courage the entire organization to take on commit-           • (IQSM) Information Quality Standardization Man-
      ments regarding information quality policies [2] and           agement. All lessons learned through specific experi-
      make corresponding efforts in order to support the             ences should be properly gathered, documented and
      activities of this maturity model.                             transmitted to all new people who are going to be
    • (IPM) IMP Project Management. This is a manage-                part of an IMP. Thus, IMP performance will be higher
      ment KPA aimed at developing a plan for IMP in or-             than it would otherwise be.
      der to coordinate both managerial and technical ef-          • (OIQPM) Organizational Information Quality Poli-
      forts and elaborate all related documentation.                 cies Management. The means by which all the efforts
    • (URM) User Requirements Management. User Re-                   previously mentioned can be implemented, consisting
      quirements must be collected and documented. Three             of defining policies of information quality based on
      kinds of requirements might be identified: those re-           the previously defined standards affecting not only
      lated to final product (URS), those related to IMP –           single IMPs, but also the whole organization.
      which must be gathered in the User Requirement
      Specification for IMP document (URS-IMP) document          2.4 Quantitative Management
      - and those related to Information Quality –which
      must be gathered in the Information Quality User Re-       An IMP is said to be at a Quantitative Management Level
      quirements Specification (URS-IQ).                         or quantitatively managed when after having been Inte-
    • (DSTM) Data Sources and Data Targets Manage-               grated (Integration level has been achieved) several Meas-
      ment. Due to the intrinsic characteristics of data, both   urement Plans have been developed and implemented and
      data sources and targets must be identified and docu-      measurement procedures have been automated. Therefore,
      mented, in order to avoid problems like uncontrolled       the main information quality goal of this level is to obtain a
      data redundancy or problems with data format inter-        quantitative compliance that IMP performance over a rea-
      change [28].                                               sonable time period, remains as consistent as required in
    • (ADMPM) Database or Data Warehouse Acquisi-                terms of variation and stability through a reliable set of
      tion, Development or Maintenance Project Man-              measurements [11] of information quality characteristics of
      agement. In order to improve information quality, it       IMP. This level is composed of the following KPA:
      is highly recommendable to draw up a project for ac-          • (MM) IMP Measurement Management. Since met-
      quisition, development or maintenance of a database             rics about IMP components have been drawn up at
      or a data warehouse management system, supporting               definition level, the aim of this KPA is to define when
      both URS-IQ and URS-IMP.                                        and how to make the measurements and how to rep-
    • (IQM) Information Quality Management in IMP                     resent the results and to whom. These metrics are
      Components. For each information quality compo-                 used to check conformity to specifications [15, 24]
      nent, information quality dimensions from URS-IQ              • (AMP) IMP Measurement Plan Automation Man-
      must be identified, controlled and monitored. It is             agement. In order to increase the reliability and re-
      necessary to identify from the URS-IQ the dimensions            peatability of measures, measurement procedures
      of quality of information that must be controlled [19],         must be automated as required by [18]. This KPA
      as well as the metrics adapted for each one of those            aims to study all the issues related to the automation
      dimensions [23, 32].                                            of these management procedures.

2.3 Integration Level                                            2.5 Optimizing Level
An IMP is said to be at Integration Level or Integrated          An IMP is said to be at Optimizing Level if when being
when besides having been Defined (Definition level has           quantitatively managed the obtained measurements are
been achieved), many efforts are made in order to assure         used to develop a continuous improvement by eliminating
that the IMP is in compliance with organizational informa-       defects or by proposing and implementing several im-
tion quality requirements and standards. This implies stan-      provements. The following two KPAs must be satisfied:
dardizing different information quality learned lessons in          • (CADPM) Causal Analysis for Defect Prevention
order to avoid previous errors and improve future work..               Management. From the study of the measurement re-
The following KPAs must be satisfied:                                  sults, some typical quality techniques and tools like
   • (VV) Information Products and IMP Components                      Statistical Control Process (SPC) or Ishikawa’s dia-
      Validation and Verification. Both information prod-              grams can be applied to detect defects of information
      ucts (obtained as a result of data transformation proc-          quality and identify their root causes. The obtained
      ess) and IMP components must be verified and vali-               conclusions must form a basis for a corresponding
4                                                                                                            QUATIC’2004 PROCEEDINGS



      maintenance process for removing detected defects in                                        TABLE 1
      affected resources.                                                  NUMBER OF QUESTIONS BY MATURITY AND DEPTH LEVELS.
    • (IODM) Innovation and Organizational Develop-
                                                                                DEPTH LEVEL                    1         2        3
      ment Management. Similarly to the previous KPA,
                                                                               Level Maturity 2                12        18       82
      here the results can be used to improve the IMP, in
      terms of performance, planned time or budget. This is                      Level Maturity 3               8        7        24
      the basis for the idea of continuous improvement.
                                                                              Level Maturity 4                 3         2       11
2.6 Achieving higher levels of CALDEA                                         Level Maturity 5                 4         2       11
In the proposed framework, a KPA can be in one of these                Total Questions per depth level         28       31       131
states: {“Fully Satisfied”, “Satisfied”, “Partially Satisfied” and     Total Questions Questionnaire                    190
“Not Satisfied”}. An information quality maturity level is
said to be achieved when all contained KPAs are at least
“Satisfied”, that is to say, in order to achieve higher levels of       veloped products. The idea of organizing the question-
CALDEA, the Information Quality Management Team                         naire in several depth levels is so that questions will be
must guide an IMP to the “Satisfied” state of all contained             asked from top down and only if necessary. Thus, the
KPA for the lower level. This goal can be achieved by ap-               block of questions of the first depth level serves to
plying the assessment and improvement methodology,                      evaluate if KPAs are satisfied or not, avoiding at this
which is next described.                                                depth level other questions which are not important for
                                                                        establishing specific aspects about the accom-plishment
3 EVAMECAL: AN ASSESSMENT AND                                           of the more specific issues, which are dealt with in
  IMPROVEMENT METHODOLOGY                                               lower depth levels. So, if all the answers to the ques-
                                                                        tions of the first depth level differ from “Not Satisfied”,
    As previously mentioned, an assessment and improve-                 then questions in the level immediately below should
ment methodology is required in order to guide organiza-                be answered, and so on. Altogether one hundred and
tions to reach higher information quality maturity levels for           ninety questions would be answered in the case of all
each IMP. Basically, the methodology consists of a PDCA                 the answers to the questions of the first and the second
cycle. The following is a brief summary of the steps to be              depth level differing from "Not Satisfied". On the other
taken:                                                                  hand, a maturity level of a given IMP can be achieved a
   1. Choose an IMP which needs to be optimized                         level only if the lower ones have been achieved. Table 1
   2. Elaborate a Plan for its assessment.                              gathers the number of questions made by each matur-
   3. Execute the assessment plan by conducting the sur-                ity level and each depth level. Due to length restric-
        veys and measuring as required. (see section 3.1
                                                                        tions none of the questions are included in this paper. It
        where a set of surveys are described)
                                                                        is important to say that we are working on checking
   4. Analyze the results and elaborate an Improvement
                                                                        the validity and efficiency of each block and question
        Plan.
                                                                        inside the blocks for each depth level. The answers to
   5. Study the viability of the Improvement Plan and the
                                                                        these questions must be a number between 0 and 100,
        solution.
                                                                        in order to quantitatively assess the degree of satisfac-
   6. Execute the Improvement Plan.
   7. Confirm the improvements and obtain and stan-                     tion for each task, activity and KPA. Thus, it is possible
        dardize conclusions.                                            to set a numeric qualification for each state by calculat-
As demonstrated in this document, the numbering for sec-                ing a weighted average of the obtained qualification in
tions upper case Arabic numerals, then upper case Arabic                each one of the KPAs for that level according to a pro-
numerals, separated by periods. Initial paragraphs after the            posed weight given by a critically degree. In the pro-
section title are not indented. Only the initial, introductory          posal, it has been established that if this qualification is
paragraph has a drop cap.                                               between 0 and 20, the KPA is said to be “Not Satisfied”;
                                                                        if it is between 20 and 60 is said to be “Partially Satis-
3.1 The surveys                                                         fied”; if it is between 60 and 90 it is said to be “Satisfied”;
For the assessment process, a set of surveys has been elabo-            otherwise it is said to be “Fully Satisfied”. Table 2 shows
rated. This set consists of four different classes of question-         in the first column the KPA of each level of maturity
naires, with different goals:                                           and in the second one, the degree of criticality of each
A. In order to delimit and characterize the organization, a             KPA for that level. The degrees of criticality also serve
    total of fifteen questions.                                         as a criteria in order to choose which KPAs must be sat-
B. In order to delimit and characterize the IMP to be as-               isfied first in the third step of EVAMECAL. These de-
    sessed, a total of six questions.                                   grees of criticality are a hypothesis according to the
C. In order to assess the degree of achievement of each                 supposed degree of importance. It is a line of future re-
    maturity level, several questions organized in different            search to determine these weights based on the de-
    and selective blocks have been developed. The ques-                 mands of the different organizations interviewed and
    tions are focused on the KPAs, activities, tasks, pro-              to set finely the ranges for qualification.
    posed techniques, tools and practices and required de-           D. Finally, in order to collate and compare the answers
CABALLERO AND PIATTINI: ASSESSMENT AND IMPROVEMENT OF INFORMATION QUALITY THROUGH IMP CONCEPT                                    5



    with previous questionnaires, there is a last block of                                   TABLE 2
    questions with descriptive and textual language.                       CRITICALITY DEGREE FOR EACH KPA IN CALDEA.
   The surveys are going to be conducted at assessment                                 CRITICALITY DEGREE
time.                                                                                    Definition Level
                                                                    (IQATM) Information Quality Assurance Team
                                                                                                                       10 %
4 EXPERIENCES APPLYING THE FRAMEWORK.                               Management
                                                                    (IPM) IMP Project Management                       15 %
    In order to empirically validate the framework and test
                                                                    (URM) User Requirements Management.                25 %
its practical applicability and efficiency, it has been applied
                                                                    (DSTM) Data Sources and Data Targets Man-
to different IMPs from several organizations. The following                                                            10 %
                                                                    agement.
shows the results obtained from applying the framework to
                                                                    (ADMPM) Database or data warehouse Acqui-
a particular organization with proven experience in the
                                                                    sition, development or maintenance Project         25 %
information management field. EVAMECAL was first ap-
                                                                    Management
plied by following the steps previously detailed. The results
                                                                    (IQM) Information Quality Management in IMP
of questionnaires A and B are presented in subsection 4.1                                                              25%
                                                                    Components.
and 4.2; in 4.3 the results of questionnaire C and a list of                             Integration Level
proposed improvements are presented. Since finishing this           (VV) Information Products and IMP Compo-
paper, the organization has continued working on the im-                                                               25%
                                                                    nents Validation and Verification.
provement plan, although several subgoals have already              (RM) Risk and Poor Information Quality Impact
been achieved.                                                                                                         25%
                                                                    Management
                                                                    (IQSM) Information Quality Standardization
4.1 Characterization of the company                                                                                    25%
                                                                    Management
   The main activity of the company is software develop-            (OIQPM) Organizational Information Quality
ment with a solid knowledge of and training in software                                                                25%
                                                                    Policies Management
quality standards and Software Engineering (all the devel-                       Quantitative Management Level
opments are carried out by following one of the most im-            (MM) IMP Measurement Management                    70 %
portant and widely used national software development               (AMP) IMP Measurement Plan Automation
methodologies). The company has obtained an ISO 9000                                                                   30 %
                                                                    Management.
certification. Their offered services are consulting, devel-                            Optimizing Level
opment, training courses, technical attendance, sale of li-         (CADPM) Causal Analysis for Defects Preven-
                                                                                                                       50%
censes, database and data warehouse administration, sys-            tion Management
tem planning projects and migration to an important com-            (IODM) Innovation and Organizational Devel-
                                                                                                                       50%
mercial DBMS (e.g. Oracle of which they are certified part-         opment Management.
ners). With a total of eighty-nine employees, it is the eight-
een of the department of systems who organize the re-
sources of computing support for the rest of the depart-            4.3 Assessment and Improvement of the IMP.
ments.
                                                                    All the questions in the surveys were made to the head of
4.2 Characterization of studied IMP                                 the consulting department. In table 3 the main results of
                                                                    these surveys can be found. These results reflect that none
Among all the IMPs, the framework was applied to that
                                                                    of the KPAs belonging to level 2 or higher are at least “Sat-
related to the Training Management Process, which is a
                                                                    isfied”. This means that the Definition level is at a “Not
responsibility of the consulting department. The main goal
                                                                    Achieved” state. As an example, the conclusions drawn are
of the IMP in question is to manage data regarding training,
                                                                    included:
which consists of gathering both internal and external re-
                                                                        • (IQATM) Information Quality Assurance Team Manage-
quests for training, choosing who are going to be the train-
                                                                           ment. In spite of not properly satisfying this KPA, the
ers, determining which resources are going to be used and
                                                                           organization presents a quality infrastructure that can
managing several quality training issues This process is
                                                                           adequately support information quality.
adequately specified and documented in the quality man-
                                                                        • (IPM) IMP Project Management. This KPA is also not
ual of the organization.
                                                                           satisfied.
Some different forms exist for gathering data about course
                                                                        • (URM) User Requirements Management. User Require-
demands, assignations and quality evaluations of proposed
                                                                           ments have been managed for the training proce-
exercises, didactic materials, trainer capability, installations,
                                                                           dures, although information quality requirements
assistance and used resources.
                                                                           have not been taken into account.
The organization runs a software application, which is an
                                                                        • (DSTM) Data Sources and Data Targets Management. In
internally developed tool to manage all previously men-
                                                                           the IMP definition, both data sources and data prod-
tioned data. One of the employees of the consulting de-
                                                                           uct targets are identified and documented. There are
partment, normally always the same one, is responsible for
                                                                           some forms in order to standardize data interchange
transcribing data from the forms to the tool and for obtain-
                                                                           formats.
ing the information, which will be given to the adequate
                                                                        • (ADMPM) Database or data warehouse Acquisition, de-
person.
6                                                                                                          QUATIC’2004 PROCEEDINGS



     velopment or maintenance Project Management. The da-       5 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
     tabase where data is stored is an organizational one
                                                                In this paper, an integrative framework for assessing and
     adequately modified to support the training manage-
                                                                improving information quality for organizations has been
     rial software tool. Thus, data and procedure models
                                                                briefly presented, and one experience of applying this
     were modified and extended, although none of the in-
                                                                framework has been described. The framework consist of
     formation quality issues were considered.
                                                                two main components: CALDEA, an information quality
  • (IQM) Information Quality Management in IMP Compo-
                                                                model based on maturity levels which serves as references
     nents. This KPA has not been satisfied because infor-
                                                                when assesing and guidance when improving; both activi-
     mation quality is not one of the goals of the IMP.
                                                                ties, assessement and improvement are supported by the
Taking into account the criticality degree of each of the
                                                                second component, EVAMECAL.
KPAs (see table 2) the following recommendations were
                                                                On one hand, the IMP concept with both CALDEA and
proposed in order to satisfy KPAs at Definition level:
                                                                EVAMECAL satisfies the four goals required for a good
  1. Create an Information Quality Assurance Team
                                                                information quality framework [9]:
       which assumes the responsibility of IMP project
                                                                     1. CALDEA provides a systematic and concise set of
       management
                                                                         criteria for information quality according to which
  2. Adequately manage user requirements, both IMP
                                                                         information can be evaluated.
       and IQ ones.
                                                                     2. EVAMECAL provides a schema for analyzing and
  3. Identify and define both data sources and data prod-
                                                                         solving information quality problems
       uct targets, as well as the data interchange formats.
                                                                     3. Some KPAs in CALDEA provide the basis for in-
  4. From these requirement specifications, adequately
                                                                         formation quality measurement and proactive
       manage the information quality dimensions for each
                                                                         management.
       component of the system
                                                                     4. CALDEA is by itself a conceptual map that can be
  5. Modify database or data warehouse to give support
                                                                         used to structure a variety of approaches, theories
       to the information quality
                                                                         and information quality related phenomena since
  6. Plan a project for the development of the IMP.
                                                                         KPA does not propose a closed set of tools, tech-
                                                                         niques and methodologies.
                        TABLE 3                                     On the other hand, the experience of applying the
RESULTS OBTAINED FROM APPLYING EVAMECAL TO THE TRAINING         framework to real case studies has allowed both CALDEA
                    MANAGEMENT IMP                              and EVAMECAL to be refined and has demonstrated that
                    RESULTS OF SURVEYS                          although it is known that information quality is becoming
Definition Level                            Not Achieved        increasingly important, organizations do not have or do not
(IQATM) Information Quality Assurance                           provide enough time or resources to deal with it. This fact
                                            Not Satisfied       is aggravated by the lack of an information quality enter-
Team Management
                                            Not Satisfied       prise culture.
(URM) User Requirements Management.
                                                                Although the presented framework is becoming more
(DSTM) Data Sources and Data Targets
                                          Partially Satisfied   widely used much work has to be done, beginning with a
Management.
                                                                validation of both models, all the questionnaires of the sur-
(ADMPM) Database or data warehouse
                                                                veys, and the criticality degrees for each KPA. Another line
Acquisition, development or maintenance   Partially Satisfied
Project Management
                                                                of work being pursued, consists of choosing (or even de-
                                                                veloping when they do not exist) some standards, practices,
(IQM) Information Quality Management
                                            Not Satisfied       techniques and tools in order to satisfy the majority of the
in IMP Components.
Integration Level                           Not Achieved
                                                                information quality requirements for the majority of the
(VV) Information Products and IMP
                                                                organizations.
                                            Not Satisfied
Components Validation and Verification.
(RM) Risk and Poor Information Quality                          ACKNOWLEDGMENT
                                            Not Satisfied
Impact Management                                               This research is part of both CALIPO- supported by Direc-
(IQSM) Information Quality Standardiza-                         ción General de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia y
                                            Not Satisfied
tion Management                                                 Tecnología (TIC2003-07804-C05-03)- and MESSENGER pro-
(OIQPM) Organizational Information                              ject - supported by Consejería de Ciencia y Tecnología de la
                                            Not Satisfied
Quality Policies Management                                     Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha (PCC-03-003-
Cuantitative Management Level               Not Achieved        1).
(MM) IMP Measurement Management             Not Satisfied
(AMP) IMP Measurement Plan Automa-                              REFERENCES
                                            Not Satisfied
tion Management.
                                                                [1]   Ballou D., Wang R., Pazer, H., and Tayi, G.K. “Modeling Informa-
Optimizing Level                            Not Achieved
                                                                      tion Manufacturing Systems to Determine Information Product
(CADPM) Causal Analysis for Defects
                                            Not Satisfied             Quality”. Management Science 44(4), 1998, Pp. 462-484
Prevention Management
(IODM) Innovation and Organizational                            [2]   Ballou, D. and Tayi, G.K. “Enhancing data quality in Data Ware-
                                            Not Satisfied             house Environments”. Communications of the ACM, January 1999/
Development Management.
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CABALLERO AND PIATTINI: ASSESSMENT AND IMPROVEMENT OF INFORMATION QUALITY THROUGH IMP CONCEPT                                                         7



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8                                                                                                                     QUATIC’2004 PROCEEDINGS



Ismael Caballero has an MSc in Computer Science from de Escuela           Mario Piattini has an MSc and PhD in Computer Science from the
Superior de Informática of Ciudad Real. His is currently working on his   Politechnical University of Madrid.and is a Certified Information System
PhD Thesis on Information Quality Management. He is a professor in        Auditor Manager by ISACA (Information System Audit and Control
the Departament of Computer Science at the University of Castilla-La      Association). He is a professor in the Department of Computer Sci-
Mancha, in Ciudad Real, Spain. Authors of several papers on data          ence at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, in Ciudad Real, Spain.
quality, information quality and information quality management, be-      Author of several books and papers on databases, software engineer-
longs to ALARCOS Research Group where develops his research               ing and information systems, he leads the ALARCOS Research Group
work.                                                                     of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Castilla-La
                                                                          Mancha, in Ciudad Real, Spain. His research interests are: advanced
                                                                          database design, database quality, software metrics, software mainte-
                                                                          nance and security in information systems.