Data quality

Data quality is a perception or an assessment of data's fitness to serve its purpose in a given context. The quality of data is determined by factors such as accuracy, completeness, reliability, relevance and how up to date it is. As data has become more intricately linked with the operations of organizations, the emphasis on data quality has gained greater attention.

An oft-cited estimate originating from IBM suggests the yearly cost of data quality issues in the U.S. during 2016 alone was about $3.1 trillion. Lack of trust by business managers in data quality is commonly cited among chief impediments to decision-making.

The problem of poor data quality was particularly common in the early days of corporate computing, when most data was entered manually. Even as more automation took hold, data quality issues rose in prominence. For a number of years, the image of deficient data quality was represented in stories of meetings at which department heads sorted through differing spreadsheet numbers that ostensibly described the same activity.

Determining data quality

Aspects, or dimensions, important to data quality include accuracy, conformity and consistency. As a first step toward improving data quality, organizations typically perform data asset inventories in which the relative value, uniqueness and validity of data can undergo baseline studies. Established baseline ratings for known good data sets are then used for comparison against data in the organization going forward.

Methodologies for such data quality projects include the Data Quality Assessment Framework (DQAF), which was created by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to provide a common method for assessing data quality. The DQAF provides guidelines for measuring data dimensions that include timeliness, in which actual times of data delivery are compared to anticipated data delivery schedules.

Managing data quality

Software tools specialized for data quality management match records, delete duplicates, establish remediation policies and identify personally identifiable data. Management consoles for data quality support creation of rules for data handling to maintain data integrity, discovering data relationships and automated data transforms that may be part of quality control efforts.

Collaborative views and workflow enablement tools have become more common, giving data stewards, who are charged with maintaining data quality, views into corporate data repositories. These tools and related processes are often closely linked with master data management (MDM) systems that have become part of many data governance efforts.

Data quality management tools include IBM InfoSphere Information Server for Data Quality, Informatica Data Quality, Oracle Enterprise Data Quality, Pitney Bowes Spectrum Technology Platform, SAP Data Quality Management and SAS DataFlux.