Business Information Quality and its Assessment

Topical problems of modern business are: how to cull right information from its abundance, how to decide which information is valuable and which one is useless, finally, how to assess the quality of the usable information. These problems are relevant and important both globally and locally in Lithuanian business. This paper highlights information quality (IQ) management and assessment peculiarities, reveals the importance of IQ in the modern business. The authors present IQ dimensions that are essential to Lithuanian and foreign business information consumers because effective IQ assessment and management depend upon right evaluation of these IQ dimensions. The authors of this paper also evaluated information maturity levels of Lithuanian business organizations and revealed their attitudes towards the information. This information maturity was assessed according to IBM Corporation proposed Information Maturity Model. In reference to the accomplished research, authors of this paper identify the crucial problems that influence business IQ and also highlight these root problems: absence of proper technologies, poor information technologies (IT), inappropriate software, difficulties to discover reasons for IQ errors, insufficient information security, lack of time to ensure IQ, lack of reliable information sources, poor knowledge of business information consumer (employee). The findings revealed that the main business IQ assurance problem is influenced simply by the lack of time. To draw a conclusion, to ensure IQ, information must be presented and produced in accordance with clearly defined IQ dimensions, just like other products (services and goods) are supplied and evaluated according to specific quality characteristics. Consequently, the identification of IQ dimensions that are the most important to information consumers, and the estimation of IQ measurement criteria and its methodology are the basis for the better information product's quality assessment. To assure quality information in the organizations the authors of this paper propose: to adapt IQ Management Model that might service like one of the tools for solving IQ assurance problems, to define and choose right business IQ dimensions, and change organizational attitude towards the value of information.