The authors, all leaders in the data quality field for many years, discuss how to make the economic case for data quality and the importance of getting an organization's leaders on board. They outline different approaches for assessing data, both subjectively (by users) and objectively (using sampling and other techniques). They describe real problems and solutions, including efforts to find the root causes of data quality problems at a healthcare organization and data quality initiatives taken by a large teaching hospital. They address setting company policy on data quality and, finally, they consider future challenges on the journey to data quality. (available at The MIT Press, ICIQ Conference Discount Coupon, also discount at amazon.com

Table of Contents [PDF]

This book will educate people about the critical issues in data and information quality that have been plaguing information systems for many years. Researchers have only recently begun to address data quality as a discipline in its own right, and a body of data quality literature has just begun to appear. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) began a total data quality management program and have hosted ten international conferences on information quality aimed at practitioners, academicians, and researchers. This book is built on two primary sources. After an extensive literature review and study, an importance of data quality knowledge and skills survey was completed by 110 data quality researchers and practitioners, all data quality leaders in their own right, at the International Conference on Information Quality held at MIT. The results of these studies led to a consensus of the most critical skills necessary to begin performing information quality work. An introduction to those critical skills and knowledge areas are the primary topics of this book. The second source is the research into data and information quality of the four authors who collectively have published over 100 articles.

Copies are available at the online Authorhouse Bookstore, through their Channel Book Sales Department hotline at 888.728.8267 Ext. 5022, or by email to bkorders@authorhouse.com.

Editors: Richard Wang, Elizabeth Pierce, Stuart Madnick,  and Craig Fisher

(Available at Amazon.com)