Elucidate a relationship between strategy and data quality.

Correlation Between Strategy and Data Quality

Organisations are turning to be more dependent on data; nearly every modern organisation depends upon data and creates huge quantities of data. So, to meet the requirements of the organisation, a comprehensive data management program is necessary. But data is distinctive from other resources and requires diverse management techniques.

Organisational framework required to tackle the above concerns often does not exist. Hence, it is necessary to develop a comprehensive data quality strategy that can address many of these issues. For example, as with many organisations, formal data quality strategy was not documented for the New Zealand Ministry of Health. A planned data quality framework was later introduced which informed the overall development of a data quality strategy for the Ministry of Health. All results of the development of the strategy were documented for each collection of data. And it enabled internal members to access all the information about data collection. The documents are:

· Guidelines for the usage of data and original purpose for the collection

· Roles and responsibilities

· Results of assessment of collection using data quality framework

· Action plan for quality improvement

· Current and previous data quality initiatives

The data was available both on paper and Web.

As defined by Joseph Juran^[3], “Data are of high quality, if they are fit for their intended uses in operations, decision-making and planning. Data are fit for use if they are free of defects and possess desired features”. Hence, a data quality strategy in an organisation is a must to define the level of quality required to make the data useful. The data quality strategy also needs to look forward to the future potential uses of the data.