A data quality framework applied to e-government metadata: A prerequsite to establish governance of interoperable e-services

Data quality is becoming increasingly important in information critical systems and the data, also coined information product (IP)[1] is frequently considered as an item with equal importance to the physical product. Several frameworks for both data quality processes and data quality methods have been defined and are routinely applied to transactional and master data systems. However, it has been suggested that the same principles could also be successfully implemented for metadata repositories[7]. This article outlines how data quality processes and a data quality framework both based on semiotics[2] and Wang[1] are being applied to monitor and improve the content in an e-government metadata repository. In the work described here, the term data is used to denote data instances whereas metadata denotes the reusable data definitions.