Plus...IQ Research from University of St. Gallen, Switzerland

Information Quality Management is NOT a project, NOR a program, NOR a functional unit. It is a journey of growth and maturation. When that IQ journey is taken, it leads to escalating reduction of the costs of process failure and its resulting information scrap and rework; increases in customer satisfaction and knowledge worker satisfaction; and increases in profit or surplus that can be used to add new value.

Maturity models have become a new fad. Someone counted over 120 different maturity models for quality management, software quality management, information quality and information management. Unfortunately, many of these do not contain the real ingredients of a quality maturity model as defined by Philip Crosby, in his seminal model, The Quality Management Maturity Grid, described in his book Quality Is Free. Some, tragically, are merely taxonomies of software tools!!!

In this presentation, Mr. English describes the journey of maturing the Organization's IQ environment. While every organization will have its unique pilgrimage with its unique twists and turns, there are critical success factors each must accomplish to sustain the journey.

Mr. English describes:

• The Stages of IQ Management Maturity
• Taking Inventory: Where are you?
• Establishing a Vision: "Begin with the End in Mind"
• Planning your next Steps: "Put First Things First"
• Assuring continual growth and improvement: "Hold the Gain"
• Moving to Certainty: Counting the value you deliver

"Do not puff, shade, skew, tailor, firm up, stretch, massage or otherwise distort statements of fact," was the admonition from the FBI's law enforcement ethics presentation given nationwide one week before the 9-11 attacks-one that Special Agent Rowley found difficult to forget afterwards. Maintaining information accuracy can become difficult, nearly impossible, in all kinds of professional settings and workplace dynamics for a host of reasons.

Time Magazine's 2003 Person-of-the-Year for her integrity in calling attention to serious information quality problems, Special Agent Rowley, discusses the unfortunate decline of ethical behavior affecting almost all professional and social groups in this country. She describes how we must place greater focus on the ethical decision-making process and the human-nature factors that adversely impact decision-making. Special Agent Rowley describes a simple "whistleblower test" listing the rare circumstances that must all exist to support stepping outside one's primary loyalties in the workplace when serious mistakes or issues arise.