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The characteristics of good information include accuracy, reliability and accessibility to name a few. Below we’ll discuss more characteristics of good information in detail…

Valid
Valid information is information that is accurate and reliable so that no mistakes or errors can be made. The reason for this is that if information is invalid, it can lead to the wrong decisions being made.

Reliable
Reliable information is information that is gathered from a valid and trusted source and can be relied upon to be correct. An example would be sales information from the sales department which is given to the finance department about the sales figures for a specific period. This is trusted and valid as it comes from an internal source.

Timely
Timely information is information that is given for a correct time period. Profit and loss analysed by a company would need to access current sales figures and not access past sales figures from several years ago. Also, timely information can be information that is available when it is needed. If a company want to check sales figures for today, timely information would be the information from the cash register, at the time they wanted it.

Fit for purpose
Fit for purpose information is information that is relevant only for the task at hand. If a business was opening in Birmingham, then it would be a good idea to look at the population within an area around where you wanted to open. If you looked at the population of London then this information wouldn’t be fit for purpose.

Accessible
Much like a ramp for the disabled which ensures easy access, accessible information should be stored in a way the makes it easily accessible at the time it’s needed. For example if it took an hour to look at the sales figures in a cash register and print them, then that information would not be easily accessible. Good information should be easily accessible as the users need to have it as and when they need it.

Cost effective
Information that is worth investing time and money in to get help with your business would be cost effective information. For example, if you paid for a survey to be done by a company and it cost you £1,000 and the information gathered increased your profit by £1,500 then this could be seen as cost effective information. Although if you spent £50,000 and only seen an increase of £100 next month, this would not be seen as cost effective. Information that costs less to put together than the profit from analysing and using the information to increase profits is what is cost effective information.

Accurate
Correct decision making relies upon accurate information. If your car showed that you were going 20 mph less than you were actually going then this may result in you breaking the law.  In the same way if a sales department gave inaccurate sales information to the finance department, it may result in the incorrect tax information and could land the company in trouble with the tax man.

Relevant
Information that directly relates to the business need. If a bakery was looking at the price of sand, this wouldn’t be relevant information (unless they were somehow incorporating sand in to their products). If a business was looking for way to cut costs they may look at their incoming bills such as electricity to try and see where they could save money. Looking at the price of ingredients they use would be relevant to the bakery.

Level of Detail
The requested information must have enough detail to provide an acceptable answer. For example if the manager wants to see a summary of the sales figures for the last six months, the information with the right level of detail would show overall figures for each month plus a grand total. If the manager received a complete breakdown of all the sales for all products sold in a large report, this would be seen as the wrong level of detail and wouldn’t really be a summary.  It is important to understand what the person is requesting when presenting the information.

Reliable Source
Information that is obtained for a business purpose should be gathered from a reliable and trustworthy source. If you wanted the information about the population of Birmingham, then Wikipedia might not be seen as a 100% reliable source. If you researched government census data for Birmingham on a government website then this would be seen as an accurate source.

Understandable by user
Information given or used for a business purpose has to be understood by the end user. If a person with very limited IT skills calls a help-desk to try and solve a printing problem, talking to the caller using IT jargon wouldn’t be understood by the end user. Having empathy and being able to put yourself in another person’s shoes helps you to answer the question in a manner which the other person can understand.

This entry was posted in Information Systems and tagged information, systems by Sean.Posted on November 18, 2015

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For all information to be successful then it has to be correct otherwise people may spread around false information and that could be bad for the business. For it to also be valid it should be easy to understand for a reader to see. Any invalid information would be useless to a reader of the information. An example of valid information would be a news service. They need to keep updating constantly and make sure that they use information that they are sure is correct.

Reliable Information:

For information to be reliable then you need to make sure that the information is from good source. If you got information from an unreliable source then you will not be very good at giving out information to other people as you are spreading round false information.

Timely Information:

Timely is an important characteristic of good information. Information is important and it needs to make sure that you know that it is useful in the present and not in the past or future. For example, a business would use current sale figures to work out the current profit/loss they are making or losing. They will use data that they have collected within possibly a week and not a long time ago.

Fit-for-purpose Information:

The information that you will collect will also need to be useful to your needs. For example if you collect information and you don’t use it then it won’t be fit for purpose. For example, if someone got a spreadsheet of a list of numbers with sale figures on it then the data would not be fit for purpose as they would not know what to do with it.

Accessible Information:

Accessible information is information that you can store away and access it at another time or when you next require it. For example, a business would use timely information to look at sale figures however they may put 4 weeks’ worth of sale figures away and they can then access the information when they next require it.

Cost-effective Information:

In a lot of situations a business may want to get information from other businesses. An example of this may be a business buying information from another business around the area to see what works well for them to improve general sales. They are usually sold in forms such as surveys.

Sufficiently accurate Information:

It is very important that information needs to be accurate otherwise it is useless to the reader. You need to make sure that information is reliable and correct so that it is useful. If you provide incorrect information then this could lead to poor decision making by a company.

Relevant Information:

It is one of the most important features that you need to make sure that information is relevant to your purpose. An example of relevant information is making sure that you look at present data and make sure that it is useful to the business.

Right level of detail Information:

In any form of data and information collection it is very important that you make sure that it has correct spelling and grammar so that you can read and understand the information. It is also important that you don’t go over the top when it comes down to marking information. You don’t want to write too much detail but you also don’t want to write not a lot of detail it is about finding the right balance.

Confidence in source Information:

In my opinion, this is one of the most important characteristics of good information because if your sources are not reliable then the information and data you are using is a waste of time. You need to ensure that the information collected is from a trusty and reliable source that you know is 100% accurate.

Understandable by user Information:

Information is only useful if another user of that information can fully understand what it means. You need to ensure that if you are passing data on to someone else that you mark information and make sure that you can understand it yourself. This is a crucial characteristic because if they can’t understand the information then it is redeemed useless.