Design and evaluation of business process oriented assessment techniques to determine the quality of information exchanges -demonstrated in public organizations-

This thesis investigates information quality (IQ) of information exchange in public organizations. A clear relation between the quality of information and success of organizations has been acknowledged, but approaches for analyzing information quality on the basis of higher abstraction level have been lacking. When examining organizations, limited understanding of information processes relating to information exchanges are often observed. As the example of emergency medical service demonstrates, this is particularly true within public service organizations. In this thesis, a set of techniques for IQ analysis are developed and evaluated, namely quality assessment for information exchange (QA.IE) techniques. This extends previously developed methods and provides a novel way to assess IQ, complementing data oriented approaches that have been often proposed in research in the last years. Design of the QA.IE techniques is undertaken in the public service within the emergency medical service, where information exchange utilize various forms of media and are known to be of critical importance. The research follows a design science (DS) approach. The analysis is based on data from interviews, in depth field investigations, and surveys. Evaluation of the QA.IE techniques are carried out in the operating room within a large hospital in Ireland and Counter of Lost Wallet (BPC) for e-Citizen service in Portugal. Within the work, an evaluation framework was developed which formed the basis for evaluating the techniques and is comprised of demonstration, design principles, interviews, and Moody and Shanks factors. The resulting QA.IE techniques provide models to evaluate the state of IQ in information exchange with consideration of enterprise contexts. The results can be utilized as guidelines when planning and assessing information and information exchange related matters, and facilitate digitalization for improvement. Suggestions concerning further development for future use of the techniques are formulated, and consolidated into principle for IQ assessment. This thesis thus contributes theoretically to the development of a new approach for analyzing IQ of information exchange