Implementing Information Integrity Technology - A Feedback Control System Approach

Intrinsic information integrity attributes of accuracy, consistency and reliability are central to any information system in that in their absence the information systems (IS) will have massive amounts of polluted (error – filled) data and useless, even dangerous information. These errors are essentially caused by on-line factors of change, complexity, communication, conversion and corruption which have their presence mainly through system environment which is external to computing (and hence the application) system and overlaps with the user environment. Need, therefore, is for on-line error detection and integrity improvement mechanisms in the IS models in the form of automatic feedback control systems. The paper addresses this research issue of implementing integrity technology. Specifically, the paper begins with the choice of information model for integrity improvement, followed by presentation of some alternatives for quantification of intrinsic integrity attributes and development of integrity profile and cumulative information integrity index as a means for demonstrating integrity improvement. This is followed by presentation of information integrity technology implementation steps. Finally, the paper gives a description of information integrity technology, thus emerging, as a software product and details it.