Information Management: Developing & Using Content Quality Guidelines

Abstract

All organisations will have guidelines on how things should be done, from completing an expense form to starting up a new project. Very few provide any guidance to employees on how to ensure that the content they are creating as internal documents or as intranet and website pages is of a high quality. This guidance should be an element of an overall information management policy. At the core of content quality is the ownership of a piece of information by an individual employee who is given support both by their manager and by the information management ethos of the organisation.

Anyone using a piece of content needs to be assured that it:

Is owned by an employee who has the responsibility and support to ensure that it only remains available for as long as it is valid, accurate and of use to the organisation;

Is the most current version;

Is of the highest quality;

Can be used with confidence to make business-critical decisions;

Can be used with confidence in creating new content;

Presents no risk to the user or the organisation in referring to the content in the course of a business transaction;

Will highlight related content;

Can be shared with others with an appropriate access permission;

Is in a format that encourages use.