Factors Affecting Information Quality in the Malaysian Public Sector

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Information is an important asset that can determine the success or failure of an organization. Hence, the quality of information should not be compromised, instead, it should be an organization's priority. Information should be managed efficiently and effectively to ensure its availability whenever needed, especially for making decisions. Without information quality management, an organization may be seemed unaccountable, holds no integrity, not transparent and competent, thus affecting performance. Most organizations do not implement information quality management because the factors that affect the quality of information are not identified. This study aims to identify the relationship between selected factors and the quality of information. The quantitative data were collected through questionnaire surveys distributed to public organizations (federal public services, state public services, federal statutory bodies, state statutory bodies, and local authorities) throughout Malaysia as the unit of analysis. Questionnaires were distributed from May to September 2017 and involved 273 respondents. Pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficient was utilized to analyze the relationship between the factors and information quality. The findings reveal that most of the factors have a high level of correlation. The analysis shows that public organizations need to prioritize the factors focused in this study, especially those identified with a high level of correlation, to optimize information quality. The findings can be a guide for developing policies, strategies, or programmes related to information quality management in organizational decision-making and performance enhancement, thus highlighting and empowering information quality management in public organizations.