Attributes of data

What is data?

Data is representation of facts, concepts or instructions in a formalized manner suitable for communication, interpretation or processing by humans or by automatic means.For example, data can be details of a person or a place which will be useful in processing valuable information. The following activity will help to improve your knowledge on the relationship between data and information.

Attributes of data

From an organizational perspective we can identify some desirable attributes of data as follows.

Shareable

There are many decision makers in an organization. Therefore the same data need to be accessed by different decision makers simultaneously.Data can be categorized as volatile and low-volatile data. 

Low-volatile data can be shared among the decision makers by printing, binding and distributing them as books.Volatile data is data which changes dramatically and is therefore difficult to share. But for the decision making process need both low volatile

data and volatile data.

Transportable

Data should be transportable from the storage location to the relevant place and it can be transported using different media such as telephone, fax, email, etc. Through certain media, data can be transported as text and visuals.

Secure

An organization uses different methods to guard against data loss, damage and theft.Duplication of data or storing data at different locations is a common approach for ensuring security of data.As data is shared among its users, it is important to make sure that the right users are accessing the correct data to protect data it hackers.Therefore, security plays a major role in the organizational perspective.

 Accurate

Accuracy is a key attribute in data. If the data is not in accurate, the quality of the decision making will drop dynamically.

Timely

The validity of the data is often measured by their timeliness and if the data is accurate, and provided in a timely manner, it is effective for good decision making also.

Relevant

Any organization maintains data which is relevant to transaction processing or decision making. Relevance is a key concern in designing a data management system.