Dr. Richard Wang, UALR professor of information quality and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s information quality program, has been appointed by the Army as its chief data quality officer.

Wang’s Army assignment through the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) Mobility Program is to assess and improve data quality throughout the Army. Wang will use his expertise to improve analytical processes supporting executive decision-making to foster a corporate global enterprise approach.

Additionally, he will help the Army formulate policies and procedures to enhance business intelligence goals and objectives.

The UALR professor, recognized as a world-class expert on data quality matters, will provide advice to Army governance and executive boards consisting of the senior military leadership, including Army secretariat and staffs.

Wang will recommend strategies and solutions that will significantly streamline management burdens and reduce overhead and operating costs of Army data management programs.  He will also be responsible for developing and implementing data quality strategies and criteria to manage data elements across the Army organization, ensuring that data is trusted.

Dr. Wang was instrumental in creating the Master of Science in Information Quality (MSIQ) degree at UALR in 2006, the first of its kind in the world and is still the only of its kind in the United States. The UALR program, established in collaboration with MIT, is dedicated to promoting state of the art curriculum in information quality education, contributing new ideas to the information quality knowledge base, and establishing information quality partnerships with the community, government, and industry.

In 2008, UALR added an information quality emphasis to its Applied Science Ph.D. program. Wang also serves as the co-director of the UALR Laboratory for Advanced Research in Entity Resolution and Information Quality (http://technologize.ualr.edu/eriq/).