The Information Quality Graduate Program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the International Association for Information and Data Quality (IAIDQ) celebrates World Quality Day on Thursday, Nov. 13.

The United Nations established World Quality Day in 1990 to increase worldwide awareness of the important contribution that quality makes toward the growth and prosperity of nations and enterprises.

This year’s theme is “Building a Quality World Together,” with a focus on the impact quality professionals make to an organization, according to Dr. John R. Talburt, graduate coordinator for the UALR information quality program.

According to Talburt, “Organizations now recognize information as one of their most important assets. Software is quickly becoming a commodity.”

Talburt added that with more open source software and software-as-a-service (SaaS) available, companies are beginning to understand their competitive advantage lies in their information and knowledge workers, not their software.

“And that is what information quality is about — maximizing the value of an organization’s information assets,” he said.

Talburt, recipient of the IAIDQ 2014 Distinguished Member Award, will join a panel of seven other international information quality professionals for a webinar to discuss these types of quality issues at 11 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 13.

The free webinar is sponsored by the IAIDQ, which is also celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. The UALR Student Chapter of the IAIDQ will also sponsor several on-campus events that day.

UALR is a world leader in information and data quality. In collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Information Quality Program and Acxiom Corp., UALR was the first university to offer graduate degrees in information quality beginning in 2006.

Today, UALR offers a Graduate Certificate in information quality, a Master of Science degree in information quality, and a Ph.D. in integrated computing with an emphasis in information quality. More than 100 students have graduated from these programs.