The aim of this paper is to provide participants of the seminar with some background information on the general notion of data quality (DQ), to illustrate a few agreed-upon and frequently used concepts and definitions, and to detail open problems to be addressed during the seminar. The paper is not meant as complete and comprehensive overview of all aspects related to data quality in the context of databases, information systems or the Web. It is rather intended to provide the participants with a basis for the seminar, outline specific foci, and raise questions and problems to be addressed extensively (and hopefully solved) during the seminar.

This paper presents an overview of the objectives and goals of the digital seminar on "Data Quality on the Web" held in 2003. The problem of managing and assessing data quality is introduced as a expensive and time-consuming process. More importantly, 6 fundamental questions are posed to encourage people to evaluate various aspects of data quality assessment. These include:

1. How can data quality be assessed?
2. How can data quality be modeled as metadata?
3. How can we describe the data quality life-cycle?
4. How are DQ aspects utilised at the data consumer side?
5. How do we deal with poor quality data?
6. What are the relationships between data quality and trust?

Presentations pertaining to the digital seminar and these questions can be found at http://www.db.cs.ucdavis.edu/Dagstuhl03/pres.html

• Data producers, data custodians and data consumers
• Information quality
• Intrinsic, accessibility, contextual and representational data quality categories