It is interesting – if you ask five people what Information Management is – you will get 7 different definitions. Recently I was in a panel discussion on this subject. Here is my take on this.
Information management is kind of an esoteric term – data but view in a context. Information becomes an asset and as any other physical assets of a company, it has associated value that is linked to the age of the asset. As with any other type of asset the information depreciates over time. Because of its nature – you cannot touch it – most of the companies ignore managing the information in the same way as the typical assets. However – it has its own value and sometimes it is considerable. If for example organization spent 2 million dollars on developing a research or a GIS map, if the users cannot find it – it is a waste. So adding monetary and time value to the information is critical and people responsible for information should define and communicate this. Information should be put under quality control and protected. Again – because of its nature these concepts are the same but implementation must be different. As with other assets – information has its own lifecycle. Another important aspect is that information should have associated accountability within organization.
There are few elements that information must be based on:
- Governance – describing how information is managed
- People – how people use and influence the information
- Processes – how information flows and changes
- Technology – supporting collaboration, storage, preservation and security
- Organization – how information is organized
To address these, the organizations should build the supporting elements – starting from the most basic, to more sophisticated where information value is realized:
- Fundamental – these must be in place first
- Information Strategy
- Information Architecture
- Governance
- Basic business
- Enterprise Content Management – managing unstructured data
- Enterprise Data Management – managing structured data
- Business value realization
- Business Intelligence
- Search, discovery, delivery
- Knowledge Management
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