INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Information management (IM) concerns a cycle of organizational activity: the acquisition of

information from one or more sources, the custodianship and the distribution of that information to
those who need it, and its ultimate disposition through archiving or deletion.

This cycle of information organization involves a variety of stakeholders, including those who are
responsible for assuring the quality, accessibility and utility of acquired information; those who are
responsible for its safe storage and disposal; and those who need it for decision making.
Stakeholders might have rights to originate, change, distribute or delete information according to
organizational information management policies.

Information management embraces all the generic concepts of management, including the planning,
organizing, structuring, processing, controlling, evaluation and reporting of information activities, all
of which is needed in order to meet the needs of those with organizational roles or functions that
depend on information. These generic concepts allow the information to be presented to the
audience or the correct group of people. After individuals are able to put that information to use, it
then gains more value.

Information management is closely related to, and overlaps with, the management of data, systems,
technology, processes and – where the availability of information is critical to organizational success
– strategy. This broad view of the realm of information management contrasts with the earlier, more
traditional view, that the life cycle of managing information is an operational matter that requires
specific procedures, organizational capabilities and standards that deal with information as a
product or a service.
History of Information Management

Emergent ideas out of data management

In the 1970s, the management of information largely concerned matters closer to what would now
be called data management: punched cards, magnetic tapes and other record-keeping media,
involving a life cycle of such formats requiring origination, distribution, backup, maintenance and
disposal. At this time the huge potential of information technology began to be recognized: for
example, a single chip storing a whole book, or electronic mail moving messages instantly around
the world, remarkable ideas at the time. With the proliferation of information technology and the
extending reach of information systems in the 1980s and 1990s, information management took on a
new form. Progressive businesses such as British Petroleum transformed the vocabulary of what was
then “IT management”, so that “systems analysts” became “business analysts”, “monopoly supply”
became a mixture of “insourcing” and “outsourcing”, and the large IT function was transformed into
“lean teams” that began to allow some agility in the processes that harness information for business
benefit. The scope of senior management interest in information at British Petroleum extended from
the creation of value through improved business processes, based upon the effective management
of information, permitting the implementation of appropriate information systems (or
“applications”) that were operated on IT infrastructure that was outsourced. In this way, information
management was no longer a simple job that could be performed by anyone who had nothing else
to do, it became highly strategic and a matter for senior management attention. An understanding
of the technologies involved, an ability to manage information systems projects and business change
well, and a willingness to align technology and business strategies all became necessary.

Positioning information management in the bigger picture

In the transitional period leading up to the strategic view of information management, Venkatraman
(a strong advocate of this transition and transformation, proffered a simple arrangement of ideas
that succinctly brought together the managements of data, information, and knowledge (see the
figure)) argued that:

• Data that is maintained in IT infrastructure has to be interpreted in order to render

information.
• The information in our information systems has to be understood in order to emerge as
knowledge.
• Knowledge allows managers to take effective decisions.
• Effective decisions have to lead to appropriate actions.
• Appropriate actions are expected to deliver meaningful results.
This is often referred to as the DIKAR model: Data, Information, Knowledge, Action and Result, it
gives a strong clue as to the layers involved in aligning technology and organizational strategies, and
it can be seen as a pivotal moment in changing attitudes to information management. The
recognition that information management is an investment that must deliver meaningful results is
important to all modern organizations that depend on information and good decision-making for
their success.
Theoretical background

Behavioral and organizational theories

It is commonly believed that good information management is crucial to the smooth working of
organizations, and although there is no commonly accepted theory of information management per
se, behavioral and organizational theories help. Following the behavioral science theory of
management, mainly developed at Carnegie Mellon University and prominently supported by March
and Simon, most of what goes on in modern organizations is actually information handling and
decision making. One crucial factor in information handling and decision making is an individual’s
ability to process information and to make decisions under limitations that might derive from the
context: a person’s age, the situational complexity, or a lack of requisite quality in the information
that is at hand – all of which is exacerbated by the rapid advance of technology and the new kinds of
system that it enables, especially as the social web emerges as a phenomenon that business cannot
ignore. And yet, well before there was any general recognition of the importance of information
management in organizations, March and Simon argued that organizations have to be considered as
cooperative systems, with a high level of information processing and a vast need for decision making
at various levels. Instead of using the model of the “economic man”, as advocated in classical theory
they proposed “administrative man” as an alternative, based on their argumentation about the
cognitive limits of rationality. Additionally, they proposed the notion of satisficing, which entails
searching through the available alternatives until an acceptability threshold is met - another idea
that still has currency.

Economic theory

In addition to the organizational factors mentioned by March and Simon, there are other issues that
stem from economic and environmental dynamics. There is the cost of collecting and evaluating the
information needed to take a decision, including the time and effort required. The transaction cost
associated with information processes can be high. In particular, established organizational rules and
procedures can prevent the taking of the most appropriate decision, leading to sub-optimum
outcomes. This is an issue that has been presented as a major problem with bureaucratic
organizations that lose the economies of strategic change because of entrenched attitudes.
Strategic information management

Background

According to the Carnegie Mellon School an organization’s ability to process information is at the
core of organizational and managerial competency, and an organization’s strategies must be
designed to improve information processing capability and as information systems that provide that
capability became formalized and automated, competencies were severely tested at many levels. It
was recognized that organizations needed to be able to learn and adapt in ways that were never so
evident before and academics began to organize and publish definitive works concerning the
strategic management of information, and information systems. Concurrently, the ideas of business
process management and knowledge management although much of the optimistic early thinking
about business process redesign has since been discredited in the information management
literature. In the strategic studies field, it is considered of the highest priority the understanding of
the information environment, conceived as the aggregate of individuals, organizations, and systems
that collect, process, disseminate, or act on information. This environment consists of three
interrelated dimensions which continuously interact with individuals, organizations, and systems.
These dimensions are the physical, informational, and cognitive.

Aligning technology and business strategy with information management

Venkatraman has provided a simple view of the requisite capabilities of an organization that wants
to manage information well – the DIKAR model (see above). He also worked with others to
understand how technology and business strategies could be appropriately aligned in order to
identify specific capabilities that are needed. This work was paralleled by other writers in the world
of consulting, practice and academia.

A contemporary portfolio model for information

Bytheway has collected and organized basic tools and techniques for information management in a
single volume. At the heart of his view of information management is a portfolio model that takes
account of the surging interest in external sources of information and the need to organize un-
structured information external so as to make it useful (see the figure).
This portfolio model organizes issues of internal and external sourcing and management of
information, that may be either structured or unstructured.

Such an information portfolio as this shows how information can be gathered and usefully
organized, in four stages:

Stage 1: Taking advantage of public information: recognize and adopt well-structured external
schemes of reference data, such as post codes, weather data, GPS positioning data and travel
timetables, exemplified in the personal computing press.

Stage 2: Tagging the noise on the world wide web: use existing schemes such as post codes and GPS
data or more typically by adding “tags”, or construct a formal ontology that provides structure.
Shirky provides an overview of these two approaches.

Stage 3: Sifting and analyzing: in the wider world the generalized ontologies that are under
development extend to hundreds of entities and hundreds of relations between them and provide
the means to elicit meaning from large volumes of data. Structured data in databases works best
when that structure reflects a higher-level information model – an ontology, or an entity-
relationship model.

Stage 4: Structuring and archiving: with the large volume of data available from sources such as the
social web and from the miniature telemetry systems used in personal health management, new
ways to archive and then trawl data for meaningful information. Map-reduce methods, originating
from functional programming, are a more recent way of eliciting information from large archival
datasets that is becoming interesting to regular businesses that have very large data resources to
work with, but it requires advanced multi-processor resources.

Competencies to manage information well

The Information Management Body of Knowledge was made available on the world wide web in
2004 and sets out to show that the required management competencies to derive real benefits from
an investment in information are complex and multi-layered. The framework model that is the basis
for understanding competencies comprises six “knowledge” areas and four “process” areas:

This framework is the basis of organizing the “Information Management Body of Knowledge” first
made available in 2004. This version is adapted by the addition of “Business information” in 2014.

The information management knowledge areas:

The IMBOK is based on the argument that there are six areas of required management competency,
two of which (“business process management” and “business information management”) are very
closely related.

Information technology: The pace of change of technology and the pressure to constantly acquire
the newest technological products can undermine the stability of the infrastructure that supports
systems, and thereby optimizes business processes and delivers benefits. It is necessary to manage
the “supply side” and recognize that technology is, increasingly, becoming a commodity.

Information system: While historically information systems were developed in-house, over the years
it has become possible to acquire most of the software systems that an organization needs from the
software package industry. However, there is still the potential for competitive advantage from the
implementation of new systems ideas that deliver to the strategic intentions of organizations.

Business processes and Business information: Information systems are applied to business
processes in order to improve them, and they bring data to the business that becomes useful as
business information. Business process management is still seen as a relatively new idea because it is
not universally adopted, and it has been difficult in many cases; business information management is
even more of a challenge.

Business benefit: What are the benefits that we are seeking? It is necessary not only to be brutally
honest about what can be achieved, but also to ensure the active management and assessment of
benefit delivery. Since the emergence and popularization of the Balanced scorecard there has been
huge interest in business performance management but not much serious effort has been made to
relate business performance management to the benefits of information technology investments
and the introduction of new information systems until the turn of the millennium.

Business strategy: Although a long way from the workaday issues of managing information in
organizations, strategy in most organizations simply has to be informed by information technology
and information systems opportunities, whether to address poor performance or to improve
differentiation and competitiveness. Strategic analysis tools such as the value chain and critical
success factor analysis are directly dependent on proper attention to the information that is (or
could be) managed.

The information management processes:

Even with full capability and competency within the six knowledge areas, it is argued that things can
still go wrong. The problem lies in the migration of ideas and information management value from
one area of competency to another. Summarizing what Bytheway explains in some detail (and
supported by selected secondary references):

Projects: Information technology is without value until it is engineered into information systems that
meet the needs of the business by means of good project management.

Business change: The best information systems succeed in delivering benefits through the
achievement of change within the business systems, but people do not appreciate change that
makes new demands upon their skills in the ways that new information systems often do. Contrary
to common expectations, there is some evidence that the public sector has succeeded with
information technology induced business change.

Business operations: With new systems in place, with business processes and business information
improved, and with staff finally ready and able to work with new processes, then the business can
get to work, even when new systems extend far beyond the boundaries of a single business.

Performance management: Investments are no longer solely about financial results, financial
success must be balanced with internal efficiency, customer satisfaction, and with organizational
learning and development.