What is Information Management?
| Information
Management |
| 1 |
The process of extracting value from the organisations
data resource by defining, delivering, maintaining and
exploiting information. |
| 2 |
The function within the business which carries out
that process. |
| Why
is information Management needed? |
|
|
Information is a key asset in the organisation. |
|
|
Most organisations fail to focus on protecting, growing
and deriving value from that asset. |
|
|
Creating information from data and using it to derive
value is a multi-stage process. Unless those stages are
understood and actively managed the process will deliver
poor results. |
|
|
Maximising the value of information can only be achieved
through an explicit Information Strategy and
a dedicated Information Management function. |
| What is Information Management
not? |
Information Management is not Information Technology
The IT function which already exists in most organisations concentrates
on delivering the technology. It manages the physical architecture, maintains
the hardware and software, resolves the business users technical problems,
and proposes the strategies that will build the future technical
capabilities of the business.
The Information Management function (which does not yet exist in most organisations)
focusses on the delivery of information: its’ purpose is to manage
the conceptual architecture, maintain the information within the systems,
resolve the business users information problems, and propose the strategies
that will build the future information capabilities of
the business.
Information Management is not Knowledge
Management
"Knowledge Management …consists of
activities focused on the organization gaining
knowledge from its own experience and from the
experience of others, and on the judicious application
of that knowledge to fulfill the mission of the
organization. These activities are executed by
marrying technology, organizational structures,
and cognitive based strategies to raise the yield
of existing knowledge and produce new knowledge."
R. Gregory Wenig
Knowledge Management is based on the idea that the organisation itself
is capable of creating, storing and acting upon knowledge – that
an organisation is itself a "cognitive system" ie a kind of collective
mind. The aim of Knowledge Management is therefore to train and develop
this mind in the pursuit of ever more intelligent action.
Information Management stops short of this semi-mystical interpretation
and concentrates on the delivery of the best possible information to individual
people, and then supporting and advising them in their understanding and
use of that information.
Next: Information
Alchemy: The Information Value Chain
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"...an invaluable compendium on the most pressing challenge
in business today"
Sean Kelly
Comhra |
 |
"At last! Something
on data even an old Luddite like me can understand!"
Drayton Bird |
|
"...a really useful resource to understanding all issues relating
to data management"
Prof Derek Holder
Institute of
Direct
Marketing |
|
"...a down-to-earth, no-nonsense site designed to cover the
new practices and theory of Information Management"
Simon Lawrence
Information Arts |
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