Deal in data

The value of information comes in many forms. For the private sector, better decisions lead to higher profits. In the public sector, poor decisions can cost lives.

The challenges for chief information officers (CIOs) are growing as technology capabilities increase and much more unstructured data comes within their domain. But how many CIOs have the information governance, the technologies and the capabilities in their teams to address such challenges?

Members of the Information Management Profession (IMP) group have been working over the past two years to support the development of enhanced information skills. IMP includes senior representatives from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), Yell, the Ministry of Defence and IBM, as well as professional bodies the British Computer Society (BCS), the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and Henley Management College.

Stephen Farquharson, group director of information management at the MPS and Mike Fishwick, head of customer information at Yell, were founding members representing the public and private sector. After two years development, what has IMP achieved against its charter and how are the specific projects, including proposals for an enhanced SFIA (Skills Framework for the Information Age) and a new information management qualification, now being delivered?

One of the first IMP deliverables included a framework that set the scope for information management. When I analysed the developments taking place in MPS and Yell with Farquharson and Fishwick, we quickly realised that we were dealing with a range of areas that required consolidation ­ namely data processing, records management, exploiting structured information, knowledge management and information quality.

The areas of information management

The early days of data processing supported the operational transactions of
a business, such as order processing, stock control and accounting. Systems processed structured data, such as order quantities and prices, to create invoices.

Here, the emphasis was very much on the control of structured information, a space historically occupied by the BCS and other professional computing bodies.

Records and document management, meanwhile, has traditionally been the domain of the librarian and records manager, professionals that dealt with paper files and then other forms of information media. Document management fell under the scope of professional bodies such as CILIP and required different skills, languages and technologies to those necessary in data processing.

It is important to recognise that there are significantly different challenges to controlling and exploiting information. Control requires records to be held securely with data that is ideally captured once at source and validated.

Exploitation requires providing access to relevant information at the right time and place. Such a process leads to two other worlds ­ exploiting structured and unstructured information.

Under such conditions, organisations recognised that operational transactional data was not sufficient for monitoring the business. Data needed to be transformed to provide consolidated views, such as monthly customer revenue against planning information.

Business intelligence was created to fill the void and exploit structured information. Other technologies were subsequently created to sustain data management requirements: enterprise resource planning supported structured data control and unstructured data was supported by electronic document and records management systems, and latterly enterprise content management.

Exploitation of unstructured information, meanwhile, falls within the domain of knowledge management. Knowledge can be explicit (documented) or tacit (in people’s heads). The challenge for businesses has often been to find ways to share knowledge ­ and the growth of the internet has supported the goal.

The final element of the information management model is quality, but the scope and accountability for information quality is often unclear in an organisation. In the structured world, the migration of data from operational transactions to business intelligence often exposes quality concerns.

Similarly, the capture of unstructured information is required for knowledge management. It is an ongoing challenge, for example, to gather up-to-date knowledge on customers. Forward-thinking CIOs are investing in software and developing quality skills that ensure information is fit for purpose.

Consolidation and a professional approach

Information management, then, is a complicated area ­ the big question is how to bring its many facets together? The contention of IMP is that while technology is a key enabler for creating a holistic view of information, skilled people and a professional approach are the main contributors in organisations.

Recent deliverables have focused on extending the concepts in information management to include the enhancement of skills frameworks and the development of an information management qualification.

The industry standard Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) provides a model for identifying the expertise needed to develop effective information systems. One of the concerns raised by IMP to the SFIA Foundation has been that information management is not given the position it merits in the framework relative to development and service provision.

Such problems can be addressed by bringing together existing information management skills, such as data protection and information assurance. However, a greater focus is required on the exploitation of information and IMP is making proposals for changes to SFIA.

IMP has also promoted a qualification that will provide a holistic understanding of information management. A draft syllabus has been created for the Information Systems Examination Board (ISEB), which is within the BCS organisation. The syllabus was tested and revised following a workshop with information management professionals.

The progress of IMP has been aided by its engagement with the Professionalism in IT Programme which is sponsored by the BCS. It has provided members for a working party and in recognition of the contribution, a proposal has been made for IMP to create an Information Management Forum for the BCS.

Such development provides an opportunity for CIOs to raise the professional bar and proactively address the management of information in their firms.

Dr Sharm Manwani is associate professor at Henley Management College.

For further information contact the BCS by email at profit@hq.bcs.org.uk, or Dr Sharm Manwani at sharm.manwani@henleymc.ac.uk

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