Nicole Bornales

Five (5) of the ten principles of Information Management and how they are applied to the Tourism Industry. Principle 1: recognise (and manage) complexity Organisations are very complex environments in which to deliver concrete solutions. As outlined above, there are many challenges to overcome when planning and implementing information management projects. When confronted with this complexity, project teams often fall back upon approaches such as; focusing on deploying just one technology in isolation, purchasing a very large suite of applications from a single vendor, in the hope that this can be used to solve all information management problems at once rolling out rigid, standardised solutions across a whole organisation, even though individual business areas may have different needs forcing the use of a single technology system in all cases, regardless of whether it is an appropriate solution purchasing a product ‘for life’, even though business requirements will change over time fully centralising information management activities, to ensure that every activity is tightly controlled. All of these approaches will fail, as they are attempting to convert a complex set of needs and problems into simple (even simplistic) solutions. The hope is that the complexity can be limited or avoided when planning and deploying solutions.In practice, however, there is no way of avoiding the inherent complexities within organisations. New approaches to information management must therefore be found that recognise (and manage) this complexity. Organisations must stop looking for simple approaches, and must stop believing vendors when they offer ‘silver bullet’ technology solutions. Instead, successful information management is underpinned by strong leadership that defines a clear direction (principle 6). Many small activities should then be planned to address in parallel the many needs and issues (principle 5). Risks must then be identified and mitigated throughout the project (principle 7), to ensure that organisational complexities do not prevent the delivery of effective solutions. Principle 2: focus on adoption Information management systems are only successful if they are actually used by staff, and it is not sufficient to simply focus on installing the software centrally. In practice, most information management systems need the active participation of staff throughout the organisation. For example; staff must save all key files into the document/records management system decentralised authors must use the content management system to regularly update the intranet lecturers must use the learning content management system to deliver e-learning packages to their students frontline staff must capture call details in the customer relationship management system. In all these cases, the challenge is to gain sufficient adoption to ensure that required information is captured in the system. Without a critical mass of usage, corporate repositories will not contain enough information to be useful. This presents a considerable change management challenge for information management projects. In practice, it means that projects must be carefully designed from the outset to ensure that sufficient adoption is gained. Principle 3: deliver tangible & visible benefits It is not enough to simply improve the management of information ‘behind the scenes’. While this will deliver real benefits, it will not drive the required cultural changes, or assist with gaining adoption by staff (principle 2). In many cases, information management projects initially focus on improving the productivity of publishers or information managers. While these are valuable projects, they are invisible to the rest of the organisation. When challenged, it can be hard to demonstrate the return on investment of these projects, and they do little to assist project teams to gain further funding. Instead, information management projects must always be designed so that they deliver tangible and visible benefits. Delivering tangible benefits involves identifying concrete business needs that must be met (principle 4). This allows meaningful measurement of the impact of the projects on the operation of the organisation. The projects should also target issues or needs that are very visible within the organisation. When solutions are delivered, the improvement should be obvious, and widely promoted throughout the organisation. For example, improving the information available to call centre staff can have a very visible and tangible impact on customer service. In contrast, creating a standard taxonomy for classifying information across systems is hard to quantify and rarely visible to general staff. This is not to say that ‘behind the scenes’ improvements are not required, but rather that they should always be partnered with changes that deliver more visible benefits. This also has a major impact on the choice of the initial activities conducted (principle 10). Principle 4: prioritise according to business needs It can be difficult to know where to start when planning information management projects. While some organisations attempt to prioritise projects according to the ‘simplicity’ of the technology to be deployed, this is not a meaningful approach. In particular, this often doesn’t deliver short-term benefits that are tangible and visible (principle 3). Instead of this technology-driven approach, the planning process should be turned around entirely, to drive projects based on their ability to address business needs. In this way, information management projects are targeted at the most urgent business needs or issues. These in turn are derived from the overall business strategy and direction for the organisation as a whole. The starting point is to conduct effective employee research that builds a clear picture of the current state, including points of pain and opportunities for improvement. Business needs can then be powerfully articulated through the lens of digital employee experience, which takes a strategic, human-centric view of where to make improvements. For example, the rate of errors in home loan applications might be identified as a strategic issue for the organisation. A new system might therefore be put in place (along with other activities) to better manage the information that supports the processing of these applications. Alternatively, a new call centre might be in the process of being planned. Information management activities can be put in place to support the establishment of the new call centre, and the training of new staff. Principle 5: take a journey of a thousand steps There is no single application or project that will address and resolve all the information management problems of an organisation. Where organisations look for such solutions, large and costly strategic plans are developed. Assuming the results of this strategic planning are actually delivered (which they often aren’t), they usually describe a long-term vision but give few clear directions for immediate actions. In practice, anyone looking to design the complete information management solution will be trapped by analysis paralysis: the inability to escape the planning process. Organisations are simply too complex to consider all the factors when developing strategies or planning activities. The answer is to let go of the desire for a perfectly planned approach. Instead, project teams should take a journey of a thousand steps. This approach recognises that there are hundreds (or thousands) of often small changes that are needed to improve the information management practices across an organisation. These changes will often be implemented in parallel. While some of these changes are organisation-wide, most are actually implemented at business unit (or even team) level. When added up over time, these numerous small changes have a major impact on the organisation. This also acknowledges that new technologies and approaches will arrive at different speeds, something that’s clearly shown in Step Two’s Digital Workplace Radar. This is a very different approach to that typically taken in organisations, and it replaces a single large (centralised) project with many individual initiatives conducted by multiple teams. While this can be challenging to coordinate and manage, this ‘thousand steps’ approach recognises the inherent complexity of organisations (principle 1) and is a very effective way of mitigating risks (principle 7). It also ensures that ‘quick wins’ can be delivered early on (principle 3), and allows solutions to be targeted to individual business needs (principle 4). To determine the need for Information: One of the first things you need to do when beginning any information-based project is to identify your personal need for information. This may seem obvious, but it is something many of us take for granted. We may mistakenly assume that we already know enough to proceed. Such an assumption can lead us to waste valuable time working with incomplete or outdated information. Information literacy addresses a number of abilities and concepts that can help us to determine exactly what our information needs are in various circumstances. When you realize that you have an information need it may be because you thought you knew more than you actually do, or it may be that there is simply new information you were not aware of. One of the most important things you can do when starting to research a topic is to scan the existing information landscape to find out what is already out there. We’ll get into more specific strategies for accessing different types of information later in the book, particularly in the Gather chapter, but for now it pays to think more broadly about the information environment in which you are operating. For instance, any topic you need information about is constantly evolving as new information is added to what is known about the topic. Trained experts, informed amateurs, and opinionated laypeople are publishing in traditional and emerging formats; there is always something new to find out. The scale of information available varies according to topic, but in general it’s safe to say that there is more information accessible now than ever before. Due to the extensive amount of information available, part of becoming more information literate is developing habits of mind and of practice that enable you to continually seek new information and to adapt your understanding of topics according to what you find. Because of the widely varying quality of new information, evaluation is also a key element of information literacy, and will be addressed in the Evaluate chapter of this book. Finally, while you are busy searching for information on your current topic, be sure to keep your mind open for new avenues or angles of research that you haven’t yet considered. Often the information you found for your initial need will turn out to be the pathway to a rich vein of information that can serve as raw material for many subsequent projects. When you understand the information environment where your information needs are situated, you can begin to define the topic more clearly and you can begin to understand where your research fits in with related work that precedes it. Your information literacy skills will develop against this changing background as you use the same underlying principles to do research on a variety of topics. The four (4) data acquisition methods: There are four methods of acquiring data: collecting new data; converting/transforming legacy data; sharing/exchanging data; and purchasing data. First is collecting new data. In collecting new data, it is important to note the following: The decision of who will perform new data collection must be balanced between skills, frequency and timeliness. Skills required for this collection may dictate that it will be contracted. For example, if the required data can only be collected by a certified person and the USGS does not have anyone available with that certification, contracting may be the only option. Frequency: If the data will only be collected once, acquiring the collection skill in-house may not be justified. Timeliness: When will the data be needed? Is it timecritical?. Data collection is important to the Bureau, data collection is important to the data stewards and it is an area where cost savings mechanisms are needed. For instance, Global Positioning Systems and mobile units are now being used to take field data and enter them directly from the source. The problem remains that quality data be collected initially at the source (where data can be correlated directly with observation), where the strictest controls should be placed. Unfortunately, heretofore, strict control has not occurred at the source. Therefore, before data are initially collected, strict controls must be in place. All of the analysis, definitions, and standards need to be in place prior to any field information collection. While this may seem obvious, it is not always practiced. Good planning will reduce this heavy budget item. Data must be reviewed and updated on a regular schedule to maintain a high standard of quality. Metadata must also be updated at the same time. Managers need to be confident that they have the best possible data available when making decisions. Each time the data changes, the metadata must be updated as well. Second method is the Converted/Transformed Legacy Data Considerations. This method determines the legacy Quality ( Is the data of sufficient quality to meet the science needs?) and all the other technical Issues presents ( Is the storage medium readable? Can the data be converted into a usable format? At what cost?). Third is the Shared/Exchanged Data Considerations. This includes the creation of Data Sharing Agreements, data organization, making records of requirements and lastly completeness of data . Data Sharing Agreements need to include provisions concerning access and dissemination. It is not wise to enter into a data sharing agreement where privacy information may be disclosed to non-Federal organizations since they are not subject to the Privacy Act. Similarly, the non-Federal organization needs to be alerted that the Federal agencies may be compelled to release information under the FOIA. Data Organization speaks about the data organized in a usable form? Will it require conversion/transformation to make it usable? Who will perform this? At what cost?. Records Requirements means that Data must have corresponding metadata and other pertinent documentation. And lastly, the Completeness of Data which determines if the data gathered is already complete? If not, who will address the gaps in the data? and At what cost?. The fourth and last method is Purchased Data Considerations. Data purchases require a Purchasing Agreement. By purchasing data, you are endorsing the data. Such data then becomes subject to the Information Quality Act, which covers all data, not just geospatial data. Metadata is required for purchased data, that is why data certification is a big help. The specifics of this requirement should be specified in the Purchasing Agreement. It is also important to take in consideration the Licensing Issues that are present if there’s any. This will help determine what restrictions are placed upon the use of the data? Are there Privacy Act or FOIA considerations?