Information Management

This is the seventh blog of a series regarding Information Management principles. The aim of this principle is to ensure information flows where it needs to flow. In practice you must ensure that the contents of a document or any other form of information is understandable by the consumer. The information should be complete, readable, unambiguous and not dependent on the author/owner for the interpretation and use of the information.

This does not mean the information should be simplified. You should make sure the consumer has the means to interpret without needing to get a PhD. This require you to know the primary audience for the information and check also if the audience can consume the information. In case of a consumer product or service you could get feedback quickly for example through the number of support calls, tweets or online reviews

However within an organisation you may not uncover this easily as most co-workers will find ways to get around the situation. Within an organisation you may get feedback through a rating system within your social network, through feedback from co-workers or from analyzing incident / issue reports. Getting co-workers to provide feedback this needs to be stimulated and fostered continuously.

This is the sixth blog of a series regarding Information Management principles. This principle is closely related to principle #5 – information has a status. This principle is aimed at ensuring information reaches a level of maturity that is useful and sensible for an organization. And when information is not useful any more, it is archived, destroyed or replaced with appropriate information.

The amount of information being created is increasing rapidly resulting in growing management costs and reducing the efficiency of finding information. Keeping information for the sake of keeping it is not a good thing, despite storage becoming cheaper. Unfortunately obsolete information itself has very no reuse / low recycling value except for the energy that it takes to keep it around. Prevention and minimisation should be the focus to reduce information waste.

Can you honestly say that all e-mail you saved in your personal archive 10 years ago is useful to you? How often do you find information that should have been removed a long time ago? What is the use to an organization if information created is never shared with others?

You have the following options to address this challenge:

Apply a retention policy for the information when it is created or reaches a certain status (see principle #5). Ideally this is done automatically without the user needing to care about it. This works well for information where there are clear rules regarding the usefulness for example invoices typically can be destroyed after a number of years or documents created during a project that was finished;

Analyse the usage of information and take action. Is information actually being used? For example how often was a document viewed in the past year, how often does the information show up in search results, when was it last accessed. This works best for information where there are no clear rules with respect to retention, like knowledge, social network messages, discussions, questions;

Periodic reviews by information owners (see principle #1) to ensure that the information they are responsible for is relevant and accurate. The information should take action if needed.  Option 1 and 2 should support the information owner in doing this task and reduce the effort required significantly;

Ensure that co-workers are not hoarding information or keep ‘polishing’ a document that can be useful to others. Regularly reward persons that share useful information with others, encourage people to provide feedback regarding content that is shared and discuss improvements with persons that do not share information.

This is the fifth blog of a series regarding Information Management principles. Once you have found information it can be very helpful to understand the status of the information*. For example an operator of potentially dangerous equipment should be able to find and use the latest approved work instruction or financial data to be shared with a shareholder has been checked thoroughly.

This implies that a process is in place that determines the status of the information. This process may have varying levels of rigidity and thoroughness depending on the business needs and obligations. In some cases a peer review might be sufficient or even no review at all. In other cases several functions need to review and approve the information including an auditable registration of the reviews and approvals.

In order for status to be meaningful a company-wide definition should be present. The status information can have should be clear. A simple** example for documents (of course there are variations possible):

Draft: work in progress, not ready to be used

In Review: being reviewed by one or more parties; potentially ready to used

Approved: has been approved by one or more accountable parties; ready for use

Obsolete: information is not current anymore; do not use anymore

The level of system support for the review and approval processes may vary from application to application. However the systems should at least support the recording of the status of information. In an ideal world all application would be flexible enough to use the same terms, in reality sometimes it is needed to lump together different terms for example “Working in Progress” and “Draft”.

Like with most of the other principles co-workers have a responsibility in determining the status of information. Co-workers need to be aware that they provide insight into the usefulness of the information for others and have a responsibility to provide quality information to others. Managers needs to set standards when a certain status can be obtained and which type of review and approval process is required to progress information to the next level.

There are also cases where a status has no real value because the information is evolving continuously. For example a document that contains information about market developments or the lunch menu. Recognizing these cases is important as well because the organisation will have set expectations to co-workers here as well.

*) This blog post refers to the status of information. There are also other types of status possible in relation to information for example whether information was published, distributed, referenced, accessed, etc. This type of status does not refer to the information itself but the usage of the information.

This is the forth blog of a series regarding Information Management principles. Information hoarding can be a major challenge for co-workers to find information they need to do the work. Even if you have implemented principles #2 – one version of the truth and #3 – one location well, there can still be significant hurdles because there are access controls in place that prevent accessing information. Typically resulting in a quest to find a person that has access, and get a copy by e-mail which undermines principles #2 and #3.

Sometimes these access controls are necessary for example for personal data, confidential information and payment card information. However in many cases access controls should be unnecessary. The majority of the information should not be sensitive and pose little to no risk when exposed to an outsider or someone within an organisation.

Typically only co-workers can determine the sensitivity and therefore primarily co-workers need to classify the information. Many organisations have an information (security) classification with levels such as public, internal, confidential, personal confidential and secret. Co-workers need to be made aware how to apply the information classification and what the impact this should have regarding access controls. A cultural change towards openness and trust may be needed as well.

In order to make the classification really effective, the IT systems must make the application of access controls in accordance with the information classification as easy as possible for the user. For example the IT systems ideally restricts access rights automatically when the information classification is set to anything other than public or internal. This probably requires some upfront investment during the implementation however this will increase the compliance to information security significantly.

This is the third blog of a series regarding Information Management principles and this one closely related to Principle #2 – One version of the truth. In most organisations there are multiple locations to store and manage information such as Customer Relationship Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, your Intranet, Sharing Platforms of your partners and many more. This in one of the cause of people making many copies (principle #2) because it can be unclear where information should be stored and also where people can search for information they need for their daily work.

This principle is especially to address this pain point. The one location principle should be applied to each type of information. This implies there should only be one location where information of a certain type should be stored and managed. This means that the organisation needs to make it clear to co-workers what to store where and especially why.

The “why” is important because at first glance it may not be apparent for each group of co-workers. For example it can be efficient to store all your documents within your Human Resources application if you work for Human Resources because you work with it every day. However when working in multi-disciplinary projects using the HR system to share documents not be very practical or even not allowed due to the risk of exposing sensitive information.

This is also a significant challenge for the IT department because many applications have overlapping functionality. This challenge should be addressed as part of the overall IT architecture and actively monitored.

This is the second blog of a series regarding Information Management principles. We all have encountered situations where there are multiple documents with the same name but with slightly different content or different lists with legal entities that were difficult to tell apart or we have based work on an outdated version and had to do rework.

This principle implies that an organisation prevents the spread of copies of information through attention to behavioral change at co-workers and management to use references to information instead of creating copies. Managers should promote the right behavior through good examples like sending e-mail with links to documents or request co-workers not to send attachments. Next to using references co-workers also need to be educated in using versioning mechanisms.

This also means that you need information systems that are able to handle versions. Furthermore the IT infrastructure should selected and setup to ensure information can be referenced and that it is sized to handle the extra storage requirements as result of keeping version history.

For example a company’s mobile infrastructure must allow documents in a contract management system to be opened on a mobile, otherwise users will keep sending attachments especially if they know someone is likely to use a mobile device. The contract management system should have version history capabilities to ensure that the co-worker can access the latest version and if needed compare the latest version with a previous version.

In practice it is not always possible to refrain from creating copies due to technical limitations or availability requirements. In those situations it is important measures are put in place to ensure that the copy version is kept up to date automatically or manually.

This is a first blog of a series regarding Information Management principles. Although all principles are important this one is really important and sometimes also very difficult to implement.

The principle implies that an organisation assigns information ownership to the appropriate function within the organisation. The organisation needs to provide sufficient budget, resources and education to the owner. The organisation also needs to provide priority for this responsibility as part of job descriptions and performance reviews. 

Futhermore the organisation needs to ensure that ownership transfers are managed for information which changes ownership due to the business process. .

The information owner should have the following accountabilities:

Ensure information is available, accurate, kept up to date and complete

Ensure the legal context is adhered to

Keep information aligned with the needs of the audience

Keep current with the legal requirements and act accordingly

The information owner, in general, is not the person to actually create and manage the information itself. This responsibility is typically delegated to others within the organisation.

Information is extremely important to a company. Information is also important to employees to do their job. Therefore it is important to make sure information is properly looked at all stages of its lifecycle. Of course there are legal and regulatory obligations which need to be adhered to. Income, efficiency, collaboration and costs also need to be considered.

In order to guide employees I would recommend to the following principles for information within a company:

Information has an owner – to ensure accountability

One version of the truth – to ensure information is reliable and current

One location – to provide easy access to information

Information is accessible unless – reduces barriers

Information has a status – so people can determine the value of the information

Information has a lifecycle – to prevent clutter and ensure records are retained

Information can be transferred – to prevent information hoarding

Assuming your Information Management initiative is addressing an issue with a strong sense of urgency or clearly linked to a problem that is urgent (“Your Information Management initiative is not getting attention. What to do about it?”), then one of the next steps should be to develop a vision for your initiative. The vision development should be done early on.

A good vision should be compelling to the people affected. It must also show them what is going to change for them. However the vision is not just for the ‘recipient’ but also for the team responsible for delivering the change. For both it is the anchor…

I hope you never worked on a project that struggled to be successful. But if you have, I hope you can agree this is often not caused by the quality or the enthusiasm of the team. When there is lack of or an vague vision there can be scope creep, lack of buy in, competition from other initiatives, regular challenges to the purpose of the initiative, etc.

A good vision provides boundaries that can be used to keep the scope in check. For example if the vision is about knowledge management then you can have a good discussion when the organisation wants you to solve issues with document management for everyone. It still does not mean that the scope is small or fully defined however you have a starting point to define scope clearly which may include being dependent on document management and having to address areas like compliance, HSE, HR, etc.

A good vision should allow you to agree on guiding principles with the sponsor and the steering committee. For example if the vision states that knowledge is reliable and accessible any time any place then this means that limiting access to information by individuals or teams is something that will have to change. This results in a principle that states “Information is accessible unless”.

Other principles that could be derived are:

1.       “System(s) containing knowledge are available from the internet” which may have a significant impact on the current IT infrastructure available.

2.       “Knowledge has a status and a source” which means that a process needs to be in place to manage this.

You may have experienced this yourself.  Sometimes an Information Management initiative starts off right from the beginning and sometimes it doesn’t… There can be a real sense of urgency for example not being able to locate large contracts with clients or incorrect work instructions that led to serious safety issues. These are easy to explain to an organisation’s executives and co-workers, and will get the right level of management attention.

But sometimes there is no urgency or an obvious ‘burning platform’ and yet there are benefits for example efficiency gains, information quality improvements, less risk of reputation damage or enabling new ways of working together. Some of the signs are:

The benefits have to be explained to many stakeholders

No one is stepping up to take ownership

This is not the first attempt

The issue has been around for many years

The main driving force is from a supporting function like IT

When you experience one or more signs above, your initiative is at risk of failure from the start. This is because you are not able to clearly relate to one or more real business problems and therefore get the attention you need… This should be at least a ‘yellow light’ for you.

Sometimes organisations continue despite the signs by using the following strategies:

Start with a launching ‘customer’ that gets its way to define the IM solution, then try to ‘sell’ it. The solution may fit some but is unlikely to fit all ‘customers’ causing rollout challenges.

Force the IM solution onto the organisation, resulting in resistance to the solution or even unsupported alternatives being used.

Allow everyone to tailor the IM solution and thus creating a support challenge and typically not providing a real contribution to the organisation’s goals.

To get off to a good start, take the following steps to limit the risk of spending significant amounts of effort and resources:

Take an honest look at the sense of urgency. Is there a real problem that needs to be solved? Can you attach to other initiatives that have an information management challenge included? For example an operational excellence or digital workplace initiative.

Find the owner of the real problem. Is there someone that has the will, the mandate and the budget to act? If you need to do a hard sell then the person may not be the right person