Professional information management

Written by David Tebbutt in June 2004

What kind of organisation do you work for? Is it an enlightened one which regards information as a vital resource spread throughout the company? Or one which prefers to leave it in the hands of the IT department and the library?

Opportunities abound in either kind of organisation for the information professional. But, in the first, your views will be welcomed while in the second you may be seen as an irritant.

Governments and regulators are winning the right to probe ever more deeply into corporate affairs. Initiatives such as Basel II, Data Protection, Freedom of Information, Sarbanes Oxley, the Patriot Act and others, are all designed to increase corporate and institutional transparency.

Organisations, rightly, are becoming anxious about their ability to comply. Directors are rattled that some of their traditional personal protections are being stripped away and are recruiting compliance officers to build appropriate safety nets.

What's this got to do with you? Well, the one thing that is required for transparency is an information-centric culture. Information about transactions, business processes, documentation, emails, conversations, research used, sources, dates and so on. Most business leaders, IT managers and departmental heads do not have the remotest grasp of what is required. But you do.

If they let the demands of the regulators drive information policy, they're doomed to a never ending cycle of change. But if they implement a proper knowledge management programme, then compliance with present and future legislation becomes an automatic by-product.

Such a culture change requires people who understand information acquisition, organisation and retrieval. And that means people like you. The more ambitious among you might strive for higher things in which case the more you are able to fully engage with people across the business the higher you will go. You need to be able to talk computers and communications with the IS department, business strategy with the board and people issues with the HR department.

Kevin Miles, head of knowledge management at TRL (Transport Research Laboratory), warns "you don't have to be an information professional to manage information professionally." He was a police inspector when he made his move. And, although not a member of ASLIB or CILIP, he picked up the European Special Librarian of the Year award for his "exceptional knowledge management work". If a police inspector can make such a move, surely an information professional is in with a fighting chance?

He believes that management from the top to the bottom of an organisation should raise 'information' to the same level of importance as 'budgets' and 'people'. The entire information strategy should be driven from the top, and serve the organisation's aims and objectives. And each manager in the chain should be responsible for their own information audits, for ensuring that the flows meet organisational needs, even if they do not directly benefit their own department. It would be easy, for example, to skimp on sales visit reporting but the missing information might prove vital later on.

If information management were to be pushed down the organisation in this fashion, then the managers and their staff will need training and assistance. By helping them audit and manage their information, information professionals can greatly strengthen their relevance to the organisation.

If your organisation is not yet aware of the importance of good information management, see if existing issues would benefit from better information provision. Show the affected departments how to tackle their problems. You won't necessarily get the credit, but you will be building a portfolio of evidence for a switch to an information-centric culture.

Someone has to take the initiative. Why not you?