Information Strategy in Practice

Elizabeth Orna

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351927529
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Information Management
• Index: Business

Liz Orna's original Practical Information Policies has become a standard text which has helped information managers in many countries to take productive action in their own environment: to get a job they wanted, carry through an information audit, make a successful business case for an information policy, or formulate an information strategy. This book is designed specially for students preparing to enter the information professions; working professionals in other fields, whose job includes an information-management element; and senior managers from other specialisms who have overall responsibilities for information activities. Information Strategy in Practice provides, in brief and practical form, and informal style: ¢ a reliable account of the key processes involved in developing organizational information policy and strategy, with realistic suggestions on carrying them through, drawn from actual practice ¢ a sound framework of the ideas underlying the practice recommended, which readers can relate to their own context ¢ advice from experience about dealing with the kind of problems that often beset information-strategy development, and about getting the best from the process.

Introduction 1.

About this book

How it came to be written and why

The story of this book goes back many years – to a consultancy assignment in an organization which wanted to set up an information service and appoint a professional manager to run it. My job was to analyse their information needs, define what the new service should do to meet them, and advise on the appointment of the manager. When the main work was done and the manager had taken up the post, a few days of consultancy time remained for us to do some joint planning. Reckoning that, although the organization had taken a commendable initiative about information, it was entering new territory of which it knew comparatively little, we decided to use the time in working out what we called an organizational information policy and getting top management to sign up to it. We both knew from experience that organizations are liable to take initiatives and then, as time goes by and other concerns become important, or new fashions take their fancy, fail to go on supporting them. We wanted to protect this one from such a fate, and to ensure that the service and its manager received continuing understanding and support from above, and guaranteed resources to develop the work that had been agreed on.

The policy that we produced was based on working out the information implications of the organization’s main objectives; that analysis led to a short statement of an information policy which committed it to:

1 Draw on all appropriate resources of information, originating outside the organization, or from its own activities, to meet the needs of the organization and its staff in fulfilling their objectives

2 Organize the resources of information in appropriate systems, using suitable means of information handling

3 Promote inter-relations between the various information-handling systems, and to develop interaction and feedback between users and providers of information, so that the development of the organization’s information activities is fully integrated with its policies.

The information manager put the policy to active use, and it fulfilled its purpose for several years, during which the service developed, expanded its remit, acquired more resources, initiated work towards an information strategy and took part in joint development of an IT strategy. Our conclusion, looking back nearly ten years later, was that ‘an agreed information policy has been “politically” useful as a basis for taking initiatives and making cases for resources for development, and as a tool for raising the awareness of management about the values of information.’ (Orna, 1990). Not long after that, changes in the organization’s orientation and personnel led to stagnation and decline in the role of the service. In the last year or so, however, things have begun to progress again; the significance of information strategy has been rediscovered under the stimulus of the popularity of knowledge management – and it has been possible to take advantage of it by returning to the foundation created by the original information policy, and relating it to the organization’s current orientation and goals.

My impression that there weren’t many organizational information policies about was confirmed at a conference of senior information professionals in 1988, when a speaker asked how many of the delegates came from organizations that had a specific information policy. Only four hands out of over 100 were raised. So I submitted a proposal to a publisher, which led to what I think was the first book devoted to the idea that organizations need policies for information just as they do for marketing, or R&D. That was published in 1990. When the time came for a new edition eight years later, there had been so many changes in the information world, that I wrote what was essentially a new book (Orna, 1999) to take account of them, though it was still based on the fundamental ideas that had inspired the first.

My greatest satisfaction from writing the first and second editions of the book has come from meeting people who have told me it had helped them clarify their ideas, make sense of their experience, and take useful action in their own environment: information managers who had used it to prepare for an interview and to get a job they wanted, or to carry through an information audit or make a successful business case for an information policy; and senior managers of global businesses who were able to draw on it in formulating information strategy.

At the same time, students and their teachers in institutions I visited to give lectures, and staff in businesses where I was carrying out consultancy assignments, made me aware that there were people who were likely to be involved in the processes which formed the core of the book, who needed a short practical text.

They wanted:

● A reliable account of the key processes, with realistic ideas on carrying it through, drawn from actual practice ● A sound framework of the ideas underlying the practice recommended, into which they could build their own experience and their special knowledge, and which they could relate to their own context ● Advice and ideas from experience about how to deal with problems likely to be encountered on the way, and get the best from being involved in the process.

I am very glad that now there is an opportunity to provide what they seek.

The readers to whom this book is addressed

This book is particularly addressed to:

1 Those preparing to enter all areas of the information profession, particularly those oriented towards managing information resources and information content (in jobs with both traditional and contemporary titles – information service managers, librarians, information systems managers, records managers, knowledge managers, information resource managers, content managers, etc); but also those specializing in the systems and IT that create the infrastructure which supports all those activities

2 Working professionals of other kinds, whose job requires them to acquire, use, communicate and exchange information and knowledge, and who may have an information-management element as part if it (eg being responsible for a database, managing records for a specific activity, recording and updating procedures, etc)

3 Managers without a specific information background, who are either the line managers of people who are professionally or incidentally engaged in managing information; or who are charged with overseeing projects such as information audits, or the development of knowledge or information strategies.

It is emphatically not addressed to what the staff of one organization of my acquaintance calls, more or less affectionately, ‘TOTO’ (The Top of The Organization). I find books which set out to tell ‘business leaders’ how to succeed in using information either unconvincing or difficult to read or both. Some offer them rules, recipes, and ‘tool kits’, ‘instrument panels’ or other bits of ironmongery; others present useful ideas, but wrapped up in academic jargon which suggests that they are really addressed to fellow academics in the management schools. Neither of those is my scene, but should any TOTO readers find their way here, they are truly welcome, and they may well find something useful in it.

The content

The central part of this book (Chapters 2–6) consists of chapters from the second edition of my book Practical Information Policies, Edition 2 (Orna, 1999) which describe the essential process of developing information policy and strategy for organizations. A good deal has happened in the information world since I wrote them, and I have extended my ideas and learned from experience in that time too; so each of these chapters has a postscript, under the heading of ‘Practical Insights’, which embodies some of that new thinking and learning.

Many organizations and businesses today engage in the processes described in those chapters. They do so because they believe some or all of these propositions: ● Information and knowledge are assets that have accountable value ● Used strategically (ie in line with an overall business strategy) they can bring: success in competing; leadership in whatever their markets are and recognition as leaders in ‘best practice’; success in doing whatever they...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Before we begin ...
• 1 Introduction
• 2.1 Establishing the ground
• 2.2 Practical insights
• 3.1 Information auditing: from initial analysis to doing the audit
• 3.2 Practical insights
• 4.1 Information auditing: interpreting and presenting the findings
• 4.2 Practical insights
• 5.1 From information audit to information policy
• 5.2 Practical insights
• 6.1 Developing and using an information strategy
• 6.2 Practical insights
• 7 Thinking allowed! Ideas and arguments
• 8 Practical advice on dealing with problems on the way
• Index