Submitted by Bob Larrivee - AIIM
As I write this I cannot help but think about how cool this is that I can view/listen to this session with the President and members of the Senate and the Congress, live with options of access though TV or the internet. It certainly does align to the move for a more transparent government in that years ago you would not see or even be able to listen to such a session unless it was presented in bite sized pieces on the news. This also further confirms some of the data presented by University of California, San Diego’s Global Information Industry Center’s report titled “How Much Information?” about the availability and consumption of information of all types from all sources.
According to the study, without counting business information, Americans consumed approximately 1.3 trillion hours or roughly 12 hours of information daily. This would be equal to 3.6 zettabytes of information in total. Think about that for a minute, a zettabye is a million-million gigabytes and this is steadily growing. The question of course is one of what information is relevant to you and your interests. I have 1,100 channels with my cable service and more often than not, I find nothing of interest to watch which means I am filtering this information coming at me to determine what is relevant for me now. This is something we must also do in life and in business.
What I am talking about is the value of information. What value does information bring or add to your business? Is it relevant to the decision making process? Does it bring value to your customers whether internal or external? What information do you capture and maintain as a result of its value? These are the challenges we face in our organizations and as such, should establish and publish information value guidelines for the user community. These guidelines would address areas like legal or regulatory requirements to retain the information and reasons for decision making and business continuity. What are the key bits of information?
In my view, we need to find ways and provide tools to help organizations sort through the zetta levels of information and capture that which has meaning and value. It is easy to say capture it all or capture none but reality is that we need to find a middle ground that makes sense and supports our business activity. While it is not an easy task, and can seem extremely daunting, with the right tools like metadata, taxonomic structure and technology it can be done effectively. In order to move forward you must assess what you have and what you need, plan on how you will determine value and capture valued information, implement your plan, and institute a continuous improvement effort to update and refine your practice regularly.
What say you? How do you assess the value of information? Do you have a story to tell? I want to hear from you.
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Bob Larrivee – AIIM blarrivee@aiim.org
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