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Information Strategist is an emerging position in the field of information management. Having information is not enough. The information strategisits is a master of content whose challenge is to get the right information to the right people at the right time and at the right place when it is needed. This article is in work and references will be added later (26Mar2010).
I. Introduction
Many professionals do not realize that they are information strategist in various forms and degrees. The information strategist is an emergent field in the information age. The discipline is so new that several other disciplines are attempting to lay claim. In the end, the information strategist will most likely break out as an independent field. The title information strategist applies to the discipline of resourcing and brokering information within an organization. Information strategist are more than data miners in that the information strategist determines the information required and pro-actively structures the systems and organization to deliver that information.
The discipline comes down to four basic questions:
1. What are the organization's strategic goals?
Organizations frequently do not have their strategic goals clearly stated. Many have hollow ISO 9000 slogans like to ‘meet or exceed customer expectations’ but fail to clearly state and define their objective goals. The information strategist often has a direct line to senior leadership assisting them in formulating strategic goals and developing the organizational structure to support the goal.
2. What information will support achievement of the strategic goals?
The information strategist identifies the information requirements necessary to cause the strategic goal. Utilizing effects based thinking the information strategist will decompose the requirement backwards developing decision points, metrics, triggers, and indicators necessary to the goal.
3. What information does the organization already possess?
The information strategist has an array of instruments at his disposal. One is data mining. Using this methodology the information strategist will root out organizational information in support of the strategic goals. During this process gaps in information and corporate knowledge will become apparent.
4. What other information needs to be resourced?
At this point the information strategist will determine to either create the information internally, resource it from external sources, or to restructure for other information.
The information strategist, IS, operates principally at the strategic level of the organization but also supports directors, managers, and other decision makers within an organization.
II. Tiered Systems
The information strategist will typically view the information technology in use within the organization from a three-tiered perspective; operational sub-systems, operational systems, and strategic platforms.
The operational sub-systems gather data and ingest that data into the organization’s virtual environment. Often raw data is error prone and unreliability. A series of business rules begin to order and valid the data. Sub-systems may include barcode scanners, web forms, point of sale systems, OCR scanners, etc… The data is frequently stored in local databases before being rolled up into remote operational databases.
Operational systems focus on the day-to-day operational processes such as logistic movements, purchase orders, freight bills, paychecks, accounting journals, etc… The number of operational systems range from as few as two to hundreds within organizations. Operational systems are where one would find many application servers such as email, database, file, and management servers. Operational systems are the most familiar to people.
Strategic decision making and strategic platforms are very different than operational systems and operational decision making. Strategic platforms roll up data from all the operational systems into a massive database. As the information passes through from the sub-systems to the strategic platform validity improves. Thus, the strategic level has the most accurate and valid data in the organization. Often located on the strategic platforms are business intelligence suites.
III. Organizational structures
How an organization is architected or structured dramatically impacts the flow and quality of information within that organization. Traditional hierarchial tree structures in an organization inhibit the movement of information and often result in duplicate efforts due to the artificial boundaries of departments and divisions. There are numerous method to overcome this problem to include matrix organizations and pooled resource homerooms. These approaches tend to re-organize the operations constantly. The staff often desires a stable work environment creating uneasiness in the staff. The information strategist tend to lean toward utilizing the networks to overcome change and reorganization blues.
One approach the information strategists utilizes is Just In Time manufacturing concepts in the development of information and knowledge within an organization. Stable information processes are organized into nodes or workcenters that are staffed within knowledge workers and interconnected. These workcenters produce information products and are called upon when the information is required. The workcenters are dynamically organized virtually over the networks through which they are interconnected based on the information requirements. The workcenters can also be organized in a fashion to reflect the formation of a line of logic. Thus, knowledge is manufactured. While not always practical, this construct is the preferred approach that information strategist desire.
IV. The Emerging Economy