Information strategist

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Information Strategist is an emerging discipline in the field of information management. Having information is not enough. The information strategisit 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. He does so by organizing around processes and structuring the operations to deliver the right information.

This article is in work and references will be added later (11APR2010).

I. Introduction

It is all about the information. 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 in support of specific objectives and goals within an organization. Information strategist are more than data miners. Data mining assumes that the informaiton is already available and the knowledge worker must then discover the source. The information strategist differs by not assuming that the data is already available but the source is unknown. The information strategist determines the information required and pro-actively structures the systems and organization to deliver that information in a susinct manner.

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 operates principally at the strategic level of the organization but also supports directors, managers, and other decision makers at lower levels within an organization.

II. Qualifications of the Information Strategist

Common to most jobs there are core competancies and qualifications. The information strategist is no different. The general background includes information technology, operations management, analytical and assessment experience, project management, and financial management.

III. 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 is unreliable. 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 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.

IV. Organizational structures

An organization's structure dramatically impacts the flow and quality of information within that organization. Traditional hierarchical 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 methods to overcome this problem to include matrix organizations and pooled resource homerooms. These approaches tend to re-organize the operations constantly creating uneasiness in the staff. The staff often desires a stable work environment. The information strategist tends to lean towards utilizing the networks to manage volatility and reorganization blues.

One approach the information strategist utilizes is the Just In Time manufacturing concepts applied to the development of information and knowledge within an organization. Stable information processes are organized and encapsulated into interconnected nodes or workcenters that are staffed with knowledge workers. These workcenters produce information products that are called upon when the information is required. Workcenters are dynamically organized virtually over the networks through which they interconnect, based on information requirements. Thus, stabilizing the staff re-assignment problems. The workcenters can also be organized in a fashion to reflect the formation of a line of logic. Thus, knowledge can be manufactured and truth reporting asserts the degree of validity to a line of logic.

V. The Emerging Economy

The economy originating out of 2010 is one that is rooted in logistics and information with both networks well established. The combination of logistic flows and information flows dovetail tightly into a need for newer streamlined ways to look at operations. The information strategist is pinnacle to this restructuring of business specifically for the ongoing globalization in order to adapt to time differentials and information requirements.

VI. Competing Disciplines

Several disciplines seeking to expand thier value are finding ways to leverage the information strategist in thier communities. For example, Library Information Science, LIS, community has explored this direction and several books are published regarding the Information Strategist concept (Dority, 2008). The information strategist has emerged on FaceBook as an author forum. The founder of the facebook group has organized further, http://www.crowinfodesign.com/, offering to design tools, services, and products that leverage information in social media, online demos, and training media. The information strategist is also not the same as a business analyst. The major difference is that the business analyst is attempting to discover information about the market, business, or operations that lend to decision making about the direction of the business. These decisions may affect or adjust the organizational objectives. The information strategist is defining the business operations based on the strategic goals and objectives. The LIS community, authors, and busines analyst possess fractional elements of the information strategist discipline.

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