Question

Information management is the management of organizational processes and systems that acquire, create, organize, distribute, and use information. Information can either be an asset or a liability depending on the adopted information strategy and as such it is important for the designer to understand the information management process.

REQUIRED:

a) Describe the characteristics that information should have in order to be deemed

     valuable to a system.                                                                              

b) Discuss the activities involved in the life cycle of Information management.  

                                                                                                                       

c) Explain the types of data that you would consider before designing an information

     management system.                                                                               

Answer 1

(a)Characteristics of Information

Good information is that which is used and which creates value. Experience and research shows that good information has numerous qualities.

Good information is relevant for its purpose, sufficiently accurate for its purpose, complete enough for the problem, reliable and targeted to the right person. It is also communicated in time for its purpose, contains the right level of detail and is communicated by an appropriate channel, i.e. one that is understandable to the user.

Further details of these characteristics related to organisational information for decision-making follows.

Availability/accessibility

Information should be easy to obtain or access. Information kept in a book of some kind is only available and easy to access if you have the book to hand. A good example of availability is a telephone directory, as every home has one for its local area. It is probably the first place you look for a local number. But nobody keeps the whole country’s telephone books so for numbers further afield you probably phone a directory enquiry number. For business premises, say for a hotel in London, you would probably use the Internet.

Businesses used to keep customer details on a card-index system at the customer’s branch. If the customer visited a different branch a telephone call would be needed to check details. Now, with centralised computer systems, businesses like banks and building societies can access any customer’s data from any branch.

Accuracy

Information needs to be accurate enough for the use to which it is going to be put. To obtain information that is 100% accurate is usually unrealistic as it is likely to be too expensive to produce on time. The degree of accuracy depends upon the circumstances. At operational levels information may need to be accurate to the nearest penny – on a supermarket till receipt, for example. At tactical level department heads may see weekly summaries correct to the nearest £100, whereas at strategic level directors may look at comparing stores’ performances over several months to the nearest £100,000 per month.

Accuracy is important. As an example, if government statistics based on the last census wrongly show an increase in births within an area, plans may be made to build schools and construction companies may invest in new housing developments. In these cases any investment may not be recouped.

Reliability or objectivity

Reliability deals with the truth of information or the objectivity with which it is presented. You can only really use information confidently if you are sure of its reliability and objectivity.
When researching for an essay in any subject, we might make straight for the library to find a suitable book. We are reasonably confident that the information found in a book, especially one that the library has purchased, is reliable and (in the case of factual information) objective. The book has been written and the author’s name is usually printed for all to see. The publisher should have employed an editor and an expert in the field to edit the book and question any factual doubts they may have. In short, much time and energy goes into publishing a book and for that reason we can be reasonably confident that the information is reliable and objective.

Completeness

Information should contain all the details required by the user. Otherwise, it may not be useful as the basis for making a decision. For example, if an organisation is supplied with information regarding the costs of supplying a fleet of cars for the sales force, and servicing and maintenance costs are not included, then a costing based on the information supplied will be considerably underestimated.

Timing

Information must be on time for the purpose for which it is required. Information received too late will be irrelevant. For example, if you receive a brochure from a theatre and notice there was a concert by your favourite band yesterday, then the information is too late to be of use.

Value of information

The relative importance of information for decision-making can increase or decrease its value to an organisation. For example, an organisation requires information on a competitor’s performance that is critical to their own decision on whether to invest in new machinery for their factory. The value of this information would be high. Always keep in mind that information should be available on time, within cost constraints and be legally obtained.

Cost of information

Information should be available within set cost levels that may vary dependent on situation. If costs are too high to obtain information an organisation may decide to seek slightly less comprehensive information elsewhere. For example, an organisation wants to commission a market survey on a new product. The survey could cost more than the forecast initial profit from the product. In that situation, the organisation would probably decide that a less costly source of information should be used, even if it may give inferior information.

(b)Activities Involved in Lifecycle of Information Management

The main activities are database archiving, test data management, data privacy/data masking, and data/application retirement. However, any systemic application of rules to business data or attempts to minimize, simplify, or increase the security of data can fall under the general procedures of ILM.

Database archiving

Database archives contain data that is most easily processed through traditional database programming services. If the data is stored in a database representation, it is relatively easy to access through programs. If it is not in a database representation, programs that access the data will be difficult if not impossible to construct.

Test Data Management

Test data management is the process of managing the data necessary for fulfilling the needs of automated tests, with zero (or as little as possible) human intervention.

That means that the TDM solution is responsible for creating the required test data, according to the necessities of the tests. It should also ensure that the data is of the highest possible quality. Poor quality test data is worse than having no data at all since it will generate results that can’t be trusted. Another important requirement for test data is fidelity. Meaning, it should resemble, as closely as possible, the real data found in the production servers.

Finally, the TDM process must also guarantee the availability of the test data. It’s no use to have high-quality data that is realistic as possible but doesn’t get to the test cases when it needs to.

So, we can say that the test data management process has three main goals: providing test data that is of high-quality, realistic, and available.

Data Masking

Data masking is essential in many regulated industries where personally identifiable information must be protected from overexposure. By masking data, the organization can expose the data as needed to test teams or database administrators without compromising the data or getting out of compliance. The primary benefit is reduced security risk.

Data Retirement

Database retirement is the process of decommissioning (shutting down) an inactive database application - mainly for cost savings. In the past, companies simply kept the obsolete database application running just in case they needed to access the legacy data. Some simply turned off the application and purged data without verifying the data was not under regulatory retention requirements or involved in litigation. Database retirement is, in fact, a one way street in that once retired, it is very difficult to reactivate the application or access the data in a readable format.