Information Management

The scope of information management is so broad that any attempt to offer a concise definition is doomed to failure. There is a good quote from Accenture on the topic of information management.It comes from a brochure entitled Navigating Information Management published by Accenture Australia in 2008. It now seems (not surprisingly) to have been withdrawn.

“Despite the fact that the components of information management—business intelligence, portals and content management and data management and architecture—have been embraced for some time, Accenture believes it is only by defining an information management destination and applying a layer of strategic insight, that the full value of information management can be realized and competitive differentiation achieved”.

The research literature on the topic is vast and selecting a few papers would be hopelessly unrepresentative of what is available. In 2014 I worked with Dr. Sandra Ward, formerly the Head of Information Services at Glaxo SmithKline R&D on a reading list on information management, and this can be downloaded from the CILIP website, which has a range of other information management resources. CILIP is currently expanding its work in the Knowledge and Information Management sector.The lead organisation in the public sector is The National Archives. Its website has a specific section on information management with links to departmental and agency information management strategies.

In the USA AIIM is leading the way in the provision of training for information managers but with a stronger emphasis on document management than CILIP. The Information Governance Initiative also has interests in this area.

Perhaps surprisingly there are not many books on information management – many of those with ‘information management’ in the title are about management information systems, somewhat to the edge of the topic. Four books in my collection that I tend to refer to quite frequently are

Competing with Information  Don Marchand 2000

Information First  Roger Everden and Elaine Everden, 2003

Information Strategy in Practice Elizabeth Orna 2004

Decision Sourcing Dale Roberts and Rooven Pakkiri 2013

Managing Information in Organisations Sharon A. Cox 2014

The leading journals in information management include

Business Information Review Sage

International Journal of Information Management  Elsevier

Journal of Enterprise Information Management Emerald

As is the case with books there are many other journals with ‘information management’ in their title where the emphasis is much more towards information systems management than information management from an organisational perspective. Wikipedia has a good entry on information management,

See also Information Charter, Information Culture, Information Lifecycle, Information Maturity, Information Policies, Information Quality, Information Risk, Information Sharing,

Martin White

October 2016