Information Development

From MIKE2.0 Methodology

Information Development allows organizations to treat information as a strategic asset through their complete supply chain.

• This approach starts with how information is created, accessed, presented, and used in decision-making.
  
• The approach ends with how this information is shared, kept secure, stored, and destroyed.
  

Information Development is a key concept of the MIKE2.0 Methodology.

The need for Information Development

The concept of Information Development is based on the following premise:

Due to its complexity, we currently lack the methods, technologies and skills to solve our information management challenges.

Many of the techniques in use today are relatively immature and fragmented. What's more, the problems keep getting more difficult to solve. An an example, the amount of unstructured data is proliferating with the rise of blogs, wikis, tweets, and social networking.

The lack of effective information management causes organizations many problems today. The organizations that manage information well are more likely to be successful.

Information Development in Action

Information Sharing in the Public Sector

While it is possible to get there in "small steps", we believe most organizations require transformational change in how they manage information. This is why MIKE2.0 promotes new strategy concepts and continuous improvement. This approach can result in:

• Collaborative situational awareness - operators in a government agency can understand its threats from a number of asymmetric and real-time sources. As a result, they can quickly make optimal decisions.

• Next-generation policy development - a policy analyst can make objective, evidence-based decisions on new policy development. Decision making becomes more collaborative, involving colleagues and stakeholders.

• Conversations with the customer - a bank can engage with customers through online channels, supplemented with rich historical information to address customer needs and wants. This is a significantly enhanced and more efficient.

• A patient-centric healthcare system - significantly improved efficiency and patient insight. Better sharing of information and longitudinal analysis balances the need for patient confidentiality.

• Demonstrating and executing an appropriate governance model for all information held by the organization

Information Development in action is something we increasingly see today. Many of the biggest changes have been in government, but it impacts all industries.

A Methodology for Information Development

Our goal with MIKE2.0 is to provide a methodology, community, and fundamental change in approach to managing information. We don't see any one organization having all the answers. As a result, this methodology has been developed in an open and collaborative fashion. Conceptually, it is a new approach in which information is "developed" on behalf of the Enterprise, supplemented with the data and metadata artifacts produced within the other domains.

The Information Development (ID) approach includes the following areas: 

• enterprise data repository(ies) development (replacing the silos of MIS Application Development)
  
• modelling of data at rest
  
• metadata development
  
• information access and storage
  
• a collection of capabilities involved in the analysis and correction of data
  

The ultimate objective is to have a virtual organisation in the enterprise responsible for Information Development. As opposed to a single team, everyone has a role to play in managing information. A central team can play a crucial role in driving the transformation and taking many of the key responsibilities.

In the past, ID has not been seen as a separate domain. Rather, it has been coupled tightly to Application Development (AD) and Integration. Decoupling ID from the AD and integration processes does not create extra work. It involves both:

• putting standards into place for how and when information should be exchanged
  
• determining how certain types of information should be captured, presented, and shared.

In summary, Information Development (ID) is about:

• Driving an overall approach through an information strategy

• Enabling people with the right skills to build and manage new information systems while creating a culture of information excellence

• Moving to new organisational models that delivers an improved Information Management competency

• Improving processes around information compliance, policies, practices, and measurement

• Delivering contemporary technology solutions that meet the needs of today’s highly federated organisations

This Information Development approach enables:

• Real-time synchronisation and transformation of information between systems. This automates integration and promotes reuse across a federated enterprise.

• The exposure of shadow processes and business rules. These are typically embedded inside application and integration functions as reusable metadata

• The standardisation of interchange information into a common enterprise format to avoid stovepipe "application-focused" integration

• Building integrated repositories of information for use by the enterprise as a whole.

• Improved information quality in a proactive and reusable fashion

• Flexible access to search across structured, semi-structured, and unstructured content
  
• The ability to supply this information in a consistent form to any channel

• The ability to make fact-based business decisions and drill-down, drill across, and aggregate analytical information

• The ability to measure both the value of any information asset and the resulting business benefits of its improvement

• An organisation that is structured in the most efficient manner to deliver information solutions for the business 

We believe this is an approach that must evolve significantly over time and be framework-based as opposed to static in its approach. By virtue of its open and collaborative form, the MIKE2.0 methodology provides a mechanism for creating this new  style of open methodology.