From MIKE2.0 Methodology
Information Development is an approach organizations can apply to treat information as a strategic asset through their complete supply chain: from how it is created, accessed, presented and used in decision-making to how it 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 premise that 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 and the problems keep getting more difficult to solve. This is one of the reasons we see so many problems today and why organizations that manage information well are so successful.
Information Development in Action
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 and quickly make decisions.
- Next-generation policy development - a policy analyst can make objective, evidence-based decisions on new policy development and create this in a collaborative fashion with colleagues and stakeholders
- Conversations with the customer - a bank can engage with the customer through the online channel, supplemented with rich historical information to address customer needs and wants, a significantly enhanced and more efficient approach to meeting in a branch
- A patient-centric healthcare system - significantly improved efficiency and patient insight through better sharing of information and longitudinal analysis that still 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, so we will develop this methodology in an open and collaborative fashion. Conceptually, it is a new approach where information is "developed" on behalf of the Enterprise, supplemented with the data and metadata artifacts produced within the other domains. The Information Development approach includes the area of enterprise data repository(s) development, (replacing the silos of MIS Application Development), modelling of data at rest, metadata development, information access and storage and a collection of capabilities involved in the analysis and correction of data; the goal is to have a “single” organisation in the enterprise responsible for Information Development.
In the past Information Development has not been seen as a separate domain, and has been coupled tightly to Application Development and Integration. Decoupling Information Development from the Application Development and integration processes does not create extra work; it is putting standards into place for how and when information should be exchanged and how certain types of information should be captured, presented, and shared.
In summary, Information Development is about:
- 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, automating integration and promoting reuse across a federated enterprise
- The exposure of shadow processes and business rules that 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 and being able 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
- Being to measure 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. The MIKE2.0 methodology, in its open and collaborative form provides a mechanism for creating this new style of open methodology.
