16. Enterprise Information Management [1]
IS 202 - 19 October 2006
Bob Glushko
Plan for IO & IR Lecture #16
- Knowledge management
- Content management
- AGU publishing case study
- Records management
- Sarbanes-Oxley
Information Management and the Document Type Spectrum
"Content" and "Data" Are Often Used Together
But Content and Data Management Have Been Treated Separately
Knowledge Management
- Much collective knowledge is embodied in a firm's people, systems, management techniques, history of strategy and design decisions, customer relationships, and intellectual property like patents, copyrights, trademarks, brands, etc.
- The goals of KM can be viewed as getting the tacit parts of this "intellectual capital" to be explicit
- Sharing solutions to customer problems
- Facilitating collaboration
- Locating people with relevant skills
- Managing unstructured content
- Providing greater access to existing information
- Improving traceability and justification for strategic (and controversial) decisions
- Recording the rationale for business process and information models
Knowledge Management Approaches
- Many technologies have been used for KM -- Lotus Notes, Intranets, Wikis, Blogs...
- But at best, knowledge management techniques can only capture knowledge that is codifiable and transferable, and not all knowledge is
- And furthermore, employees have complex motivations for complying with or not complying with KM goals
- "Enlightened" firms and management try to align personal and corporate goals for knowledge management through "assetization"
Content Management
- "Content Management" narrowly defined involves the management of semi-structured content in a logical repository, usually in a multi-user collaborative context
- But "content management" necessarily involves authoring and delivery or there would be nothing to manage or no purpose in managing it
"Flavors" of Content Management
- Document management
- Web content management
- Digital asset management
- E-mail management
- Records management
- Report management
- Collaboration tools (Notes, Wikis)
Who Needs Content Management?
- Is there a high volume of content?
- Is it created by many authors, both alone and in collaboration?
- Are there multiple instances of the same or closely related document types?
- Are multiple document types or formats required for different contexts, users, or devices?
- Does the content have a long useful life?
- Is the production, management and use of the content governed by formal processes or regulation?
Content Authoring
- Authoring can be broadly defined as creating reusable "information assets" from different sources
- Reusable information sometimes means XML, but more generally means information objects with metadata
- Reusable information assets can be created by adding structure and metadata to existing information
- Non-text information assets can be described using XML text metadata
Content Management (in the narrow sense)
- Reliable storage and retrieval of components, documents, schemas, transforms, stylesheets...
- Componentizing a document by separating it into its constituent elements using
user-defined names as boundaries
- Risk management functions like backup and archiving
Component Granularity
- What level of granularity is desired / required / achievable?
- Document level granularity
- Module level granularity
- Content unit level granularity
- Word level granularity
Content Delivery
- Content delivery is fundamental to the business models of news services, publishers, sellers, distributors, etc.
- Content delivery usually begins when some set of components is retrieved from the repository and assembled to meet some specific requirement
- Assembly may involve both the assembly of a document type model and then the assembly of an instance that conforms to it
- The retrieved or assembled instance may need to be transformed to conform to another model
A Single-Source Strategy
- Single-source is a popular slogan in content management that has both informal and rigorous definitions
- Informal:
- Write once, reuse many times
- Revise once, update everywhere
- Transform many times for delivery
- Rigorous:
- Enforce normalization techniques to prevent anomalies with duplicate content
- Use transformations to convert content from one structure or context to another, storing the transformations rather than their results
When You Should Single Source
Implications of Single-Sourcing
- Documents are much more stable because content changes are controlled
- Document consistency and quality should improve because of inherent automation of change propagation and assembly
- The total number of content components might increase significantly because they will be smaller
- Policies and practices must be developed and enforced, but not all of this enforcement can be done by automated means
- The organization of people and tasks may need to be changed to make single-sourcing work
AGU Case Study
- How American Geophysical Union redesigned its publishing processes and technology
- Substantially increased productivity in producing existing publications
- Enabled many new kinds of publications
- Well written technical case study with fascinating business and organizational "texture"
AGU Project Goals
- Develop an information creation, management, and delivery system that
- Is a single logical repository to eliminate duplicate authoring and distribution
- Makes it easy to update document components and deliver them as needed with little human intervention
- Reuses common information across different product lines
AGU Authoring -- Before and After
The Computerization and Automation Paradox
- Information technologies can solve many of the problems of content and knowledge management but can also cause them
Records
- Records may be created on any physical media including:
- Paper
- Film (microfilm, photographic film, x-ray)
- Disk (optical, magnetic, video, audio)
- Tape (magnetic, video, audio)
- The method of recording may be manual, mechanical, photographic, or a combination of these technologies
Records Management
- "Content and process management are inextricably linked via records management" (Barbero and Douglas)
- When does content become a business record?
- Retention requirements
- Non-retention requirements
- Purging requirements and purging authority
Recordkeeping Problem Areas [1]
- Electronic information systems
- "If records...do not show the complete names of senders, addresses, and the date of transmission,users should take reasonable steps to preserve the mail envelope, distribution lists..."
- Contractor records
- "Unless contract provisions explicitly define the documentation to be provided to the agency, contractors are likely to create needed documentation as private property"
- EXAMPLE: Until late 1980s when the government acquired "software" contractors would deliver only the object code and no documentation (the fix)
Didn't Follow Federal Recordkeeping Rules
Oliver North's Recordkeeping Mistake
- Oliver North used the White House email system to conduct one of the most scandalous activities ever carried out by the US government.
- In 1986 several members of the Reagan Administration sold weapons to Iran, an avowed enemy, and used the proceeds to fund the Contras, an anti-communist guerrilla organization in Nicaragua
- To conceal his involvement North and his secretary Fawn Hall shredded all pertinent papers and deleted all relevant e-mail.
- North didn't realize that e-mail was backed up, and the e-mail was used as evidence against North. (He was convicted but this was later overturned).
Recordkeeping Problem Areas [2]
- Personal papers and files
- Documentation of policy and decision making accomplished orally or electronically
- Documentation of formal meetings
- Drafts and working files
Ken Lay Does the Perp Walk
Sarbanes-Oxley and Information Management [1]
- The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was enacted to curb corrupt business activities and fraudulent accounting practices like those of Enron and WorldCom.
- SOX (aka Sarbox) requires firms to implement adequate internal control structures and procedures and attest to their effectiveness.
- SOX requires sufficient auditing and traceability to relate the IT systems that carry out internal controls and the financial reporting process to the firm's financial statements
Sarbanes-Oxley and Information Management [2]
- SOX also requires that firms disclose "material" information about their operations and financial situation in a timely and predictable manner ("trip wires") that trigger disclosure
- So SOX is causing is causing increased spending in document and records management, security, business process management and document engineering as companies define, document, and automate the processes that are needed to run the company while enabling auditing and timely reporting
- Standardization underway to develop an "Extensible Business Reporting Language (xbrl.org) and standard models for the auditing document types and their interrelationships
- EXAMPLE standard timesheet instance (http://www.gl.iphix.net/)
The Stolen Berkeley Laptop
- Laptop theft at UC Berkeley
- On 11 March 2005 someone stole a laptop from an office in Sproul Hall that contained personal information about 98,369 alumni, graduate students and past applicants
- "For several years University of California systemwide policy and UC Berkeley campus policy have required that restricted information stored on portable equipment be protected to safeguard the data if the equipment is lost or stolen. Since fall 2004, the UC systemwide policy has required encryption of such portable data, and campus units are in the process of moving toward full compliance with this new policy."
The Stolen Berkeley Laptop: Lessons?
Readings for IO & IR Lecture #17
- "Bringing together content and data management: Challenges and
opportunities" A. Somani, D. Choy, and J. C. Kleewein
- "Semantic Integration: Tapping the Full Potential of Enterprise
Data" Neil Raden
- "Chapter 4, The Information Supply Chain" Larry Downes,
The Strategy Machine
