An Information Bill of Rights

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April 18, 2010 - 11:38 PM

At AIIM, we've been thinking about how we can better explain WHY managing information well is so critical for anyone to be successful in the future. Here is our initial Information Bill of Rights (and the manifesto that you can read on this community's home page). What do you think -- good, bad, indifferent? What other elements should be included? I think it boils down to a single thing: Information needs to be able to be used. Look forward to hearing your thoughts. Information is an asset that can be used to change reality, improve positioning, and reduce costs and risks. Knowledge is power, which means increased focus on the information worker in an electronic world. Web 2.0 has already started to influence how employees are connected to each other, and solutions like the iPhone, Facebook, and Twitter change our enterprise requirements for functionality and usability. Information workers want solutions like in Star Trek, and over the next few years we will see new worker models for business information and users. Information needs will be managed with the following objectives: 1. It must be easy to find, retrieve, and process relevant information. 2. Information must be available when, where, and how workers need it. 3. It must be easy to identify and connect with colleagues, partners, customers, and/or suppliers with the relevant expertise or interests. 4. It must be easy to create, share, and discuss information within and outside the organization. 5. Workers should be notified about information or colleagues that may be of value to them. 6. Staff must learn from each other and benefit from the collective intelligence of the organization. 7. The organization must not lose important knowledge when staff leaves or retires. 8. Business decisions and agreements must be documented and retained for future references and legal compliance. 9. Information must be easily shared, but it also must be secure so that it is only shared with the right people. 10. Keeping everything is not a solution, no matter how inexpensive storage seems. Information that is no longer needed or useful should be systematically deleted.
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Submitted by

Was speaking with Al Linden earlier today and he mentioned that we needed to work in "The right information to the right person at the right time" to this manifesto.

After blinking for a second and refraining from slapping my forehead for having such a giant "duh" moment. Al's right, that is exactly how information needs to be managed. It was so obvious, I missed it. As my mom always said when i was just next to something I was looking for and couldn't see, "if it had been a snake, it would've bit you."

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Submitted by

I love your Information Bill of Rights. One problem we have with the free flow of information is the need for it to be secure. That's the rub that we face right now. If we let information flow freely like a untamed, unsecured river who among us(individually or business) will drown in it?



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Submitted by

In a time where we are overloaded with information the last objective is very important. Any ECM strategy should pay more attention on this area. Also we need to focus on minimizing the duplication of records / information.

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Submitted by

Rather than "working in" the concept of "right info to right people at right time" it seems that it is the core of information management. The 10 objectives you listed could really be considered sub-bullets of that overarching definition.

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Submitted by

Paul,
By "working it in" I mean I need to rework the Bill of Rights to include the idea of right information right place right time right person. It is the basic idea/goal that we're reaching for.

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Submitted by

We originally began this discussion on LinkedIn about 3 months ago. I wanted to bring some of the comments originally made over there to here.

*****Barclay T. Blair *****
Independent Information Governance Consultant, Writer, and Speaker

The enterprise will enforce its own policies. (Inconsistent enforcement of policy is discriminatory. In other words, departments, workgroups, and individuals who follow policies are at a disadvantage versus those that do not.)

*****Tim Heard *****
President at eSearch Associates

• I'm hardly an expert on the subject, but I think there are all sorts of responses, some pro and some con.

With respect to sharing data with team members so that it's not lost when someone leaves the organization, there are new collaboration tools that are geared toward accomplishing just that. It's just a matter of rolling them out and then of people actually using them. :-)

Regarding work being done anywhere. That's true sometimes. There's a lot of value in being able to walk down the hall and grab a bunch of people to discuss something. Also, there are privacy issues and legal reasons why some things have to be done across secure networks, thus making telecommuting a less viable option.

Regarding shared drives... What's wrong with shared drives? I have always thought that they were helpful, as long as I could also save some things to my desktop.

How does one define what's important and what must be kept and shared? The more you keep, the greater the potential iability. Also, the greater the technical headache when trying to back it all up and retrieve it when required to do so.

*****Hanns Köhler-Krüner *****
Experienced consultant and facilitator in Social Media and Enterprise 2.0

How about spending some time on a common vision? Not just for top management. but also for the worker bees ? Where I think the the whole system falls down is in the communication between top and bottom. Which approach do you take, which will largely define which rights you have to give the individuals which are going to be part of this.

Shared drives, etc. These are technologies and can be more useful when used correctly than some Social Software used badly.

My suggestion is, next to all the things you say, is:
Vision - agreed, understood and shared
Incentivisation - make it understood for everyone what is in it for them.
Governance & Control - There is no point to replace one jungle with another. We need clear governance on these new tools that allow for use and abuse to be guided where necessary. Your Bill of Right should also contain the dos and don'ts.

and last but not least... this must not end up being about technology, but about people.
-Right to be informed
-Right for transparency
-Right to give input into processes and procedures
-Right to be heard....

Just my 2 cents worth.

*****Bryant Duhon*****
editor at AIIM International

Yes, shared drives CAN be useful. However, to me, it just seems like we're wasting the potential of the tools at our disposal to help us find the information we need more quickly and efficiently.

Hanns, good point about governance/control, and your 4 Rights--been reading Woodrow Wilson's 4 Freedoms? ;)

*****Luis Martínez-Negrete Gasque *****
Experienced Manager, Telco, Billing, Content Management, PMP, BSCS

To avoid loosing information you need to use either a collaboration tool or grant read-only access on shared drives .
Read-only access limits collaboration and almost ensures that you don’t have the latest version, and most collaboration tools are a pain to use properly so much that people don’t use them (unless forced but then the true spirit of sharing knowledge gets a bit lost)

• Whatever system is used, it should be very simple to use by everyone
• All information should be properly indexed (the indexing should be, if not automatic, very easy). Information should be classified in more than one way so more than one group of people can find it.
• Sharing information should not be a time-consuming task

*****George D. Darnell, CRM *****
Senior Systems Engineer at SAIC

In today's economy information is a vital enterprise resource just as important as human, fiscal, and property resources. It's interesting that most organizations have strict controls on the management of the last three but not the first. No one thinks these controls are unreasonable, but try to establish controls on information and you can hear the outrage a block away.

******Jessica Arts ******
Information & Privacy Officer at The Law Society of Alberta

A Bill of Rights isn't one way - if you demand rights to access information easily, anywhere and anytime, then you have a duty to respect, support and defend those rights. So, when you create your list - why not include something like:

In support of this Bill of Rights, I will:

*share information appropriately
*support collaborative efforts
*make my knowledge and experience available to others
*be an information role model for others
*monitor myself to avoid creating bad information habits

No bill will succeed unless each person agrees to take responsibility for keeping it alive.

*****Evert Kuiken******
Driven to collaborate, share knowledge and improve the world we live in

Information will be categorized. Information will be linked to business processes. Outdated information will be discarded or updated.

@Tim: telecommuting can also be done through secure channels. Our Document Management system is available all over the world, but through secure channels.

What is wrong with shared drives? No indexing, no metadata, no audit trail, no versioning. But for data that does not need this, shared drives can work.

What I would like to see is a workplace with the right tools I need for my job and the right information available at hand (quick and easy to find).

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