Administración de la información
The term “information management” is used ambiguously in the literatures of several fields: in computer science and its applications it is used as a synonym for information technology management or as identical to “data management”, where the emphasis is on the structures underlying quantitative data and their relationship to the design of databases. In business or management studies it has similar connotations to technology management, with an emphasis on the relationship of information technology to business performance and competitiveness. In the field of librarianship and information science it is identified with the “emerging market” for information workers (managers), whose perception of information embraces data, organizational intelligence, competitive intelligence, external information resources of all kinds and the associated technology (manual or machine) for handling these different sources. Compared with the other areas, information management in this latter context is more widely concerned with the meaning of information for the information user and with information retrieval issues.
Information management and “information resource(s) management”
A further difficulty in defining information management arises out of the often synonymous use of the term information resource (or resources) management (IRM), the term used by the US National Commission on Federal Paperwork in its report (1977), where “paperwork”, including electronic documents of all kinds, was defined as constituting the information in Information Resource (or resources) Management. This usage appears to limit the idea of Information Resource Management, but the report goes on to say that an IRM function (in US government agencies) would incorporate a wide range of disparate activities, including records management, library management, computer systems, printing and reprography, microforms and word-processing centers. Schneyman (1985) elaborates on this definition of IRM to cover five types of “information resources”: systems support, including computers and telecommunications; processing data, images, etc.; conversion and transformation, including reprographics; distribution and communication, including network management and telecommunications; and, finally, retention, storage and retrieval, which covers libraries, record centers, filing systems, and internal and external databases. He adds that, IRM supports Information Management to do its job, which he defines as managing the ownership, content, quality and use of information.
This expansion of the idea, of course, takes it into the difficult area of the interface between information resources, in the sense of data, documents, etc., and the technology used to manipulate, manage and transmit those resources, with the result that information technology becomes characterized as an information resource. This is a source of endless confusion in the literature so that, form example, when Strassman (1976) writes on “Managing the costs of information” he is really discussing the problem of accounting for the cost of computer-based systems.
The origins of information management
Although earlier uses may exist, information management and information resources management achieved a high visibility in the USA in the mid-1970s as a result of the work of the National Commission on Federal Paperwork, the aim of which was to seek a reduction in the costs incurred by organizations in satisfying the demands for paperwork by Federal bureaucracies. Ironically, as Porat (1977) notes, the Commission itself required more than 100 information workers and produced a seven-volume report of almost 3,000 pages!
However, the Commission quickly moved from the position of concern over the physical volume of “paperwork” to the real problem of “information requirements planning, controlling, accounting and budgeting”. Porat (1977) addressed these essentially economic issues in a report for the US Office of Telecommunications Policy. Porat noted that, in 1967, “the total cost of informational inputs [TO THE Federal government] was a $50.5 billion”. However, Porat’s definition of the information economy is very wide, so that it included, for example, the research and development purchases of the Government, amounting to $13.1 billion. Only $11.8 billion, was in the form of direct purchase of goods and services from the primary information inputs had risen to $62.8 billion.
In spite of the strong impetus provided by the Commission, however, the idea of information management ten years later did not appear to have penetrated very far into the governmental structure. Claude (1988) notes that, in spite of the emphasis in the Paperwork Reduction Act on treating information as a resource, 12 of the 16 department IRM managers surveyed conceded that IRM is primarily seen as automation or information technology, including telecommunications and that “There is not a general perception outside the IRM unit that IRM has anything at all to do with good management”. She also found that there was even less of a perception of IRM as helpful to management at the bureau level (i.e. the level below departments in the Federal government), where the idea was equated almost solely with the idea of end-user technology support services.
Claude concluded that the realization that information is a resource, “is developing much more slowly than the paperwork reduction act’s designers likely intended” and, perhaps with more optimist than is justified by the research, that once the information technology infrastructure is in place and the Information Resource Management (IRM) offices themselves become operationally mature, IRM managers and their organizations should be ready to take further steps toward true IRM.
In the UK, the development of information management did not receive the same impetus from government, which since 1979 has been concerned with establishing the concept of the “market” in what was the public sector. The same attitude has prevailed towards information: thus, the report of the Information Technology Advisory Panel, Making a Business of Information (1983), was concerned simply to direct attention to the business opportunities in the information sector. Later, the Government produced guidelines for departments on dealing with business in seeking to derive benefit from “tradeable information”.
There was an attempt, however, to introduce the fundamental concepts of information management in government departments when the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency produced guidelines for departments, following an investigation into departmental practices (CCTA 1990). One of the main planks of the guidelines was the recognition that responsibility for information resources was diffused over different sections in most departments and that there was a need to ensure effective collaboration among the resource-holders and, possibly, the integration of these services (particularly data management, records management and library and information services) under a single director.
The definitions task group of the IRM Network (1993), which operates under the aegis of Aslib: the Association for Information Management, has provided concise description of the nature of information management and associated ideas. Clarifying somewhat the relationship between information management and information resources management, the Group associates the former with the task of managing the relationship between organizational objectives, management processes, and information needs in the development of an information strategy and information systems strategy.
An information systems strategy is the definitions of systems (technological and otherwise) that are needed to satisfy information needs, whereas an Information Technology strategy defines the way in which the technology can support the systems strategy.
Information resources management is, then, defined as applying “the general principles of resources management to identify discrete information resources, establish ownership and responsibility, determine cost and value, and to promote development and exploitation where appropriate”.
This brief account of the development of information management serves to show that a degree of consensus can be seen to have emerged, but the relationships to other managerial issues in organizations are such that considerable scope exists for confusion over disciplinary or intra-organizational boundaries.
Feather, John; Sturges, Paul. 1997. International encyclopedia of information and library science. Great Britain: Routledge. Pág. 187
