We have the answer.
The answer to how to effectively manage your digital information.
And the answer is in the questions.
Three questions.
It’s that easy.
Seriously.
OK, bear with me a moment. At its most basic level, managing digital information is about making the appropriate decisions as to what level of time, resource and cost you’re going to spend to ensure you have the right technology supporting the right information in delivering the right business requirements. Once you know what that is, you can apply the people you need to work together using the tools they need to deliver the outcomes you need. See? Easy. And that’s the message at the heart of our rather excellent Digital Continuity training course.
It’s the decision framework you need to be able to support the new drivers in supporting your business through its information: the Information Principles, the Open Standards Principles, the Government Digital Strategy, even right back to the Section 46 Code of Practice.
As the meerkats would say: “simples”…
Before we get to the big reveal, let’s pause a moment to talk about value. All of our actions are based on the key understanding of what value the information brings to our organisation. And value covers everything: what does the business need it for? what services does it support or deliver? how long does it need it for? its sensitivity, protection requirements, exploitation, transparency, re-use, sharing and publication, how it needs to be used, legislative requirements to consider, business continuity; right through to its status as a historical record. And that list is far from exhaustive! Government creates millions of records, some of which could be disposed of immediately, some of which need to be kept for ever. You don’t need to be incurring the cost of keeping ephemeral information on expensive online secure storage now do you? Do you???
So what is this golden nugget? What are these three mythical questions? You’ve probably guessed them already.
- What do we have (information)?
- Where is it (technology)?
- What is it for (business)?
That’s it. All you need to do now is ask all the right questions to get the answers to the questions. Arm yourselves with the facts and go out and do good things.
