Information Resource Management

The Data Administration function in any organization is a leader in information resource management (IRM).

Data Administration's role can be thought of as defining policies and leading the culture change necessary, across the organization, to encourage managing information as a vital corporate resource (just like people, vehicles, and buildings are vital resources).

Introduction

There are three key situations in the Ministry of Forests that make attention to information resource management critical:

1. Integrated Sequence of Forest Management
• Knowledge from each program area has to be available - passed along from one staff person or group to the next.
• Later activities are dependent on earlier ones (dependent on time, or precedence, and dependent on information).

For example, many areas in the ministry depend on other program areas to complete an activity, and then enter information about that activity before it is possible for them to start their work. Silviculture's PreHarvest Silviculture Prescription (PHSP) requires the Timber Mark for a cut block to be defined before Silviculture staff can enter any information about the PHSP, because the Timber Mark is the identifying characteristic of the PHSP (the Timber Mark is defined by Timber Harvesting staff, not Silviculture staff). Timber staff cannot authorize a Cutting Permit to allow the timber to be cut until the PHSP is completed, showing the plan for how the area will be reforested.

2. Data Proliferation and Information Starvation

Staff in the ministry have available to them an abundance of data from many sources. However, they are often constrained by not having access to the particular data they want at the time they want it -- there is too much available, with little in the form required to make effective use of it. Learning what specific data is out there, where it is available from, how it was collected, and how it was manipulated into its present form is often time consuming and error-prone. The goal of data administration is to answer these questions about data and in addition, relate together sets of data between program areas.

In general, people normally focus on the business from a functional perspective. Of course, how a business gets things done often changes with new procedures, new technology, etc., whereas what the business deals with (the data) usually stays constant.

"Relative to most other components of the enterprise -- including functions and processes and especially organizational charts -- data possesses far greater permanence and stability. Furthermore, data possesses innate organization (which directly reflects some static image of the business) whose continuing existence is largely independent of applications."[1]

This means that data is relatively stable through the life of an organization, and is not tied to the functions or processes of the organization. Therefore, good standards for data should give us a better chance at being able to meet the information demands that will appear in the future.

3. Increasing Dependence on Technology

Technology is now ahead of management's ability to recognize opportunities and appreciate the real business issues. But the best use of technology lies in being able to perceive the business trends and issues early, and then exploiting the technology to provide a solution that moves the business forward. Since inherent data structures tend to be static through the life of an organization, ensuring the proper structure exists should help to raise those issues early.

Acceptance of information resource management (IRM) as a philosophy will require a number of changes in the "corporate culture" of the ministry. The ability to properly use information requires a certain amount of inherent standardized structure. The benefits of introducing formal IRM practices are many, just as the benefits of treating staff as valuable resources are many (less turnover, higher productivity, etc). IRM is not inexpensive by any means, just as managing human resources properly introduces costs (general training and education course costs, time "lost" at work due to courses, learning curves for new employees, etc).

Benefits of IRM include:

• better control over the information that the ministry considers important to the conduct of its business (see the Management Guide to Custodianship);
• more and better communication between staff in different program areas through ministry-wide access to an integrated data dictionary;
• more reliable data, better data accuracy, better integrity of business information, more timely updates of ministry (corporate) information.

Some of the increased costs of introducing IRM include:

• increased commitment is required from ministry staff across the province to come to a collective consensus about how the ministry does its business, and what information isneeded to be kept by the ministry in the course of doing its business.
• the effort required is continuous.

One of the cornerstones of implementing IRM is the proper integration of the ministry's corporate data. The ministry's business needs are well integrated with one another, so that any one program area needs to communicate intensely with one or more other program areas, in order to complete their assigned work requirements. Therefore, integration of data is essential to the ministry.

Contact Data Administration Staff