Information Cartography identifies how many of which information functions pre-identified by information topography are needed to fully inform a particular situation.

Information cartography is discovery, not design. It answers questions:

• Who are the actors?
• What are their possible roles?
• What are the tangibles? ... locations? ... constructs?
• How do all of these correlate with each other?
• What are the actors intentions? ... actions? ... activity?
• What are the events? ... scenarios?

Answering these question tells us what we need
to know about to know about a business.

The purpose is to understand what a business knows about itself within the ebb and flow of daily work ... not what it wants to know or could know (collateral and secondary information) but what it does know (primary information).   The known, not the knowable.  

• Cartography focuses exclusively on primary information.
   
• Collateral and secondary information are in the mechanics; the responsibility of information engines.

Mapping primary information requires real-thinking. To avoid back-sliding into the artificial-thinking of conventional IT we willfully ignore:

• Processes; what we might or could do to information
  
  
• Previous usages (a good way to get mind-stuck in institutionalized information problems and never know they're there).
  
  
• Using computers

The resulting map IS the information system.  With an information engine handling the mechanics based on what a map tells it, keeping a system current becomes a relatively simple activity of keeping the map current.