Managing information to its full potential requires that ALL information put into a system is available when needed for any use to which it could apply.

 

 

Once it's bought and paid for an organization should be able to use its information as it needs when it needs without:

• Waiting for someone to program or re-program a computer.
  
  
• Having to anticipate when a system is created every way they think they will ever use their information.
  
  
• Being shackled by package software to only use their information the way a software vendor thinks they should.

Conventional system strategy assumes unique information requires

unique solution ... as though every trip requires a different car. 

Conventional systems manage information for very specific and very limited needs, severely obstructing legitimate usages of the same information for other equally valid reasons.  This creates an artificial and self-perpetuating need for ever more systems, programming, and maintenance to accommodate information usages prohibited by prior systems.  

No system has ever required that we invent
a new way to use information.

Even though information usages / types / meanings / functions are exactly the same in all situations, conventional systems solve the same information problems over and over again because the information is different (as though the right turn at Broadway and Third is somehow technically different from the right turn at Fifth and Center).  The difference in systems is not in what we do with information, but in how many of which information usages/functions are needed to inform a particular situation ( how many turns, stops, starts, etc.). Solving information usages regardless of specific situations, keeps us from having to re-invent solutions for each situation.

Truly managing information ... managing information usages instead of special purpose needs ... requires new rules and perspectives:

• No organization should pay for the same information more than once.
  
  
• No organization should pay for the same information usage more than once.
  
  
• Information must be developed and organized independent of but consistent with all information usages that could apply. (Don't plan a trip for a particular car.)
  
  
• Information usages must be developed and organized independent of but consistent with all information that could apply. (Don't design a car for only one trip.)
  
  
• Information must be developed and organized, not to fit technology, but to fit the real world with clear understanding of the difference between technical and informational considerations. It's about the information, not the technology.