Information first, technology second

Ask most people about the best way to share information within organisations – whether it’s data about the previous purchasing habits of a customer or the health history of a patient – and they are liable to hail technology as the answer. But a partnership between public and private sector bodies is challenging that assumption with its own message: that it’s the quality of the information, rather than the sophistication of the technology, that really matters.

The Information Management Professional group (IMP) was set up by the Metropolitan Police Service and the online search directory Yell in 2004. Since then, the two organisations have been joined by representatives from technology analyst company Gartner, IT professionals organisation the British Computer Society (BCS), the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (Cilip), and academics from Henley Management College.

At its simplest, IMP’s aim is to promote information management as a professional discipline on a par with marketing or accountancy. In an information age, the group argues, it is not good enough that those who work in information management remain without well-defined roles, standards and relevant qualifications.

It’s a message that Sharm Manwani, academic fellow at Henley Management College and a driving force behind IMP, hammers home.

A former IT director with 15 years’ experience in industry, he joined Henley six years ago to research and lecture on information management “rather than take a CIO role for the fourth time”. He was brought into IMP for his rare combination of business and academic expertise.

“I do feel that a lot of the challenges in the big organisations relate to information rather than technology,” he says. “The extent to which you can be clear on the information required dictates how well projects will go. If there is a clear understanding of what information is needed and how it will be used, and you achieve that understanding before you launch the technological project, it is much more likely that the project will work.”

Although Manwani demurs from mentioning them explicitly, the series of public sector disasters that led the McCartney report to conclude in 2000 that “government IT projects have too often missed delivery dates, run over budget or failed to fulfil requirements” – as well as more recent high-profile failures such as the delayed £6.2bn upgrade of the NHS computer systems – cannot be far from his mind.

So why has the information part of information technology been so neglected for so long? To some extent, believes Manwani, it’s because it’s harder to sell.

“People recognise the role of technology in allowing you to do things that you couldn’t do without it,” he says. “Companies see that and suppliers see that, and what they are doing is marketing the technology. So what’s happened is that information management becomes associated with technology rather than information.

“What we are saying is that we should be focusing more on information. If you haven’t captured information in a quality, timely, useful way, then the technology is not going to be able to find or use it.”

Second-fiddle
Mike Fishwick, head of the customer information group at Yell, was instrumental in setting up IMP after realising the need for chartered information professionals. Like Manwani, Fishwick thinks that information has played second-fiddle to technology too often.

“Information is less tangible than technology,” he says. “It’s more of a conceptual capability. Information is about an organisation’s capabilities rather than an actual product suite that you can demonstrate and sell to someone and make revenue for your company. You can’t necessarily sell it and the industry is driven by things you can sell rather than the things you can learn and understand.”

In the two years since IMP was set up, information management has moved a long way up the agenda, particularly within the public sector. A series of scandals, including the Victoria Climbié and Soham murders – all of which occurred after warning signs were missed because police forces, education and social services did not share information – have prompted the government to launch data-sharing initiatives.

Public concern about issues such as identity theft and the protection of private information has also driven the political agenda, and the post of information commissioner was created to oversee the difficult balance between the Data Protection Act 2000 and the Freedom of Information Act 1998.

Yet IMP believes a significant degree of institutional blindness – and, in some cases, hostility – remains over the importance of information management and information sharing within and between organisations.

Steve Farquharson, group director for information management at the Metropolitan Police and an IMP member from the start, admits that a huge cultural shift is necessary in an organisation where paper records are still commonplace.

“We need to move our people from the perception that inputting and storing information effectively is administrative bureaucracy to a position where information management is seen as an essential activity in the delivery of effective policing services,” he says.

Similar issues exist in the rest of the public sector. Chris Head, subject area leader for managing information at Henley, has nearly 30 years’ experience of working in local government – most recently as board member for IT and strategy at Surrey Council – and knows some of the barriers only too well.

“It’s a cultural problem much more than a technical or legal problem,” Head says. “It’s amazing that when Ian Huntley appeared on television after those girls in Soham went missing, nobody in social services or the police, to whom he was well known, picked up the phone and said he was a rogue. The people concerned who knew either felt too insecure to divulge the information or hid behind the Data Protection Act because they don’t want to get involved in information sharing.”

Head says there is a need for greater clarity from the information commissioner to overcome such institutional barriers. “As far as I know, nobody has ended up in court as a result of sharing information inappropriately,” he says. “But people have died as a consequence of not sharing information. You have to ask, which is worse?”

There are few more graphic examples of the consequences of getting it wrong than the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman by Ian Huntley, a man who had been able to get a job as a school caretaker despite a string of allegations of sexual assaults on underage girls.

The murders prompted the Bichard inquiry, whose central conclusion was that better information sharing was needed between the police and other agencies working with children and young people in order to safeguard them from harm. It led to the code of practice on the management of police information, which came into force in November 2005, to promote consistency between forces over the way they manage information.

Yet a Met police spokesman told IWR that police officers often still have to access up to six databases and enter the same information several times. “Every time you do that you are creating a new record and the potential for human error is very high,” he says. “So you could have a persistent offender whose details have been entered in different ways on different systems. When you do a trace, their information won’t come up.

“Changing that is a big challenge and we need to help people to do it. You can’t introduce information management if you don’t have the systems in place to make it happen. You have to bring staff with you.”

Private-sector problems
Fishwick says that barriers also exist within the private sector, although the challenges are different. When he joined Yell in 2000, his brief was to improve the company’s data capabilities. He says he found an organisation with “great technical skills but not great information skills” and one of his first tasks was the daunting job of consolidating 3.5 million customer records from no fewer than six databases.

While institutional hostility towards information management is less of a problem than in the public sector, Fishwick still has to fight for resources. “I don’t believe I suffer in quite the same way [as someone promoting information in the public sector], but that doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges,” he says. “We still need to communicate the ‘so what?’ factor. There’s no point coming up with this great initiative unless you can articulate to the rest of the company how it adds value – for example, by taking out costs. Otherwise there’s a danger of becoming a backwater within your own company.

“There’s also a widespread attitude of ‘it’s not my job’. Everyone says that data is important and information is important because at Yell our entire product is about information, but when it comes to personal accountability it’s not on everyone’s list. My job is to make clear why it’s important.”

IMP members admit that some of the practical solutions to such complex problems do lie in technology. Technical improvements underlie integrated databases that can talk to each other and require only one log-in, for example, and the harmonisation of fields so that, say, a police officer need fill in somebody’s name and address once only because it is subsequently replicated.

But there is also a need for a better understanding of how to get the information right in the first place – and that’s where training and qualifications come in. Separate training for librarians or technicians is no longer enough, argues Manwani, in a world where information professionals are expected to work with all kinds of data.

“We have got people who are comfortable in their world of highly structured information in IT, and others who can work with the unstructured information found in documents and text in libraries, but as you combine those worlds it becomes much more complex,” Manwani says. “What we need is a much more rounded information professional who knows about all types of information.”

One of the things that Manwani hopes to announce at this month’s conference is a new integrated qualification supported by both the BCS and Cilip, and bringing skills from both the technical and library worlds. IMP is also looking at widening the scope of information management covered by the industry standards, the Skills Framework for the Information Age, which Manwani describes as “too IT-focused” at present.

But Manwani is also looking beyond information professionals. He recognises that information is no longer just the domain of librarians and technicians – everybody from call centre staff to social workers input and use information during their working day.

“People who use information should be better trained in those skills,” Manwani argues. “That will vary according to the level of information you are using. How many times have you called a company and spoken to somebody who actually knows who you are or when you’ve called before? It’s clear from our everyday experience that a lot of organisations are not training people in this.”

The Met police spokesman says that through its work with IMP, the Met has learnt the importance of embedding information management in every aspect of its work. “We need to make sure that every member of police staff understands why they have to do what they have to do,” he says. “We need to look at every aspect of the workplace and see how information management can be part of it, whether that’s in training or as part of staff’s performance reviews.”

Manwani says he will use his speech and IMP’s half-day seminar at the Information Management Solutions conference, a new event, as a “call to action” to information professionals. He wants them to engage in the debate about the best way forward and support the development of appropriate new roles, skills and qualifications.

“In no way are we blaming the individual managers here,” Manwani says. “What we are saying is that at this moment in the profession we don’t have the body of knowledge and the information to support the professionals, the users and the managers. Any profession matures over a period of time and the information management profession is an evolving one.”

Manwani acknowledges that any debate must also consider how to balance information sharing with individual privacy.

“Information management should be about both,” he says. “When we talk about professionalisation, within that we need to create some sort of ethical platform. As a profession we have a duty of care. We are dealing with major ethical issues. It’s very sad when you hear stories of customer data not being kept secure. That should be another driver for increased professionalism.”

Putting the I in IT
Throughout his professional life, Manwani has been thinking about the information element of information technology. Unlike many chief information officers, Manwani’s qualifications are in economics and maths rather than IT and his first positions were business, rather than technology, roles. This approach has given him a firm grounding in what technology is for, rather than a belief in technology for its own sake.

“I had enough understanding of technology to know what worked, but my skills were more from a business and systems analysis perspective,” he explains. “For me, it was always about technology as an enabler. I’ve come at it from that angle and that’s what’s driven my career.”

Before joining Henley, Manwani completed his doctoral research into how IT can deliver business needs. Since entering academia, he has lectured in information management and conducted research into information overload and IT capabilities and leadership. He now heads the CIO elective on Henley’s MBA programme, is a fellow of the BCS, and consults for leading public and private sector organisations.

But he denies that discussions around information management need to be intensely academic.

“This is not a high-level debate,” he says. “It affects every one of us. The benefits are clear. If you get knocked over and those treating you have access to your medical records that is clearly going to be beneficial.”

Manwani is delighted that his passion – the central importance of information management for organisations – is finally winning wider recognition and he is positive about the impact IMP can have on it.

“The fun of it is engaging with like-minded people who share that vision,” he says. “The beauty of it is being with people who have a passion and a vision of the benefits of getting this right for everyone. It’s also the possibility of making that agenda a reality.”

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