With all the attention to information management these days, you’d think
that information was being . . . well, managed.
But it isn’t – quite. Or at least that’s part of the story in this issue of Lac Carling Governments’ Review.
The articles in these pages run at information management from a variety of views, but they’re broadly agreed on this: IM is hugely important to e-government; IM is therefore worth the time and attention it seems to require; implicitly in some cases, that time and attention is not always readily apparent.
There are exceptions, to be sure. Oracle Corporation writer Graham Rose describes a data warehouse on Page 10 that’s a classic example of information management at work. And scholars Luc Juillet and Gilles Paquet afford an intriguing glimpse of the implications of information management in academia, on Page 16.
But then there’s John Davis’s extensive tour of the IM world on Page 20. Davis, an Ottawa-based specialist in public procurement, lays out a virtual catalogue of the challenges in IM. Check it out; you’ll find it’s a thick catalogue.
To be sure, Treasury Board official Niall Sinclair affords a kind of work plan, on Page 12, of just what it will take to get the federal IM house in order. It’s a useful sketch which seems to suggest that the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t attached to a train after all. All that’s required is a little . . . management.
Bob Parkins
