Easing the Information Flow with Data and Network Maps
Jinfo Blog

By Sophie Alexander

Abstract

Sophie Alexander looks at how data and network maps can help us to make data-driven decisions and to identify and breakdown information silos.

Item

My previous blog highlighted suggestions for facilitating information discovery in the enterprise using tools that go beyond technology.

This blog focuses on Constance Ard's article "Taking the Mystery Out of Big Data - Moving from Data Collection to Competitive Actions", and looks at how data and network maps can be used to identify how information flows within an organisation and to support the goal of making actionable information highly visible.

As Constance reminds us, making data-driven decisions depends on discovering the right information in the right format at the right time. Businesses rely on both internal and external data to function and information silos are a familiar challenge. She suggests that perhaps the best way to identify any silos and break down barriers is for a process to falter.

Data and Network Maps

Data and network maps are an effective way to identify information flows within an organisation and can help make information more visible.

A data map is "a comprehensive and defensible inventory of an organisation's IT systems that store information - electronically stored information or ESI - which may be relevant to litigation, regulatory proceedings, government investigations, or audits" (as defined by John P. Collins of The Ingersoll Firm - PDF). This shows how information moves in and out of the organisation but network maps can be useful to show how information moves within a company. 

Constance points out that the difference between a data map and a network map is that the network map concentrates on an organisation's hardware and the connections to networks and domains, network maps are highly technical and may need to be translated into business speak.

Whilst designing workflows that ease information discovery is important, Constance reiterates that technology is only one aspect of this.

Analytics and Other Options

For visibility in the context of content seeking, federated search and discovery products such as InfoNgen have their place but that still only represents a small fraction of what knowledge workers do with information in today's workplace.

Project collaboration and sharing is another important area. Products such as Microsoft's Delve can highlight information based on what you're working on and what's trending around you. This is done via their Office Graph which shows you what may be "relevant" or "interesting" to you. Other tools such as Tallyfy focus more on workflow, enabling managers to easily share processes to make information more visible within organisations.

Analytics and big data are still significant and whilst visualisation tools can be beneficial in this area, decision-makers need to be clear on their objectives overall and processes need to be regularly reviewed to adapt with the needs of the business.

This Blog Item is part of the FreePint Topic Series "Making Information Visible".

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