Does Anyone Remember the I in IT?

I entered IT in the era of proprietary methodologies and the ascendancy of "Information Engineering". Since then much has changed and everything has become "Digital". Yet increasingly, I have noticed that people who have entered in the last 10 year don't appear to understand data or information.

The IT profession has been caught between Object Oriented thinking, COTS dogma and the assumption that everything is now available "as a Service". Whilst at the same times our colleagues in other disciplines just ask for more innovation, business insight and new capability, whilst we are struggling to keep the lights on with operational services and legacy infrastructures.

In the last 6 months I have been to events where the discussions have revealed the dangers of this lack of focus on information. At one event, everyone confessed that they had lost control of customer data. Most organisations do not have a single source of the truth for customer data that they can trust. In many cases, customer data is littered across many systems, is incomplete, untimely, incoherent, duplicated with inconsistencies or just plain wrong.

At another event it was made clear that Digital Businesses regard customer data and data about their preferences, behaviour, buying patterns etc. as their most valuable Intellectual Property Right. At the same time legislation in multiple jurisdictions is making it essential that organisations control, protect and manage their customer data.

When you look at core capabilities for Digital businesses it is also clear that getting to grips with customer identity management is also essential. In fact, this is just one dimension of engagement. Truly digital businesses manage all their stakeholder interactions, internal and external, with customers, partners, regulators, employees and prospective talent digitally. Then there are the challenges of integration and obtaining insight from Business Intelligence and Big Data.

If you put this altogether, Information has to be back on the menu for IT attention. The model however has to be changed. Just as with Finance, budgets are devolved within a governance framework to other functions, certain information management tasks need to be devolved from IT to the people who gain the most benefit from the information.