Jenny Levine, Internet Development Specialist and Strategy Guide, American Library Association, USA is this weeks speaker. Jenny is a track keynote speaker on day one of the conference. ...

Day 1: Track 3 New Channels, New Media and New Approaches for Libraries

Q Which are the most important topics, for you personally, due to be discussed at the Online Information Conference 2008 and why?
Jenny: The most important topics for me are the integration of user-generated content, interactivity, and syndication (RSS). I believe these three things are changing user expectations and behaviour with information and media, forcing the rest of us to adapt to these changes.

Q Which tracks would you recommend to delegates attending the conference?
Jenny: As someone who works in an association and is implementing a professional networking service for our members, I'm interested in the "Risk 2.0 or Opportunity 2.0 - hype or hope?" and "User generated content - challenging professionals" tracks. I'm also intrigued by the "Perspectives from Generation Y" and "Information seeking behaviours in the new world" ones, as I think these have an impact on our profession.

Q What are you looking forward to most about participating in Online Information 2008?
Jenny: The piece I'm looking forward to the most is the networking and meeting new people who can provide me with new information and inspire me think of things in different ways. This conference certainly looks like an exciting group of people to do just that.

Q If you had to choose only one - which social network would you recommend to colleagues?
Jenny: don't think I can recommend just one social network, as I don't believe any of them meets all of someone's needs. Instead, I think each person should create their own social network using Friendfeed, although I am discouraged that the site still cannot display Facebook updates.

Q And finally, just out of interest - where are you planning to spend Christmas this year?
Jenny: I'm planning to spend the holidays at home, which will be a nice break after a fall of quite a bit of travel. :)

About Jenny Levine
I work in both the Information Technology and Publishing units at the American Library Association. As part of my job, I blog, create wikis, bug my colleagues to instant message, test podcasting and vodcasting, teach RSS, post pictures on Flickr, explore Second Life, and do similar work with emerging technologies and new tools. I am currently organizing the 2007 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium which will take place in July in Chicago. Last year, I had the pleasure of traveling around the United States and Europe to give more than 30 presentations. The "strategy guide" piece of my title is providing leadership and implementation of new technologies at ALA and in libraries in general.

Learn more about Jenny by checking out her Blog www.theshiftedlibrarian.com
For more information, or to view the conference programme in full, please visit:
www.online-information.co.uk/conference

Posted by dgriffin | October 1, 2008 Arts, Humanities & Social Science, General, Information Management | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

On the 25 June 2008, the Cabinet Office decreed that all government departments would have to encrypt important information held on discs, USB sticks or laptops in its wide ranging review of security practices. This conclusion could be either seen as a sensible approach to managing the vast data government holds or, less charitably, a statement of the obvious.
If it were a statement of the obvious, it wasn't quite obvious enough. Data handing procedures in government: final report doesn't seem to have been read, or understood, or acted upon by the Cabinet Office's colleagues at the Home Office or by suppliers to the Home Office. Less than two months after the tome hit the streets, the UK government is once again mopping up after at another hugely embarrassing loss of data.
Back in February I wrote on this blog. Data loss has become a running story over the last few months. Not so much is the question "Has there been a data breach?" more a case of "Who now?"
And that "Who now?" question keeps being repeated. It is hard to think of a government department which hasn't mislaid data. There is something of a routine to all this: government department confesses to the latest cock up. This is followed by emerging of embarrassing details. Opposition politicians express their outrage, experts express their opinions and inquires are set in train. And then another data loss comes to light (repeat above).
In this latest example, my thought processes go like this: so at one stage the data on 84,000 criminals was encrypted, that's good. And then it was decoded, well OK maybe that was necessary so the data could be used. Then the decoded data was put on a memory stick. At this point I want to shout: "What did you do that for?"
The Times reported this morning that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was furious. Who can blame her? The BBC reported that PA Consulting has searched its premises and looked at CCTV recordings in an attempt to recover the missing memory stick. If the security guys and gals at PA start by questioning everyone who has a pocket, wallet, handbag or briefcase that should narrow it down. Unbelievable (again).

Posted by P. Williams | August 22, 2008 Electronic Document & Records Management, General, Information Management | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

Corporates appear to be sold on the idea of Web 2.0. More than three-quarters of executives who responded to a McKinsey survey say they plan to maintain or increase their investments in technology trends that encourage user collaboration, such as peer-to-peer networking, social networks, and web services.
More than half say they are pleased with their past internet investments, though some regret not boosting their own capabilities to exploit technology. So there are still people out there who ask their secretaries to print out their emails. Surely not.
Anyway it will be interesting to see how the results of the McKinsey survey contrast with research due out later in the year by TFPL and the Edinburgh-based Napier University School of Computing.
TFPL's Melanie Goody says that the idea of the research is to look at the risk and opportunities of social networking tool in the business market. At the moment most of what we think we know about the impact of social computing comes from anecdotal evidence, although last year the British Computer Society (BCS) estimated that £130m a day is being lost due to employee engagement with social networking sites.
The TFPL/Napier research (results in the autumn) is designed to look at the use of social tools such as Facebook, blogs and microblogs, plus more formal collaborative platforms such as Sharepoint (in which TFPL has a particular interest).
Out of the research it may be possible to start to formulate policies on acceptable use, workplace bullying and damage to corporate brand. Of particular interest to information professionals are subjects such as corporate confidentiality and the archiving of valuable employee exchanges which has to date received little attention.
Enterprises still have a lot to learn about web 2.0 and its role in the work environment. While there may be opportunities there has been a lot of focus on the downside risks. The McKinsey survey talks about the possibility of these technologies providing a sustained competitive edge. If that is the case then businesses will definitely be interested.

Posted by P. Williams | August 8, 2008 Enterprise Content Management, Information Management, Legal, Tax, Regulatory & Patent | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

Here's a timely reminder for all those high flying company executives who are off on holidays and can't quite tear themselves away from the thrill of work. As you pack the laptop or the BlackBerry ("Honestly darling I probably won't even switch it on and certainly not when the kids want to play") say to yourself: "Nearly 4,000 laptops go lost or missing in Europe's major airports every week." No, not a figure made up by a desperate hack in the midst of a silly season but the headline finding from Ponemon Institute for Dell. This statistic summons up images of piles of laptops strewn around arrivals and departures halls like so much modern art. How do we manage to lose so many?
And while the amount of kit that is getting mislaid is mind boggling, equally astonishing is that fact that the research claims that nearly half of the professionals surveyed take no steps to protect the data in the event of a loss or theft. Maybe that would be OK if the only information on there was the holiday packing list but nearly half reckon they keep confidential information on their laptops. It is hard to assume those two halves don't overlap so a fair amount of important info is sculling around the world's airports unprotected. The other astonishing statistic unearthed by this research is that 57% of the 3,300 laptops in the eight largest airports that end up in lost and found departments are never reclaimed. Is that because people want an excuse for a nice upgrade or maybe we're all too cynical to believe that something that is once lost can ever be found?
Whatever the lesson from all this is plain. While business travellers clearly need to carry the kit, if you are off on holiday think twice before you haul that laptop into the hand luggage. They'd be much safer locked away in the office and you would definitely have a better holiday. Enjoy.

Posted by P. Williams | August 1, 2008 Electronic Document & Records Management, General, Information Management | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

The 21st century is the era of the information professional. No, not another claim from the editor of IWR after a good lunch (I should be so lucky), but a summary of the prediction of the IBM Data Governance Council.
The council is a US-based industry group whose 50 members include big names from the corporate world including American Express, Deutsche Bank, Citi and Mastercard. Formed three years ago to help the business world take a more disciplined approach to how big companies handle data, it has produced an interesting assessment of life following the credit crunch.
The council concluded that failures in data governance were at the heart of the sub-prime crisis and that a regulatory backlash will see data governance becoming a regulatory requirement in some countries, initially in the banking and financial services industries. There is nothing like imposing a regulatory requirement for hoiking an issue up the corporate agenda. But the council goes even further. It is discussing the idea that the value of data should be recognised in the financial statements and should be treated as an asset on the balance sheet. The accountancy profession has always been a bit wary of intangible assets, with fierce arguments over if and how intellectual property assets such as goodwill, brands, and human capital should be recognised. The credit crunch and the argument over the value of financial instruments has underlined how difficult it is to inform investors about the changing asset values.
In the scenario painted by the council, the quality of data will become a technical reporting metric and key IT performance indicator. New accounting and reporting practices will emerge for measuring and assessing the value of data to help organisations demonstrate how data quality fuels business performance. Crucially the council sees the role of the chief information officer changing - with reporting on data quality and data risk to the board becoming a key task. The CIO will have the mandate to govern the use of information and report on the quality of the information provided to shareholders.
For information professionals it is an exciting idea, putting them at the heart of the knowledge economy and at the centre of corporate life. It is a vision which the profession should try to turn into reality.

Posted by P. Williams | July 11, 2008 Company & Financial Information, Information Management, Professional Development | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

Promises like pie crusts are made to be broken. Or maybe we need to update that old saying to promises like data protection guidelines are made to be broken. I had made a half promise to myself that the best policy on the seemingly endless flow of news on data and information that had...whoops... disappeared was to ignore it. Maybe like unruly children various government departments, ministers and civil servants would just stop making embarrassing data breaches if we all looked the other way and pretended they weren't doing it.
But the events, hard on the heels of each other, of the Communities Secretary Hazel Blears having her laptop stolen so soon after south west trains were apparently overflowing with top secret documents was just infuriating and reignited the great data debate. What is puzzling is why so many people seem so slow to learn the lessons from the misfortunes of others about the necessity to take the most basic precautions to protect data.
I've got this image of the street value of juicy information falling faster than a stone as members of the criminal classes are overwhelmed by bits of kit and secret documents that they are trying to offload in dodgy pubs in Salford or near Waterloo station.
The situation has become so serious that after the Blears' laptop was taken (reinforced glass was smashed in the raid you'll be pleased to know, barely careless at all then) that, according to newspaper reports, Prime Minister Gordon Brown was forced to intervene urging ministers to enforce "procedures on the treatment of information".
Sounds like a good idea to me. And it takes a prime minister to tell everyone to follow the rules which they have drawn up.
The question which is intriguing me is what and how? As the habit of throwing sensitive data away is clearly a hard one to break, I want to know which government department will be the next culprit and how. I may call up Williams Hill and see if they are prepared to put up some odds. Is this a joking matter? No. Should we be taking this seriously? Of course we should and so should those who are losing the data. Come on boys and girls, it's time to stop. Promise now.

Posted by P. Williams | June 20, 2008 Electronic Document & Records Management, Information Management | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

Caught in the gridlock in West London, part of the gloom that descended as I crawled along in the traffic mayhem caused by a burst water pipe, was the knowledge of the mounting unanswered emails that really needed dealing with before the weekend. Of course journalists are paranoid about information: we want as much of it as possible and when we’re not actually hacking out the words we spend a great deal of time reading whatever we can (online and offline) in a futile bid to ensure we don’t miss that vital story that will… well will make us what?

But whatever the reason, our ceaseless searching and reading has been made worse not better by the digital era. Alongside information professionals, I reckon journalists suffered information overload before any other segment of the working population. Of course, dedicated technologists out there would tell me that the thing to do about email traffic jams is to find a technological based solution. While I’m not that bothered about the government reading my emails (I object in principle of course but I can’t claim to be hiding anything anyone would really want to find out)  I don’t want to sub-contract the reading of emails to a machine. Hence my doubts over SNARF. SNARF, the Social Network and Relationship Finder, developed initially by Microsoft Research to deal with the post-vacation email deluge. “SNARF grew out of an exploration of how people triage their e-mail and whether social information would help,” says A.J. Brush, a researcher within Microsoft Research’s Community Technologies Group who was one of a small team who devised the project several summers ago. “We often say, ‘Your dog knows the difference between strangers and friends who visit your house; why shouldn’t your e-mail client?’ ” A.J. Brush clearly hasn’t met my dog but I get the point.The process on which SNARF is based is called social sorting. According to Microsoft, the concept has been around for a while and now it is meant to be simple. The tool, which has been deployed within Microsoft for a field study, simply counts e-mails, sorts them by sender, and draws conclusions about their relative importance from the intensity of the correspondence relationship.Microsoft says that when launched for the first time, SNARF indexes your e-mail. When indexing is complete, a window with three panes is displayed. The top pane includes a list of people who have sent recent, unread e-mail addressed or cc’d to you. The middle pane includes people who have sent recent, unread e-mail addressed to anyone. And the bottom pane includes all people mentioned in any e-mail you have received in the past week.A configuration panel enables you to change the types of messages displayed and to sort them in different ways. Once you have the tool configured as you prefer, you can double-click on a contact’s name within one of the panes, then view a list of all recent e-mail from that person. It works with mailing lists, too, and you can organise mail by threads and read the entire thread in chronological order, top to bottom.Sounds right up my street. In fact in the traffic snarl up I promised myself I would try it for myself. Now sat in front of the screen I’m just not so sure. Perhaps I’ll clear these near-on 500 unread messages while I think about it.

Posted by P. Williams | June 6, 2008 Information Management | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

Toby Moores is a visiting professor at the Institute of Creative Technology and founder of videogame company Sleepydog. His company is best known for creating Buzz!, the hugely popular quiz for the Sony Playstation. He finds opportunities in the gaps between silos and traditional structures which are not good at communication and collaboration.

Of course, the barriers will fall over time and he will end up looking in new places for his opportunities but, as you might expect from a creative person, he has absolutely no shortage of ideas.

Loosely connected with this was the transcript of an interview with Tim Berners-Lee, done by Talis' Paul Miller. It's scheduled to go online next Wednesday (27th) and you might find it interesting. It gives a glimpse of how information can be liberated from its silos and encouraged to flow to where it's needed and to be aggregated and annotated in new ways.

And also connected, IBM is a company which has unleashed a swathe of communication and collaboration tools on its employees over the past ten years which, once again, can liberate information from its silos to the benefit of those who are able to re-use it.

As you know, everything digital can be easily copied and moved. Hoarding is more likely to diminish a person's reputation or, worse, make them completely invisible. Creativity is easier than ever before. Sure, the average person can't create a Harry Potter film, but they can create interesting YouTube movies, machinima animations or screencasts. And, of course, information mashups get easier by the day.

Abundance is the key here. And the more abundant information (in whatever form) becomes, the less value it has in its own right. What adds value is doing something new with it. The Berners-Lee semantic web stuff can ensure that information carries its provenance around with it. The stuff that Sleepydog produces indirectly promotes the films and singers whose clips are used. Oh and the IBMers who give are more likely to do themselves good than those who simply consume.

Potentially, everyone who originates useful, interesting or entertaining raw material can gain in some way from sharing rather than hoarding. But the real winners are those who are able to innovate through original blending of existing material.

And that's where you and I come in. Everyone of us is different. We each have our own take on the world and most of us are multidisciplinary to some degree. We speak one language at home and another at work, one when we're with the engineers another when we're talking to the chef. It's a natural human thing. If you find yourself able to talk the language of each of two different groups then you are surrounded by opportunity.

It strikes me that operating in the gap between IT and management is a fine starting point.

Posted by David Tebbutt | February 22, 2008 Information Management | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

IBM/Lotus held its annual shindig in Orlando this week. Called Lotusphere, it was packed with devotees plus a quite a few analysts and journalists. Yours truly included.

Perhaps Orlando was deliberately chosen, because the event was by far the most interesting thing going on there. And, miracle of miracles, IBM pulled some interesting rabbits out of the corporate hat.

Let's start with mashups, or composite applications, which sounds a heck of a lot more enterprisey. The on-stage demo's showed how mashups could be created with a few drags and drops - exactly what Teqlo was trying to do before it realised it didn't have a decent business model.

Corporate information could be surfaced, through SOA or (I believe) through Websphere, external information could be picked up through widgets and onscreen information could be highlighted and used as input to the mashup. The end result was a little window which would deliver the information you wanted, presented in the form you most needed it. Graphs, charts, maps, whatever. Mashups can be catalogued and shared, making for ready re-use and potential time savings.

The only awkwardness is in how much you let users do themselves before having to push the mashups through to IT for approval. Something that hoovers masses of data every few seconds, or some logic that dives into a dead loop wouldn't go down too well.

What else? Well, IBM hasn't been best known for delivering software to small and medium enterprises. It's now going to push hard by packaging up a whole bunch of collaboration stuff and offer it as a service. Code-named Bluehouse, it will be a few months before it sees the light of day. Except you might want to investigate the beta version. It's based on aimed at users of Lotus Foundations, a software set that will also be provided as an appliance or straightforward installable software for organisations with between 5 and 500 connected users.

A unified interface might sound boring, but the idea of working on multiple applications through a consistent interface makes software a lot more attractive to users. If they switch applications without really realising it then the clunkiness and time wasting of conventional interfaces become all too obvious. It's been tried before but the difference this time is that the user can incorporate the elements they want rather than be stuck with someone else's idea of what a user needs.

Lotus went high wide and handsome on social networking tools. Its own Connections was made all the more interesting by the fact that it can integrate with external services. The integration potential of Socialtext and Atlassian wikis made the point, especially given that IBM has its own wiki engine. And this is another thing that came out of the conference: that IBM encourages openness and integration. While it has its own world, this does have very porous edges which could lead to an interesting software ecosphere which doesn't necessarily put IBM at the centre.

In some ways it doesn't matter if IBM takes over the world with its software innovations because, if it does nothing else, it helps to raise the bar. The focus of Lotusphere was a hundred percent on making the users' lives better and more productive. And, it has to be said, more enjoyable and fulfilling.

I'll drink to that. Off on holiday now. See you in two weeks.

Posted by David Tebbutt | January 25, 2008 Information Management | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

Civil servants are reeling in the wake of the horrific news that CDs containing the records of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) database have been lost, and the futher news of DVLA data being lost. The full cost to tax paying members of the public may not be fully realised for years to come.

This debacle is not only an example of incredibly poor information management, but also a sign of a wider problem in the UK, that you get what you pay for. Or in this case you don't get what you pay for. 

Information management is, or rather was, at the heart of British life. Travel to former colonies like India or Australia and they'll gladly inform you of the regimented behaviour towards information that led to government structures that have served the sub-continent and prison colony well to date. Yet, those standards have dropped.

An IWR reporter remarked as we debated the issue, how come information of this value was so easy to simply download and burn to a CD?  Technology preventing such blunders is not new and is a basic function of many information management systems.

Revelations of the missing information came a day after a report on the BBC's Today programme that the Driving Standards Agency and vehicle licensing body the DVLA employees take on average three weeks sick leave a year. Missing information and low staff moral are examples of a civil service that is poorly funded and poorly managed.

It is too easy to wag the finger of blame at civil servants, when in truth a much wider debate needs to take place.  As tax payers and child benefit recipients we are angry and worried, as information professionals we are dumbfounded that such lapses could have occurred.  What of our role as citizens?  Since the 1980s we've wanted a John Lewis service, but only paid Tesco value brand prices.  If you want John Lewis quality, you pay John Lewis prices.  On the high street this modus operandi fits well with the public, as they choose when they want quality and when they want to increase their spending. So why is it that we expect our state services to manage high level information on a low level budget?

This needs to be a debate about our society and its values, literally, as well as an improvement in information management.

Posted by mchillingworth | December 18, 2007 Company & Financial Information, Electronic Document & Records Management, Enterprise Content Management, Enterprise Search, General, Information Management, Legal, Tax, Regulatory & Patent | Permalink  | Comments (0)