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Main Points
- The problem is that modern organizational design depends on the possibilities created by advances in information technology, while the effective use of information technology depends, itself, on organizational design.
- Information architecture is the art of applying information technology to organzational design. It does this by "bridging" or communicating across the different levels of analysis and design processes necessary to information systems design.
- The results of an information architecture should be:
- specific maps of information resource usage, connectivity, and flow; and
- organizational designs that take maximum advantage of information resources and technology.
Organization, Information, and Technology Many organizations (and most of our customers) are struggling with the forces of the Information Age. In practice, they are bringing information technology into their work. Their efforts come in part from a hope that these technologies can assist them in producing higher quality at a lower price; in part it is because information technology is more and more a fabric of our lives. The challenge for all of us is to adapt our lives (and work) to the technology, and adapt the technology to our lives. Therefore, we are faced with solving organizational problems with information technology, and are faced, in parallel, with solving information technology problems.
This kind of problem solving is evolving into a practice called "information resource management," and a process called information architecture. This latter is the art of applying information resource management to organizational design.
The following is an attempt to sketch the basis of this art, show how it can be used, and describe three simple "tools" that are useful in its practice. The concept of "information architecture" is a work-in-progress; that is, it reflects an approach to organizational design and development that many believe to be useful, but, to this point, no one has written the definitive text.
The notion of an information architecture is important for managers, leaders, and most workers to understand because information technolgy enables the use of information resources in producing results. To make effective use of information technology, we need to better understand how the results we desire are dependent on information resources. The information architecture is a means of describing and designing those dependencies.
The metaphor "architecture" is useful because it describes a design process whose purpose is to facilitate the translation of ideas into reality, always respecting the "whole" of the design. An artist that works alone has the ability both to see new forms, and to represent those forms in real objects. However, some forms are so complex (e.g., communities, buildings, machinery, organizations, and information systems) that no individual, working alone, can turn an imagined form into a real one. An architecture provides the language and tools that assist the communication process among all the people that must be involved in turning a complex idea into reality.
It is also important for the architecture to include the "whole" of the design.2 With complex designs, many individuals and groups that ,have a multitude of specialities, interests, and languages must communicate in order to manage the required tasks. It is the job of the architect (and the architecture) to provide a structure that both facilitates the application of specialized tools to parts of the design and constructution process, as well as ensures that each component is faithful to the ultimate form as a whole in its "natural" environment.
An "information architecture" must provide a structure that allows the decomposition of information resource problems into "natural" components, and ensure that those components work together in concert. It is, in effect, the art of using information resources to produce organizational results. This is to say it is a process that produces a design that links the practice of information resource management and the instruments of information technology to organizational design.
In this sense the information architecture underlies the design for the application of information technology, and must be supported by the architecture of the organization.
Thus:
FIGURE 1
DESIGN DEPENDENCIES
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Organizational Design |
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Information Design |
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Information Technology Design |
We also deal with these design issues at various levels of abstraction. We move from the realm of concepts or ideas, through the logical interconnection and requirements of those ideas, to the physical manifestation of what we are building. Designed "objects" have a logical structure that is based on a set of ideas.
Thus:
FIGURE 2
DESIGN LEVELS OF ANALYSIS
For example, if we were going to look at organizational design by itself, some of the components would be
- results,
- mission statements,
- functions,
- organizational charts, as well as
- real people and machnery doing real work.
In fact, each of the "levels of analysis" is not discrete; rather, one tends to "flow" into in another. In the following diagram (Figure 3), some of the elements of an organizational design are depicted.
FIGURE 3
SOME ELEMENTS OF AN ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN
Statements of organizational principles and results to be achieved are the main conceptual elements.3 Functions and processes are the means by which results are intended to be achieved. People doing real work in real places, producing real products or services is the "physical" expression of the organization. The main architectural "bridges" are things like mission statements, organization charts, and process flow diagrams.
Sample elements of a technology design are represented in the next diagram (Figure 4).
FIGURE 4
SOME ELEMENTS OF A TECHNOLOGY DESIGN
We see information "at work" in the form of reports, databases, computer networks. The logic of the design is found in data dictionaries and standards. The basic concepts or "building blocks" are lists of essential data elements, and contract catalogs of specific equipment. The architectural "bridges" come in the form of systems requirements, data-entity relationships, network designs.
Putting all this together, a simple representation of a comprehensive information architecture could be:
FIGURE 5
FRAMEWORK FOR AN INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
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Organizational Design |
Information Design |
Technology Design |
| Conceptual |
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| Logical |
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| Physical |
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This represents a general framework for analysis of existing systems, or, more important, a frame that can guide the design process. Using this framework, a primary function of an architecture is to provide "bridges" between the various levels of analysis, and between the various structural design components.
In this framework, the design process, in the abstract, works from top to bottom and from left to right. In reality, the process is not so neat. This is because even though each "more fundamental" level supports and provides assumptions to guide further level of design, each of the more concrete and more specific levels enables possibilities in the designs that precede. For example, different organizational structures make different assumptions about how information flows or is used; information usage in an organization creates requirements for information technology systems. At the same time, certain technology designs enable, different information designs, that, in turn, create possible organizational structures. Thus high speed networking enables distributed data management, which, in turn, enables a decentralized, yet closely connected organization.
Generally, the problem in information systems, or "technology," design is to have a collection of workstations, networks, programs, and databases (the lower, right corner of the diagram) that enables the flow of information necessary to make the organization produce results. An information architecture supports the information systems design when it contains the essential elements of organization, information, and technology designs. The "art" of design is knowing when, and to what extent, to deal with each of the design elements.
INFORMATION DESIGN
The foundation of information management by design is a set of principles: the nature, purpose, use, etc., of information in the organization. For example, the State of Minnesota developed the following four "Information Principles" that govern the State's information management policies:
- Information is a resource of the entire organization to be managed and shared across organizational boundaries.
- Information is a resource for people, to extend human capabilities to better serve the public.
- Information resources must be managed according to standards common across the organization.
- The management of information resources is the responsibility of top management.
Information in its "physical" form includes such things as performance measures, employee job descriptions, inventory management systems, telephone directories, laws, reports, memoranda, gossip, and the like. These are "held" in different media, and exist in various physical locations. Frequently information is a natural product of doing work.4 Often it is the result of explicit demands and designs for feedback on specific processes or results.
The key to information design lies in the "logic" or "grammar" of the information structures or relationships desired in the organization. We need to know how each essential function uses information (and where it comes from), and what information it produces (and where it goes to). The following describes 3 analysis and design tools that can be used to "map" information designs, and are graphical representations of an organization's information architecture.
INFORMATION DESIGN TOOLS
INFORMATION RESOURCE MAP
The Information Resource Map begins with each of the functions (activities, processes) from the organizational design (Figure 3). The process is to map both the information used (input to) the function and the information produced (output) by the function. This generates an organized list of the main information "elements" used by the organization.
FIGURE 6
INFORMATION RESOURCE MAP
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Processes
(Activities, Functions) |
Information |
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Used
(Input) |
Produced
(Output) |
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- --------------------
- --------------------
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- --------------------
- --------------------
- --------------------
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- --------------------
- --------------------
- --------------------
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- --------------------
- --------------------
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- --------------------
- --------------------
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INFORMATION CONNECTIVITY MAP
The Information Connectivity Map begins with the information elements of the Information Resource Map (Figure 6). The process is to map the information resources by the processes that produce and use them.
FIGURE 7
INFORMATION CONNECTIVITY MAP
| Information |
Processes (Activities, Functions) |
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From |
To |
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- --------------------
- --------------------
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- -----------------------
- -----------------------
- -----------------------
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- ---------------------
- ---------------------
- ---------------------
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- -----------------------
- -----------------------
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This map is a transformation of the Information Resource Map used to describe or design how information connects the various processes of the organization, and allows the production of a series of Information Flow Maps. (See below, Figure 8.)
INFORMATION FLOW MAP
Information Flow Maps use various classes of information to show how it "flows" among the organizational processes. For example, these would be maps of financial information, performance measures, operational data, etc.
FIGURE 8
INFORMATION FLOW MAP
© 1999 The Public Strategies Group, Inc.
Version: 2.1
Endnotes
1 The following are notes for a client seminar on issues of information resource management and information systems design. It is intended for public managers who are interested in the broader issues of how information technology influences organizational design and management. [Return to text.]
2 "First, the taking in of scattered particulars under one Idea, so that everyone understands what is being talked about .... Second, the separation of the Idea into parts, by dividing it at the joints, as nature directs, not breaking any limb in half as a bad carver might." ---Plato, Phaedrus, 265D
"The ultimate object of design is ... the ensemble comprising the form and its context. ... The rightness of the form depends ... on the degree to which it fits the rest of the ensemble." ---Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964) pp. 15 -17, 194. [Return to text.]
3 For example, at the State of Illinois Department of Children and Family Services the following 5 results are basic organizational concepts:
- Family care of the child is at or above a threshold level of safety and development opportunity
- When the family's care of the child falls short of that threshold, the level of care will be raised to that threshold.
- When this is not possible and children are placed outside the family, the child's physical, emotional, and developmental needs are met.
- When the family will meet the child's needs for safety and development, the child will be returned home.
- When the family will not meet the child's needs for safety and development, the child will live in an appropriate permanent living arrangement.
That same department expouses 3 "simple" principles:
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