INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Information Architecture and
Management are typically seen as separate entities but they need to be brought together in order to ensure that
information structures actually live from a process perspective.
Information Management is often regarded as consisting of
traditional Data Warehousing or Business Intelligence. While thisis not wrong, it is only part of the bigger picture. The
other part of the picture relates to Document and Content Management. In essence, the traditional view of Information Management deals
with numbers whereas the Document and Content view deals with words, images and other rich media types. These categories are also
often referred to a Structured and Unstructured data respectively.
A large percentage of the Governance, Risk and Compliance challenges
relate to the management of documents and content. IACT believesthat these challenges are best addressed through a combination of
Information Architecture and Business Process Management practices. The BPM component is essential in order to ensure that the
Information component actually lives and that processes for managingthe life cycle of documents are established in an operational
sense. Other GRC requirements such as the monitoring of decision making processes can also be addressed through the same BPM solutions.
In view of the above, IACT's approach to Content orientated
projects is Enterprise Architecture based as it incorporates Information Architecture and Management components This
approach aims to ensure that the following elements are covered inthe design and execution of new projects:
- Business Architecture - this ensures that appropriate People and Process aspects are defined with sufficient detail to support requirements for a sustainable system;
- Information Architecture - this ensures that appropriate information models are built and that they link to relevant processes for lifecycle management;
- Technical Architecture - this ensures that software and
infrastructure designs are carried out in such a manner that they will satisfy the business requirements.
In summary, our reason for using an Enterprise Architecture approach for projects of this nature is to ensure that the relevant Process, People and Technology requirements are incorporated into the design. Architecture acts as the glue that brings these areas together and ensures greater business value.