Information Revolution
Every fortnight Karl, Judi and Michael get together to discuss topics in information management practice that are relevant for today and the future. We’ll bring in other industry insiders to talk about what they’re doing, and how their practice is changing. Information management in government is in the midst of a long term transition. To be successful now and in the future, we have to be active participants in the day-to-day business of our organisations and in the design of the information resources that our organisations use. If we get this right, the next big gains in productivity and public good will come from us. It’s a revolution in information management – and we want everyone to be part of it. Hosted by Karl Melrose, Judi Vernau (Metataxis NZ) and Michael Upton (Metataxis NZ).
Episodes
A short note to acknowledge that we haven't done an episode this year and to confirm that we are not sure when we will be back.
In our last episode before we take an end of year break, we had the pleasure of talking with taxonomy consultant Helen Lippell, editor of the book Taxonomies and programme chair of the Taxonomy Boot Camp. We talked about the value of semantic work, the cost-effectiveness of keeping a taxonomy fed and watered, and, of course, how well these tools support the use of AI.
Somehow we collectively hallucinated the existence of "Canada A...
What does it take to bring together a library of your organisation's valued information? Alison Jones tells her story with a focus on her current role at Atlassian.
Go back to episode 43 to hear the conversation sparked by Alison's LinkedIn posts, which Karl refers to in this episode.
With your hosts:
- Karl Melrose
- Judi Vernau
- Michael Upton
Welcome back to our guest Adrian Kearns! We thought last episode was fruitful enough that we should go another round. Testable strategy, learning how to influence, and more.
A couple of bonus blog posts from Adrian you should definitely read:
How to influence at work: https://morphological.wordpress.com/2024/11/21/how-to-influence-at-work/
Four traps experienced solution architects fall into and how to mitigate them: https://morph...
As part of an occasional series trying to join some dots between information management, information architecture, and other professions, we invited Adrian Kearns to come in and talk about what he does, the kinds of problems architects try and solve, and some of the ways he tries to go about it.
While Michael battles with a touch of the laggy video, we have some good discussion about throwing technology at something that isn't a te...
A free-ranging* conversation about the value of establishing a library or knowledge base of authoritative information than people want to access and can trust!
We touch on everything from shifting the focus of our practice towards getting people the right info, through Conway's Law and the DMBOK, to the persistent value of knowing what problems we're even trying to solve.
With your hosts:
- Karl Melrose
- Judi Vernau
- Michael Upton ...
If we've got a thousand records to manage, what do we do? How about a million? How about a billion? We talk about the problem that records and information management practices don't seem to change in the face of scale, some of the implications of that, and what we might try.
With your hosts:
- Karl Melrose
- Judi Vernau
- Michael Upton
This episode Michael share three things he wishes he'd known sooner about how information is structured in Microsoft 365, compared to in an EDRMS:
- Microsoft 365 Groups change the way you manage access;
- there is no folder structure, a site just sits there on its own; and
- using content types are key to managing metadata when there's almost no inheritance.
Some links to learn more:
Episode 40! Wow! Thank you to all who have been listening. For this one, we're back on the people stuff, thinking about when folks at work won't stick to the script.
A couple of things that come up:
- Fundamental Attribution Bias https://www.simplypsychology.org/fundamental-attribution.html
- Five Whys https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-use-the-5-whys-technique-for-a-root-cause-analysis
With your hosts:
- Karl Melr...
It's been a minute! Is "information governance" just a rebrand, a way to get people to listen to us? Is it a thing you can get from a piece of software? Surely not. So, what is it?
With your hosts:
- Karl Melrose
- Judi Vernau
- Michael Upton
In the era of paper, records management hinged on a custodial model: get the things of value, describe them in order to take care of them, and help people to access them if they ask. How much is this still our practice in 2024? And what does it mean?
Karl mentions Edgar Schein's definition of organisational culture, here's an open access PDF of Schein's Coming to a New Awareness of Organizational Culture.
With your hosts:
- Karl ...
Judi and Michael talk more about auto-classifying records with Judi describing her experiences and the two of them exploring the value of NOT using where something has been filed as the basis for deciding how long it should be retained for. Michael opens with a wee addendum to last episode - there is a data catalogue, by name, in Microsoft Purview!
With your hosts:
- Judi Vernau
- Michael Upton
Karl Melrose was an apology for...
Michael takes us through how you can group information in Microsoft 365 and then trigger actions on it, looking at Microsoft Purview (f.k.a. the Compliance Center) and SharePoint Premium (f.k.a. Syntex).
With your hosts:
- Karl Melrose
- Judi Vernau
- Michael Upton
If domain models and information asset registers are two ways of modelling your organisation's information, how about ontologies? Judi leads the conversation on what they're all about.
A few notes:
- A snapshot of the Australian Series System as implemented by Archives New Zealand in their system Archway https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/webarchive/20190705140941/http://archway.archives.govt.nz/ArchivalSystem.do
- The article 'Al...
Why does Michael get a sinking feeling when people talk about information asset registers?
What are they for?
What's worse, boiling the ocean or having to retrofit the information you didn't collect?
Could tools help us?
And how many times can we fit the word "catalytic" into one episode?
With your hosts:
- Karl Melrose
- Judi Vernau
- Michael Upton
A few notes:
Treesize gets a mention: it's a piece of software for analysin...
Why limit yourself to functional classification?
How could you think describe the whole domain of what your organisation cares about?
... and why would you do that?
Judi mentions some work on an all-of-government ontology, link here: All-of-government ontology options paper – Archives New Zealand
With your hosts:
- Karl Melrose
- Judi Vernau
- Michael Upton
In this episode we reflect on the goodies we've gleaned since last November, when we first brought valuing information into focus. If you haven't gone back through the previous episodes, we've had great guests with a lot of insights! Today we pull out some highlights and ruminate on integrating lessons into practice.
With your hosts:
- Karl Melrose
- Judi Vernau
- Michael Upton
We were thrilled to have Chicago-based innovation fellow, data management enthusiast, and author Doug Laney on the Information Revolution podcast. He touches on the concepts of his books, Infonomics and Data Juice, and drops all kinds of good oil (refined or otherwise) on how to value and make more from the data, information, knowledge and wisdom your organisation holds (a little in-joke there).
With your hosts:
- Karl Melrose
- Ju...
Today's episode continues a conversation with Liz Wilson about data, documents, and the need for changes of practice to avoid data management cutting records management's lunch. Oh, and the nature of memory!
With your hosts:
- Karl Melrose
- Judi Vernau
- Michael Upton
Our first episode of 2024! We're back after a bit of a break, with the first part of a conversation with Liz Wilson about data, documents, (not) managing the container and some ruminating on how financial institutions work with information.
With your hosts:
- Karl Melrose
- Judi Vernau
- Michael Upton
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