Appendix: Case studies
Case study 1: change management through the development of a new thesaurus
Client: International publishing house in growth
Background
Besides the publishing of scientific journals and books, the company has also incorporated several smaller publishers with a range of various products. Moving into the ‘publishing house’, all these small companies have brought with them their own information systems (card catalogues, address register, lists, local databases, etc.). They have accommodated themselves in the publishing house and continued to use their own systems to handle the information relevant for their products. After some time, effective communication in this growing organisation was more and more difficult, and the need for a common, corporate information system became obvious.
Challenge
After several meetings with the manager(s), the information consultant agreed to lead the project, in the development of a kind of ‘corporate thesaurus’ for the organisation. This thesaurus was designed to serve as a means of coordination for all communication within the publishing house. All previous independent units would adopt this system to organise their information and to make it (some part of it) accessible for the whole organisation.
The intranet was not yet available, but some basic electronic information systems and databases existed here and there in the organisation. The ‘paper tradition’, naturally, had a strong hold on the organisation, as well as the use of various personalised information sources and storages.
Among the personnel there was neither support nor enthusiasm for the development of a new corporate information system. They pointed out all the difficulties with it and they didn’t feel that it was necessary. The overall management goals and objectives of the system sounded farfetched to most of them. From the management side, however, there was a strong desire to start up the project. The first step was the establishment of an ‘in-house’ thesaurus for the organisation of information.
The information consultant was supposed to develop the thesaurus in cooperation with the users and to ensure that it fitted, as near as possible, with their way of thinking and speaking about their products. It was the role of the information consultant to take the initiative and gain cooperation between the representatives of the small units. It was difficult to request that the staff members do their tasks within the confines of a corporate information system – with a focus on the development of the thesaurus. Occasionally tension was felt by the consultant when contacting the staff on a daily basis.
Some of the unit leaders were cooperative, but they were often very busy and didn’t have the time to work on this task, while others acted reluctantly. Time pressure became one of the main problems in the project and the consultant had to report all the problems to the manager. A new, modified time schedule for the development of the thesaurus was set up.
Approach
A time study, as a (new) strategic approach, was carried out for various administrative work tasks in the organisation. The analyses clearly showed how much it cost for the organisation not to have an adequate corporate information system, but to follow all the existing fragmented pathways in accessing and managing information.
One of the striking examples was a graph showing how the switchboard was passing queries from person to person, higher and higher up in the hierarchy, because employees in lower-level positions did not have access to the relevant information. The path most often ended up at the leader of the unit, because they were the only person who knew the answer. The relevant information is stored in the head of one person or in a personal/local information system – organised on the basis of their previous working conditions and situation.
Using the time of expensive labour for answering ‘close’ questions, such as the publication date, name of the illustrator or translator, prices and royalties, etc., is not only bad economy but also a waste of time, causing stress and extra workload on the qualified professional staff.
Result
These kinds of facts and examples helped to convince people about the necessity of a common, coordinated information system for the whole organisation.
The time studies and other strategy activities in the organisation were going on side by side with the development of an in-house thesaurus. When the underlying motivations and concerns of the project were better understood by the staff, it also became easier for the information consultant to carry out the actual professional task – which was to build a thesaurus that has a good ability to discriminate and has a balance between width and depth in content. Getting the staff members involved and engaged in the process, secure in the knowledge that their share of the information would be properly treated (coded) in the new, corporate information system was a daunting feat.
The professional challenge was that, besides all these aspects, the in-house thesaurus must have an easy and practical form for use throughout the organisation.
Lesson to learn
Besides the challenges in the construction of the thesaurus and in the identification of suitable words and concepts, the most difficult part of the task was the involvement and active participation in the internal processes of the organisation developments. Your tasks often draw you close and get you involved in the organisational problems related to the (management of) changes in the use, distribution, storing and accessing of information.
As a consultant you may have to sometimes act as messenger or catalyst for the development processes in the organisation. You must also see yourself as an agent of change. Managers need you as a neutral, external partner to put their plans into action at different levels of the organisation hierarchy. It needs a solid comfort level between the client and the consultant, based on trust and mutual support. Be aware of the underlying motivations and concepts of your task. Gain a sense of what the incentive is and what would make the client look good to superiors.
To be a vehicle for internal development and change also requires a kind of social competence, which is normally far beyond the experiences of an information consultant. Thus, you have to have the skills for selling an idea with tact and delicacy, and get the staff interested in your task. You have to point out and emphasise the benefit of participation and what benefits them.
Therefore, you must be a realist when saying ‘yes’ to this type of complex task, which equates to involvement in the change of work processes and organisational developments.
Understand precisely the nature of the project and the drivers for it.
Case study 2: information professional projects on current awareness bases
Client: A consulting company of customer communication
Background
The client is a market-leading consulting company in customer communication. Several prestigious companies can be found among their clients from banking, telecom, hotel, restaurant and catering sector, insurance and trading companies. In addition to the custom-tailored consultancy, courses are held, and books and course materials are published by them. Although the client employs people whose duties partly include gathering information, their capacity is limited in this case. An external information consultant may enhance its working capacity during high working times.
Challenge
Offering information consultancy to a client for its professional development requires up-to-date knowledge in certain fields offering a good challenge for the information expert. The client’s knowledge has to be partly acquired by the information professional; and trust and regular feedback has to be the basis of cooperation between both parties.
Approach
As a certified public relations professional, the information professional attended a conference organised by the national association of public relations, where an excellent presentation was held on complaint-handling. Following the presentation, the information professional asked some questions of the speaker and they exchanged business cards, thus establishing a business relationship. In the following months the information professional e-mailed some clippings to the public relations professional in his area of expertise. He found the clippings professionally adequate for his job and after detailed agreements he ordered a continuous subject-flow for his consulting company.
Next step: the agreement
The first step of the cooperation agreement was collecting the most important national and international literature of complaint-handling. Based on that research the key professionals – also the possible partners or competitors of the client – could be identified.
To create a firm foundation of further current awareness, the client – as the part of the briefing – offered the information professional his course about customer communication and complaint-handling for free. In this way, the information supplier got to know the business around the client, his way of thinking and studied a lot of examples and common cases in the client’s practice.
Results
The cooperation agreement lasts for several years. It means permanent projects such as current awareness in the field of customer communication and CRM (customer relationship management) (among the sources are: local and international newspapers, news websites, newsletters, rumours, blogs, forums, etc.), actual national cases and decisions relating to the subject.
The client and the information professional have regular yearly personal meetings, with e-mails and telephone conversations in between. Besides the current awareness, the client asks for additional projects on occasion, such as:
attending professional conferences, which the client is not able to participate in due to other business engagements, taking notes in the local language;
purchasing foreign books on CRM, customer relationship and complaint-handling;
advisory work on developing a database – the permanent current awareness results produce a huge amount of electronic clippings, of which effective retrieval had to be planned and organised. Besides mapping the fresh knowledge of the field and trend-watching, the database is used for gathering information about the preliminary clients of the client, which allows the opportunity to widen his competitiveness during negotiation processes;
collecting data and other resources for the client’s PowerPoint presentation – the results of this research are data tables, pictures, and market survey data all put into a presentation;
collecting the compulsory literature lists of universities and colleges in certain subjects, identifying the most common thesis – since the client plans to play a role as a teacher of higher education, he needs to know the current level of relevant training. By mapping out these items of literature it also makes it possible to identify market gaps for a new course book or material needed by the client.
The information professional also offers public relations consultancy, which completes his offered service portfolio in this case:
Help to write and publish articles in professional and daily papers and magazines which are read by the client’s different market segments.
The client offers special professional knowledge and good stories, precedents which are welcomed by the economic columns of newspapers, business magazines and professional periodicals. The purpose of this work is branding and enhancing the reputation of the client. The articles were written by the information (and public relations) professional or by the journalists of certain papers. The texts were made available on the client’s website.
Organise presentations at different professional conferences (although this project was not as successful as was planned).
Lessons learned
It is useful that the information professional offers expert knowledge other than informational as a part of the service portfolio (in this case study: public relations). This may create synergies in their service and helps to differentiate their company among other information providers.
It is helpful to be a member of a professional organisation (not only an information professionals’ one), where the professionals’ ways of thinking are familiar; this offers possibilities for finding and cooperating with prospective clients. The speakers on their conferences are specialists of certain areas of business. Most of them already learned that gathering, selecting, justifying and organising information takes time and money, and it is worth their while to hire a professional for this job.
Offer a qualified current awareness, trend-watching, etc. service which covers national and international sources, requires a proper initial briefing (in this case: brief formal training) and regular feedback discussions between the provider and customer.
A proactive attitude is required. The clients rarely have ideas of the deliverables of an information professional. They have probably never heard about an information broker or information advisor. They often think that information professionals deal mostly in computers or software. Free, unobtrusive opt-in postings, containing important information, may generate the potential client’s trust in ordering information services.
In some cases, the client’s knowledge may also be useful for the information professional’s own business. In this case (serving a consulting company of customer communication): to learn customer relations practices from this client in a certain level may enhance the quality of the relationship between the information professional and their clients in general. (Of course this aspect does not exist in the case of serving, e.g. a leather industry specialist.)
Another benefit of this experience is the pleasure of discovering new professional areas and widening one’s reference frame and horizons.
Case study 3: client acquisition with more effective order registering
Client: Market leader multinational telecom company
Background
The information entrepreneur company was founded five years ago by outsourcing the company library. In addition to its parent company, it serves other exterior ventures. The biggest client uses 119 different kinds of information researches, current awareness newsletters, all prepared with daily, weekly or monthly periodicity. These regular information packages are (referred to as) general permanent information researches or newsletters. According to the contract signed by both parties, any of the client’s employees may subscribe to these for free. They can subscribe or unsubscribe at any time, but the employees are reminded of their existence every January. Since the supplier is interested in the maintenance of the contract, and in the quite wide coverage of the client’s employees, a cost-effective documentation of the interest and feedback is necessary.
Challenge
In earlier years, an Excel worksheet was distributed among the managers of the clients, which was filled out with the requirements of their colleagues. These methods required a lot of administrative work, which included gathering data. The new subscriptions and cancellations had to be filed during the year while revising the table regularly. The benefit of this method was that the Excel tables offered different methods of analysing possibilities, which eased the choosing and planning method of the proper marketing strategy.
Approach
The 2009 survey was not carried out in the conventional way, but online. The required database and the web-based background were already partly available on the client’s intranet, on the knowledge base side (Infobase). It was tailored to the specifications of the older method of subscriptions registration and sending out newsletters via the Infobase. That is why an easy-to-use subscription system was needed and was designed in two weeks, within a pretty short timeframe.
The survey was connected to the login method of the intranet, the easy-to-use and safe monitoring system, and to the Excel type control outputs. This was very useful for the quick identification and correction of failures. It was also necessary for designing quick and automatic solutions, e.g. uploading institutional codes. The current login system of the intranet does not require such institutional codes, since according to the experience these abbreviations are not well known (and are not uniformly used). The provider asked for these codes from the client’s HR system.
The novelty of the workflow was that a letter was sent out for registering subscription needs. The letter reached all inland and overseas colleagues of clients, so the opportunity of refreshing the subscription was offered for everyone. For the overseas affiliate this opportunity became available with a narrowed form: by sending attached files. The subscription can be registered on a checkbox, a popup window informs the user about the successful process, and therefore saving is not required. (In the checkbox the list of newsletters also contains a short explanation about their content. Also, previous issues can be easily checked in the archives.) For the colleagues who did not want to alter their subscription, they only needed to click on ‘I do not want to alter my subscription’ checkbox.
The subscriber – depending on the frequency of the newsletter – receives a letter in their mailbox in which intranet links can be found leading them to the information sheet of certain research material. On this sheet the user can be informed about the production method of the newsletter, and can get access to the current and earlier issues. The provider draws your attention to the bottom of the page where you may evaluate the package that has been sent.
Results
As a result of the above action, the number of subscriptions was increased by 83 per cent and the number of subscribers increased by 36 per cent. Eighty-six people did not renew their subscriptions (i.e. did not fill out the checkbox, nor confirm their earlier subscription and, according to the logfile, they did not open any of them).
After the subscription request the provider summarised the change of institutional needs. This helped to decide where to promote the service and which division is suitable to justify the quality of the performance and service. A positive point was that all the key divisions are active users of the service. Personal presentations are planned to be held for the lower represented divisions, where the research will be demonstrated in detail, their use will be described and help will be offered in the subscription process.
Individual requests were identified and taken into account with a view of using a lower-demand resource solution. There are 37 subscribers – e.g. among the employees of a foreign affiliate – who cannot reach the research via the intranet. Attached files are sent to them (requests for 35 newsletters by 74 users) by the provider. There was also a director who uses a special computer and operation system who chose the attachment method.
Since the beginning of the users’ survey, four new regular researches were required, and the need for case research increased by 20 per cent.
There was a huge amount of registration following the first letter – the number of subscriptions increased by 33 per cent in just a few days. Notices about registration problems only arrived from the affiliates, which were communicated and solved immediately by webdevelopment colleagues. Some positive feedback also arrived, e.g. ‘my work became much easier’.
After two weeks a reminder letter was sent to the same target group. Approximately 10–15 feedback letters arrived with the report of failed registration. In every case, the reason was individual error; all of them were directly helped by the provider.
The third letter was sent to those who did not react until that time. It resulted in a lot of thanks, e.g. ‘I would have to pass a huge amount of useful information; I found the newsletters very interesting and useful.’
The amount of feedback increased remarkably with the number of subscribers. This feedback did not really alter the end results, but – since anyone could use this option – some people asked for newsletters that they could not understand properly. Due to their misunderstanding, some negative feedback was given. As they were written anonymously, the supplier could not react to these personally, but they tried to write more proper content descriptions on the datasheets.
Service reputation and acknowledgement increased. Only about 10 per cent of the former users had to be cancelled; the others responded somewhat to the calls, which means that they find the service important.
Lessons learned
Brand reputation increased. The comprehensive demand analysis made the information research service more well known. It also became known by colleagues who did not read it before.
The image of the earlier service with attached mailings was smoothly connected to the new knowledge base newsletters and the fact that these are serviced by the contracted supplier.
It is useful to send more letters to those who do not respond the first time; this produced more subscriptions and positive feedback.
The simplification of the process, eliminating of doorsteps, increases the number of subscribers.
The cost of supplying needs can be diminished by innovations.
Technical assistance or more proper descriptions are needed for some of the client’s colleagues who do not use the service due to a lack of understanding or insufficient technical capability.
Case study 4: managing information and customer care centre
Client: Publishing company of professional magazines
Background
The client publishes three professional monthly magazines, one of which – about road freight – is a market leader. The other two are about coach transport and the construction industry. The readers are mostly employees of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or independent entrepreneurs. The business model of the publisher is that, in addition to the printed magazines, the subscribers have the option to call the publisher’s professional information centre to ask for legal advice (including legal defence), as well as to use the exclusive content and offers rights of the publisher’s web portal (advertisements, bidding, etc.) The internal workflow is based on synergies: the issues that arise at the information and customer care centre or by the attorney are processed by journalists and return in the magazines or in thematic booklets (e.g. as articles or in the form of questions and answers). As a result the magazines generally cover issues that the readers are interested in, such as professional questions on freight, bus transport and construction, legal and practical business, management issues of SMEs in taxation, labour and customs. In addition, the centre also fulfils the tasks of a common customer centre.
Challenge
The representatives of the client and the customers met in a library at a presentation on information brokerage several years ago. The business relationship began with a request for an information package produced monthly. The next proposal came a few months later, which queried whether the provider should take over the information and customer centre. Since this field was quite unknown for the provider (e.g. practical customer relations, complaint-handling), the decision of undertaking took some time. (The provider lost a relatively large and continual charge in the construction industry at that time. It is worthy of note that the construction industry has been in crisis since then, so the change happened just in time.) Since then, the client had commissioned the provider to prepare smaller projects for him.
Approach
The provider employs a colleague for fulfilling the tasks of the information and customer centre. Due to the hundreds of kilometres between the client and the provider, training was not as successful as was planned, but the problems raised could be eliminated with self-instruction and practice.
The fee for the service contains a fixed and a variable part (dependent on the number of calls). This offers the provider a moderate but persistent and reliable monthly income. Using a 10-rated scale, the client regularly studies the quality of the service with control calls. These reported results are between 9.2 and 10.0. The work cycle of ‘pure’ call centre workers is usually about two years. However, in this case the more creative information-seeking part of the work may make this period longer.
Results
The other important opportunity is business development. Since the customer service work is front-end, most of the user feedback arrives at the provider, which can be used for business development and for raising workflow efficiency. Based on this idea, after half a year of cooperation, the provider suggested an information consultancy for business development, which was accepted by the client. Some subjects of the information consultancy include:
regular monitoring of the web content, aiming to develop its usability and data content;
optimisation of the integrity of the client’s database and clearing the client’s data;
news service and co-branding with publishing organisations having business in similar fields;
broadening content service and sale by restructuring the existing data resources (e.g. publishing thematic booklets based on the summary of frequently asked and answered issues, cases of legislative issues, freighting forms used abroad);
streamlining internal communication with the aim of making information flow more effectively;
development of quality management of content production;
broadening the customer’s data with new information for marketing purposes.
The sources of these suggestions are process monitoring and regular discussions with clients, and secondly with internal colleagues.
Lessons learned
Favourable cooperation may come into existence between two ventures which are interested in information service – such as an information consultancy and a publisher – as both are servicing information with analogous activity they may easily and effectively discuss the work that has to be done.
The information provider may have a persistent and reliable income when taking over and managing an outsourced information and customer centre. (It is worthy of note that fulfilling this task also requires complaint- handling ability, which is not a common informational activity.)
The project contains summing up and processing the results of customer relationships, and initiating business development activities. These – apart from the value of reference – are also useful practice tools for the information provider’s own business. These may create new services and value-added service concepts, which reinforces the original business of the information professional.
It is possible and useful that the contracted partners – in case of mutual satisfaction – broaden their cooperation with ad hoc or persistent tasks.
Case study 5: reorganising information management using process management approach
Client: A government organisation requiring better information management
Background
The organisation was responsible for supervising the country’s financial system. To deal with this task, a specific unit managed the necessary information. It gathered information from financial institutions, stored the data in databases, collected certain other information from other sources, and analysed the situation of financial institutions or groups of institutions by checking solvency, liquidity and capital adequacy among other parameters that could indicate potential problems regarding the present or future stability of institutions and the safety of the system. The type and amount of information collected had been determined over time according to the specific nature of each kind of analysis, but the information processes weren’t always managed as a whole. To improve the quality of analysis, it was found necessary to examine the information management practices.
Challenge
After meeting the management group, the information consultant realised that it was necessary to examine the information process itself as a starting point for reorganising the group and improving the information management process. The first task was to convince the management team that the performance of the information management group was linked to the organisation of the workflow, and to make the managers realise that to improve the quality of the analysis it was necessary to question the quantity and the quality of information available as well as the kind of management process they used.
The consultant focused on the requirements: what kinds of question must the analysts answer? Insight into the requirements would point to specific characteristics of the information needed, and thereby to the process for collecting and manipulating the information.
The analysts would then need to adjust their information behaviour. As the information work had been established without any previous study of the information process, the analysts concentrated on delivering results rather than on the information supply that enabled those results. Procedures were not standardised, causing some risks for the organisation due to overwork and lack of compliance. Opportunities for efficiency were missed when similar types of task were carried out in isolation and when automation was applied without regard for streamlining the work process.
The information consultant demonstrated the losses and risks the organisation was incurring with its ‘patchwork’ process for information collection and management. As a result, the management group decided to remodel the business process to mitigate the risk, to improve the quality of the information process, and to reduce costs if possible.
Approach
After meeting the management group, the information consultant studied the information culture and the working processes to deliver a critical analysis of the challenges. A new information collection and management process was then modelled and adjusted according to the business process model.
The consultant modelled the business and mapped all the processes performed in the monitoring unit to design an information process that could support the managers’ desire for improved performance. It was discovered that each working team could in fact employ a standard series of tasks in order to perform the monitoring function, and the consultant needed to communicate to all teams that:
There were similar tasks even if there were different deliverables.
There were information tasks with the same cycle and sometimes similar deliverables inside almost all the processes.
Procedures should be standardised even if they were performed in different places.
Knowledge about all tasks should be shared.
Change was necessary in order to improve productivity and results.
Results
The information cycle was analysed and a complete overview of the information process was mapped out to show that the strong focus on deliverables had produced gaps and duplication.
Potential scenarios were described for the management group to decide on a new vision for the monitoring group’s activities. The decision was to change the organisation of the group and to organise work according to the information cycle and process. The gaps in the process were filled in and the duplicated tasks were reorganised:
A quality team was created to analyse the types of information received and develop quality patterns.
A compliance team was developed to deal with the lack of standard procedures.
Individuals with similar tasks (receiving, delivering, using) were grouped and an information process was established following the information cycle (collection, storage, distribution, retrieval and use).
The organisational structure was changed according to the new distribution of work.
At the end of the engagement, the monitoring group was organised by process and now offers a portfolio of information products. These products were designed according to client needs but adhered to specific requirements for certain parts of the information process:
Case study 6: a holistic and organised approach to appropriate information consumption and sharing among knowledge workers
Clients: Two entities overseeing practitioners and businesses in regulated professions
Background
The organisations’ mandates are to protect the public through regulating who may practise in the professions through granting licences to render services and investigating irregularities. As the professions in question are impacted by rapid changes in scientific discovery and business technology as well as by public policy, the regulatory bodies’ knowledge workers must keep abreast of new information in many areas. In addition, they must maintain awareness of past decisions made by the organisations and the influencing factors of those decisions.
Challenge
The level of professional pride is high and the pressure to meet the workload often leads to a reliance on individual experience supplemented by verification that ‘peers share my opinion in this matter’. Failure to be fully aware of emerging trends may introduce some risks, and inconsistency may develop as corporate memory is compromised due to (a) the lack of a mechanism for documenting decisions and their reasons, and (b) retirement and departures.
Over time, the knowledge workers had each developed a variety of ways to be up to date in the relevant scientific/ technical, demographic/sociological and political/legislative areas, but executives were concerned whether those personal mechanisms were adequate to protect against errors and misjudgement. Regarding awareness of past decisions, executives noted that the level of interpersonal consultation was extremely high, possibly as a result of the fact that the knowledge workers unconsciously were making up for uncertainty by ‘checking with a colleague’.
All in all, executives felt the need for an organised – and cost-effective – approach to acquiring, applying, sharing and storing information for potential future use.
Approach
The consultants conducted a baseline investigation into current practices, inventorying the external sources consulted and the internal tools used for exchanging information (newspapers, professional journals, Google, discussion lists, intranet documents, and so on) in the various teams. Then, the consultants built a map correlating with each team to a set of topically appropriate external sources, marked where a particular source applied across several teams. The map was then reviewed for the purposes of assessing options for corporate or departmental subscriptions or licences.
Findings
In addition to noting the variety of mechanisms each knowledge worker employed (including for example memberships in associations and reliance on contact with past colleagues), the consultants found that e-mail played a disproportionately pervasive role as ‘did you see this?’ or ‘do you know anything about?’ messages were routinely forwarded to groups of colleagues. As a result, each knowledge worker experienced considerable stress sifting through the inbox for ‘real’ e-mails.
The overall finding was that, through no one’s fault, there was no central ownership of or responsibility for information- related practices.
Recommendations
The consultants believed that a radical approach was called for and recommended the establishment of an information office led by an information professional and staffed with two other individuals having library and IT skills. The information officer would develop policies and oversee processes for the external and internal information flows.
management of appropriate licences and subscriptions;
intranet ‘information store’ featuring licensed content by topic or purpose (‘if you need … click here’);
training of knowledge workers in the appropriate search techniques and setting up current awareness profiles, RSS feeds, etc.;
regular follow-up with knowledge workers to update profiles, determine if licensed content was still relevant, etc.
establishment of a central presence on the intranet for collaboration purposes;
piloting several tools (e.g. wiki, e-rooms) to determine the best fit for project and ongoing teamwork.
The consultants provided the clients with operational services and instruments ranging from recruitment to job descriptions to ‘shopping lists’ for content and information about collaboration tools. In addition, they made a ‘boot camp’ process available to enable the new information office employees to get up to speed quickly and advise them on strategies for outreach and communication with the knowledge worker teams. In addition, the consultants offered to remain available for occasional support to the new employees during the first year.
The foundation for the success of the information office, as with any similar strategy, is always political: unless the organisation’s top leadership clearly signals that the new practices are desirable – and rewards adherence appropriately – knowledge workers may be slow to adopt new ways and may fall back on old habits. The consultants recommended a regular information audit process to monitor the progress and impact of the information office’s services to knowledge workers.
Case study 7: intelligence system at the Corruption Prevention and Strategic Information Secretariat to improve prevention and prosecution of corruption
Client: Office of the Controller General (CGU) of the Federal Government
Challenge
The Office of the Controller General (CGU) of the Federal Government and, more specifically, the Corruption Prevention and Strategic Information Secretariat (SPCI) asked for assistance in developing a system to help with preventive measures in fighting corruption. To meet this challenge, a study was proposed to identify primary competencies necessary to design an intelligence system to strategically manage the relevant information. A two-stage situational analysis was proposed as a methodology and the following steps were taken:
gathering of technical documentation, legislation and administrative guidelines from the CGU’s SPCI;
situational analysis phase 1 – SWOT analysis of the information management processes of the CGU SPCI;
situational analysis phase 2 – structured interviews with the employees and managers at SPCI in CGU in order to study their information use as well as inputs, demand and sources to support requirements definition for an intelligence system approach.
The first phase of the situational analysis within SPCI consisted of the identification of the information management processes in that secretariat. The next methodological steps needed insight into those processes in order to accomplish the final goals of the work, which were as follows: 1) the identification of the primary competencies; and 2) identification of basic requirements needed to design an intelligence system for information strategic management.
SPCI is composed of two entities: Corruption Prevention Board of Directors (DPC) and Strategic Information Board of Directors (DIE). The aim of the present work was tied to the analysis of DIE’s activities comprising two management units: Strategic Information Production Management (GRPROD) and Strategic Research Lab Management (GLAPE).
The establishment of SPCI was motivated by two primary factors: 1) the development of proactive actions to detect and prevent corruption cases; and 2) centralisation and follow-up (tracking) of preventive actions by a unique intelligence unit in CGU. This proposal was justified since, before the creation of SPCI, intelligence and corruption preventive actions were spread throughout various CGU units, complicating information cross-analysis.
The centralisation of these actions generated advantages by creating tools and developing competencies coupled with modern techniques which resulted in better prevention. It allowed the development of a strategic unit dedicated to producing better information in support of preventive actions.
SPCI collects and manages strategic information needed in the work of CGU for the Federal Government. It also allows the follow-up of the patrimonial evolution of public agents of the Federal Executive Power Branch.
These two strategic activities needed to be operationalised with respect to data and information collection, the integration of corruption prevention and prosecution, and the coordination of all intelligence actions.
The prevention of corruption, which is a responsibility of DPC, requires the utmost integrity, as well as the strengthening of institutions falling within the scope of government jurisdiction.
The second action, a responsibility of SIE, pertains to the area of strategic information management, including intelligence information research, production and communication activities to support GCU units when monitoring and identifying signs of corruption in legislation, and contracts and administrative procedures.
Approach
The collection, treatment and analysis of a huge amount of data for effective use and decision-making by public managers of the federal government is obviously a challenge. It is further aggravated by technological complications such as:
the advent of the electronic document;
proliferation and duplication of data in restricted and public databases;
the large amount of unstructured information available online;
Apart from technological challenges, we note that public managers are unfamiliar with the ‘information culture’. The analysis process to support corporate decisions is superficial as a direct consequence.
In this context, the integration of technological aspects and of qualified human resources facilitates the need for a study of essential competencies to support the management of information flows and the necessary support for an intelligence system to assist in the strategic decision-making process.
This study is justified if we consider that correctly structured information with high added value is extremely important for the decision process in corruption prevention and prosecution. The large number of individual actions and players involved increases the complexity. Corruption tends to generate a process of degradation of integrity in public institutions that ultimately harms the country’s image and ability to participate in global growth.
An intelligence system can be conceptualised as a process of managing an adequate information flow for decision- making in corporations by means of collecting, processing, analysing and disseminating information so as to enable preventive actions and risks in the foreseeable future.
Results
The treatment of large amounts of data needed to generate useful information in the decision-making processes is a challenge for information management.
The increasing complexity of markets and governmental regulation in strategic economic sectors leads public and private organisations to accumulate large masses of documents in digital and conventional formats. This reality dictates a systematic search of solutions to transform data into information.
In this context, the traditional process of collecting, processing and disseminating information is considered beyond the domain of information science, belonging instead to the work of specialists in strategic management. The studies related to information search and retrieval, previously the exclusive domain of librarians, is presently contained within the scope of the developers of organisational policies who have specialist expertise.
A strong example of this new interest in information organisation lies in the increasing interest in intelligence systems capable of extracting strategic knowledge from operational data. One of the central elements in such systems is based on the cycle of collection, treatment, analysis and dissemination of information. Thus, we have identified three possibilities to contribute to process management improvement in public administration:
1. The determination of essential competencies needed to design an intelligence system requires systematic studies of the users’ information needs.
2. The results obtained with an intelligence system, as well as determining essential competencies needed to do their own information-related work, are more effective when they are oriented to specific areas, as proposed in this study.
3. The use of data- and text-mining tools to discover new knowledge enhances the traditional processes in the field of information science, constituting an opportunity for modernisation and adaptation of new solutions for the improvement of performance in information and intelligence systems.
DIE’s actions when consolidating its processes in strategic management should be supported by a thorough examination of the situational analysis and, more specifically, the SWOT analysis. Analogously, the study of primary competencies needed to design a competitive intelligence system for strategic information management will also use the situational and SWOT analysis.
Thus, the situational analysis identifies the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities internally and externally for the CGU’s SPCI and with respect to the information needs of the DIE/SPCI team.
The strategic approach is supported by two factors, anchored in SWOT analysis: 1) the relationship between opportunities and threats that DIE/SPCI faces; and 2) the identification of strong and weak points that DIE/SPCI presents and their relationship to the opportunities and threats identified.
Another aspect complementing the SWOT analysis is the choice of one of the strategic approaches, or a combination, in the strategic planning process as proposed by Oliveira (2005):
survival: the adoption of actions that demand the minimum possible effort to make feasible the continued existence of a process, department or organisation;
maintenance: the adoption of actions that sustain the activity and development level of a process, area or organisation;
growth: a strategy that requires the adoption of performance improvement actions for a process, area or organisation;
development: a strategy that will demand implementation of performance improvement actions for processes, areas or organisations.
The following tables provide an overview of the environmental strengths perceived by the Strategic Information Board of Directors, resulting in the choice of the most appropriate strategic approach reflecting the real situation of DIE/SPCI.
Strategic approach
The result of the SWOT analysis of DIE/SPCI – which reflects the dominance of threats – indicates that the strategic approach to guide the actions of the organisation under study is survival. The survival strategy provides that one of the first management decisions to be made is caution in processes and re-evaluation, aiming for the correction of flaws that might be or are degrading the quality of products and services.
Regarding environmental strengths, the analysis revealed that the information needs of the board of directors are focused on the DIE/SPCI goals. However, adjustments and some changes are necessary, as pointed out in the SWOT analysis. Therefore, the improvement proposals must consider as a priority the review of most of the internal processes, including those related to strategic information use, recovery and production.
Transparency and internal disclosure (in the Federal Government Disciplinary Board) of SPCI’s most relevant activities are of the upmost importance, extremely urgent and necessary, since most of the public servants interviewed pointed out strategic conflicts among DIE/SPCI and other CGU agencies.
Lessons learned
The Strategic Information Board of Directors would benefit from incorporating a systematic evaluation of the quality of products and services. Such an evaluation would in turn provide the correction and adjustment measures that are currently ignored as pointed out in the situational analysis. In addition, there is no complete integration of the activities in both management approaches under study, which hinders communication and impedes an appropriate administrative communication flow by the board of directors.
Systematic implementation requires criteria to generate service and product evaluation indicators of DIE. The qualitative leap should be supported by clear parameters so that attention is given to all gaps and limitations revealed in this situational analysis.
The next step is to list the essential competencies needed for information resources in the proactive management of the CGU SPCI. There are two key actions: (a) itemise the critical success factors in the CGU SPCI approach; and (b) elaborate the essential competencies for information resources management in the approach.