Information and Its Uses

In our daily activities, whether in professional area or others, sometimes or maybe we as people don’t realize about how powerful the information is. The information enable to influence the whole life of an organization or society where it is considered as the one information is useful. The concept of “from data to knowledge” is the most interesting one to digest and to be deeply understood about. It is about the process of data to be information then finally become knowledge. It is told that once we value the data, it becomes information and after we understand the information, it is a knowledge. It is very make sense to see the logical process. The interesting part is the data from one person can be useful as information for another, it doesn’t have to be the same person, but it might be as well. The importance of this concept in information management is it enables for an organization to make use of the data. In understanding the information management, this concept help the organization to identify the data to be information then to be its knowledge. Any kind of data is potential information, it depends on the person who interpret the data. By the meantime, this “data to knowledge” concept is able to be used in decision-making process. As the matter of fact, “data to knowledge” concept has the relationship with the strategic, tactical and operational decision concept which consist of long-term, medium-term and short-term decisions. The information is the material for organization to take the right decision.

Applying this concept to manage the information in nowadays’ organization is able to do by giving value to the obtained data, and seeing the connection of data in organization to all the activities within. By understanding the data and information or even the knowledge, the organization may have the variety of thoughts to be considered before deciding something. For instance, in common company the personal data of the employee might have indirect influence, especially if the employee works in IT department, the personal information would have nothing to do with finance department. The employee’s personal data becomes information for human resources department and IT department itself. That data could be a knowledge when the managers of human resources and IT department are able to figure the employee’s experience from his/her personal data to be considered. However, it might have be useful for finance but maybe indirectly. If I were the information manager, the measures that I’ll take to apply this concept is, to categorized the data and allocate to the related department. As the result, the data could be the information to the department because it has the value. It is necessary to put the data in the right place where it should be, then it is very helpful for the related department to have right decision for its problem. It needs strong commitment and frequent updated filing in order to make use the data to knowledge.

Russel Ackoff mentioned about the content of human mind which can be identified into five categories: data, information, knowledge, understanding and wisdom. This supports the concept of “data to knowledge” in managing information. It is told that data is the symbols and has no meaning, while the information has the meaning. Then the knowledge has something to do with the collection of information and remember about it. Understanding is about when it’s not a memorizing but learning and finally wisdom is the highest level of understanding the data. This has the similar meaning but the difference is the use of concept. “Data to knowledge” concept is being used by business managing information. While Russel Ackoff’s is more general, but actually they have the same basic.