“Information” rather than “information technology”

01/05/2007 by Roger Evernden.

I know that information technology is big business and that vendors want to push up their sales.

I know that IT often provides great tools that make us more productive or creative.

And I know that without IT most companies would be unable to operate.

But I can’t help feeling really strongly that we focus too much on the T and not enough on the I - that most of us (either as individuals or organisations) don’t spend the time learning how we can use information more effectively.

This is of course one of the key themes in my book, Information First … it is the key reason why I called it Information First - we need to understand our need for information before we deploy information technology.

But I think that we (information using people anywhere) need to learn more about how we use information and how we could improve our use of information.

I recently saw Dr Edward de Bono talk about the need for better thinking skills. His ideas are now almost universally recognised, and many individuals and organisations have benefited from his thinking skills and techniques.

What do you think? Do we need better skills in using information? I’d be interested to know what others think on this.

Roger

Posted in Enterprise Architecture | 4 Comments »