Information Asset Registers: A Short Guide

Information Asset Registers
A Brief Guide

Information Asset Registers: An Introduction
© InfoRED Consulting Pty Ltd, 2013 A.B.N. 43 118 987 867 Page 2222 of 31313131
Author: Janet Brimson, Lead Architect InfoREDAuthor: Janet Brimson, Lead Architect InfoREDAuthor: Janet Brimson, Lead Architect InfoREDAuthor: Janet Brimson, Lead Architect InfoRED
© InfoRED Consulting Pty Ltd, 2013.
All rights reserved.
A.C.N. 118 987 867
Apart from where content is professionally cited and InfoRED credited
in the citation, no part of this document may be reproduced,
transcribed, translated into any language for any purpose whatsoever
without the prior written consent of InfoRED Consulting Pty Ltd. Names
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ContentsContentsContentsContents
Introduction ..........................................................................................................................................................4
What can an Information Asset Register do?................................................................................................5
Economics of Information Management ...........................................................................................................8
Value..................................................................................................................................................................9
Which Information Has Value?......................................................................................................................... 12
Key Documents............................................................................................................................................. 12
Registrations and Subscriptions................................................................................................................... 13
Data Sets ........................................................................................................................................................ 14
Key Business Processes ................................................................................................................................ 15
Non-Standard Document Formats.............................................................................................................. 16
Conversations and Collaborations.............................................................................................................. 17
Metadata, Taxonomy and Tags ................................................................................................................... 17
Gathering Detail.................................................................................................................................................. 19
Engaging with Stakeholders......................................................................................................................... 19
Information Owners Working Together...................................................................................................... 20
What to Include................................................................................................................................................. 21
Using the Register .............................................................................................................................................. 24
Planning........................................................................................................................................................... 24
Re-architecting systems and processes..................................................................................................... 26
Discovering Innovation................................................................................................................................. 27
Register Management........................................................................................................................................ 29
About this Guide............................................................................................................................................... 30
About Janet Brimson .................................................................................................................................... 30
Other Resources ........................................................................................................................................... 30
About InfoRED............................................................................................................................................... 31

Introduction
Information Asset Registers list the information in your
organisation that holds the most value. They are a living
business control record.
The Register details key information sources, their location and
custodians as well as detail regarding why this particular information is
of value to the organisation. Value may be calculated, licensed, intrinsic
or inherent. These Registers often focus on the important information
sources, collections or data sets in the business rather than all
information. Importantly, the Register records the relationship of the
information to the business.
Information Asset Registers are beneficial to any organisation or
businesses seeking to understand:
their greater financial value
new ways to innovate products and services
ways to improve product or service quality
the best way to attempt an information and systems clean-up
what is impacting information in their enterprise planning.
Information Asset Registers first came about as a record of what
information an organisation had – just like an Enterprise Information
Architecture stocktake. Some organisations held special registers to
monitor key documents only like those associated with
board meetings or their brand. Before digital assets
there were several registers used to help manage
documents in circulation, documents entrusted to
individuals as well as registers indicating where physical
documents were stored.
Over time, these lists were seen to contain a lot more
value than expected. With changes in accounting
practices and an emphasis on corporate value, each of
the enterprise architectural registers suddenly became

more than a management tool. Instead they are now recognised as
keys to better managing enterprise risk and value.
Different organisations use different types of Information Asset Registers
to record high value information within their organisation. For example:
research firms track patents, algorithms and formulas
recipes are high-value information assets for organisations in
Food and Beverage manufacturing
brand management systems are critical and high-value for
advertising companies
candidate databases are the core value of a recruitment firm
patient datasets are key to medical and health establishments
drawing registers are critical to engineering and architectural
firms.
Sometimes high-value information is immediately obvious (as in the
examples above), but in most organisations there is a significant
amount of valuable information buried that goes unnoticed,
undervalued and undermanaged.
Hidden information may be profitable or high risk. Until you know what
it is, where it is, who is using it and what for - you can’t say if it is
valuable or risky.
For this reason alone it is best practice for CIO’s, Information and Data
Managers to create and manage an Information Asset Register and try
to uncover the hidden value and potential information risks lurking
within the business.
What can an Information Asset Register do?
Information Asset Registers provide a formal record of the most valued
information in your organisation. They contain detailed, descriptive
information about different content, documents and data sets within
your organisation.

Figure 1: Information Asset Register Example partial line item
In the past, these registers were mainly used to list protected
intellectual property (IP) by certification dates and according to the
restrictions of the jurisdiction in which the IP existed (these rules and
conditions differ per country and sometimes by state or region).
Due to the phenomenal amount of information we now create, use
and store each day, Information Asset Registers are increasingly being
used for more specific and extensive forensic, management and
reporting purposes.
In Enterprise Information Architecture, the Information Asset Register is
extended in detail to list all information, data and collections for the
purpose of informing management, integration, migration and
decommissioning opportunities and activities. A well-executed
Information Asset Register becomes an asset in itself and is the
backbone of any Information Quality and Management Plan.
Specifically, the Register serves 3 core purposes:
defines the information assets:
what makes up the asset, parameters, constraints, users,
location, number of records, key dates, custodians
applies a value to the information assets:
based on use, association to people, processes and places,
based on owner, reporting cycles, compliance, investment,
profitability or loss
identifies key themes and patterns across documents,
collections and data that direct projects and activities for
clean-up, migration, decommission, upgrade, gap analysis,
training etc.

Figure 2: The 3 Core Purposes of the Information Asset Register
Typical information required to be tracked includes:
the number of information items in a set or collection
who is using the information and what for (process, procedure
or task)
how long has this information been available or when it was
first needed or created
any information around the original cost of setup or the cost of
current resources to maintain the information, information
collection or information system.
There are so many different descriptive aspects that can be covered
about any piece of information – that is the fantasy that preoccupies
the Information Architect. However, the aspects of most value relate
only to the context in which that information is used in that specific
organisation. That is a very unique and specific recipe and a key
attribute of an organisation’s DNA.
Technically, the descriptive information about the asset may be stored
in a basic Excel spread sheet, a SharePoint list or an Enterprise
Architecture management solution or tool. The way you store it is not
as important as getting the detail recorded and making it accessible to
key stakeholders.

Economics of Information
Management
Information has value when it is of worth to a different
person or process.
Information needs to be consumed, trigger a derivation or be used to
create new information to have value in the information economy. This
makes information a generally invisible asset feeding unknown
consumption patterns all day long.
Most organisations are not consciously aware of the
value of any of the information they own, let alone what
is the most valuable.
Organisations take information use and consumption for
granted. Storage is cheap, paper is cheap, printing is
relatively cheap, photocopiers, scanners and other
digital recreation devices are in our pockets now. More
companies will limit printing availability based on ‘green’
initiatives than through strong information governance.
So the information economy makes it easy to copy,
store, duplicate and manipulate anything digitally whether it started as
a physical or digital object. The more we create, the more we store,
the harder it is to find and discover and the more value is eroded or
lost.
This prevalence of information manipulation, creation, deletion,
continuous change is totally taken for granted by individuals and
organisations.
The majority of information workers in the Information Age have never
been taught how to think about, value or manage their information. So
we all keep on creating and re-creating and manipulating in real-time to
answer whatever question is hanging around at that time.

If you personally don’t have the answer, Google definitely does and its
downloadable, perpetuating the harvesting and discard or information,
data, conversations and other communication means – formal and
informal.
This complexity of information process relative to cheapness of access
compounds issues around information economics and value as well as
management.
Value
If you were calculating the value of your home and contents for an
insurance policy you have a pretty good idea about what is valuable.
You know how much your car, your shares, your jewellery or your
Superannuation fund is worth.
You are unlikely to know how much an email is worth or a handwritten
letter you sent to your Grandma when you were in the 4th
grade, but
that is not on the insurance company checklist so you are likely to
overlook it anyway.
An original signature from George Washington is
something you wouldn’t overlook. A signed original
manuscript of the movie the Matrix you wouldn’t
overlook. A database of the last 10 years of your research
into fish species in the local river will likely get overlooked
on the insurance, but not in the number of backups you
have of that particular dataset.
The insurance company has formulated its opinion of
worth and you work to it. Your hours of investment may
make you value one set of information differently from
another. Emotional engagement stimulates a different value attachment.
None of these valuation methods is more valid than another. It is all
relative and is all about context.
The Value of News
Let’s say we read a news article online. Where does its value lie?
Looking internally only, I could attribute a value to the article based on
what the journalist was paid.

As an Editor, if I knew the total readership for my publication and the
value of that readership, per click, online and can count the clicks
(number of times someone supposedly had the intent to read the
article), then I could value the article by the total attention it is receiving
from the readership. I might weight the value based on the comments
it receives.
If I kept an Information Asset Register I would probably want to know
the sum of the value the article is generating minus the original cost of
generation by the journalist. I might also want to model the growth or
decline in value over time.
In this context, I am not interested on what the information value was
to you as the reader – the main reason being in this case the article is
free.
Innovation and Transaction Interruption
If I wanted to be innovative I could do some research into your
perceived value for my financial benefit. If I knew the release of an
article of this type every quarter will make 70 companies another
$250K, I would likely devise a way to capitalise on those downloads
through subscription payments or some other finance-based access
limitation.
As information and information transactions are generally invisible, they
are hard to measure. So a primary role of the Information Asset Register
is to call attention to the information repositories, data sets and
information transactions that are important. In this way, the register
helps make the value of the information explicit.
Value and Risk Drive Management Strategies
If you can understand the value of an information asset and record
enough information about the cost of inception, the context of use,
the ongoing cost of the management systems etc. you can understand
what has high or low value and high or low risk.
With that information you can:
1. Target high value, high risk assets
2. Justify a budget for resources to manage the asset
3. Assign an appropriate management plan to monitor asset
quality and risk.

Information as Income
If a book took you a year to write – say $80K and you got a publishing
deal for $150K and then you get $1 every time a copy sold, you are
now looking at declarable income. This is an explicit information asset.
The more of these you have, the more total value you have, as well as
the more tax you might have to pay.
But say you want to get on the list of the richest authors. You might
need to add up all of the assets and potentially value the ones
you are still working on or those in negotiation for film rights
etc.
In corporations the value of the organisation is generally
calculated based on the total explicit value of assets. This is
multiplied by a fictitious number (which differs by industry and
annual state of the economy) which is meant to represent the
value that is likely to be able to be attributed to the intangible
assets.
If you are a good corporate citizen and invest in making the value of
your intangible assets explicit your balance sheet will appear more rosy
and the fictitious intangible multiplier will not change. Thus through
diligence and conscious information management you have helped
the organisation increase overall value.

Which Information Has Value?
There is a lot of hidden value in information (documents,
data, email, conversations) of any organisation.
Often the first conundrum is where to look for what is of most value. If
your interest is only in tracking information assets related to your brand
or a research programme, start with the obvious. Speak to the teams in
charge of those areas of the business and start to dig out
all IP registrations and any purchased subscriptions.
Another obvious area to look at is where data sets are
already recognised as a collection eg. Customer
information, Product Catalogues, Annual Reports, set of
publications, policies or forms.
Seek out the assets in the organisation where people
recognise an existing value relationship to the information
or data (eg. “this is critical to our work”).
If you want to understand where business risk lies or where value is
potentially hidden, embark on a more detailed investigation and start
with investigating your business processes. This is also the most
beneficial way to value information long-term. This type of detailed
information will be critical if you are looking to do a complete
information application overhaul.
Key Documents
Every organisation keeps key documents that are critical to business
operations, eg.:
business continuity and disaster recovery plans
business strategies
strategies
code of conduct.
There are also key documents and data sets that are legislatively
required to be maintained in order to verify company operations. The

general ledger is a data set holding the organisations financial
accountability. The reflection of the figures in the ledger in the financial
statements issued with the Annual Report are key documents
demonstrating accountability.
These types of documents are the ones you should look to evaluate
and record early in the Information Asset Register population process.
All policies and governance documentation are critical to the value of
an organisation and should be noted individually and as a collection.
Unstructured information assets are generally found on file shares, in
Intranets, Extranets, the web site and in other content, information and
record keeping systems. Scan these systems. If you have users statistics
about the system spots with the heaviest use, visit those first to find
out why they are so popular.
Don’t forget physical documentation stores – information asset
management extends beyond digital asset management. The historical
documentation of an organisation often is proof of the provenance of
the products and services the organisation delivers and is key to
corporate value.
Registrations and Subscriptions
Patents, logos, brands, ISSN, ISBN numbers, domain names are all
recognisable working information assets. Look for these formal assets
registered by your organisation. There is likely to be existing information
about how much they are registered for, when the registration might
run out and other clues to their value.

Look at the investments that have been made in information - what
was acquired. Look for subscriptions, mailing lists that may have been
purchased, data sets purchased for research etc. With this information
you are monitoring the value of the initial investment and whether you
are getting a greater value in its use. Subscription information does not
belong to your organisation so will be accounted for in a different way
(eg. a Gartner report is an asset for Gartner, however the purchase of a
Gartner report may be an investment for your organisation).
Data Sets
Data sets are used all over organisations. Some are originals, some are
replicas and some are near replicas or derivations. When you are
completing your Information Asset Register, ensure you make a note of
whether the data sets you find are original or replicas.
The original data set is normally of most value. The replicas might be
compromising value or interfering in decision making by providing out-
of-date or manipulated information to decision makers.
A near replica or derivation may have great value based on the way it
has been extended and may be assessed to replace the original.
Find out how replica data sets are being used and whether
procedures need to be put in place to limit their use and availability.
The value of a data set is calculated using several aspects:
Use and association: which business processes consume or
add to the data set and how important are they?
Quality: when did someone last verify the data was correct?
What data validation methods did they use?
Interrelationship: does this data feed into other data sets in
other systems?
Risk: is this data set used to monitor a state of compliance or
risk?
When analysing data sets ensure you review them for any compliance
or audit requirements. Record the detail of the compliance
requirement in your Information Asset Register. Where possible identify
the internal subject matter expert you would need to speak to if an
issue relating to the compliance data arose.

If your organisation has a data entity diagram or data dictionary for the
dataset, flag the entities and or attributes that are related to
compliance in that model to ensure care is taken when working with
these data attributes and records into the future.
Where your organisation has access to data profiling tools, use them to
extract additional information automatically to help populate the
Information Asset Register.
Data sets are often dominated by numerical information. Some
formulas and algorithms are worth a lot of money, especially if they are
only used by your company in your industry. Speak to subject matter
experts about any of the formulas they are using to get a sense of their
unique value to the business.
Customer value is one of the highest areas of value for a
commercial business. Many businesses are acquired just
to get control of a customer list and the associated
relationships. Most information associated with tracking
customer relationships will be of high value.
A Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) may
house your customer data. How is that customer data stored within
the system? Is it a simple name and address setup or is there
comprehensive records of sales activity, leads and other information
related to the sales pipeline buried in the Customer data set? Is the
information being entered in a consistent way? Are there errors in the
data?
Data quality and data errors require careful monitoring and recording in
the Information Asset Register. If there is a consistent pattern of errors
arising in the register it can signal the real need for a targeted clean-up
campaign to both increase overall value but also reduce potential
organisational risk.
Key Business Processes
A business is the sum of its business processes.
The way information is consumed and produced throughout the
lifecycle of the business processes is very telling when it comes to
information value. If you know the value of the business process you
can gauge the value of the information assets consumed and

produced and more importantly the associated risk involved if the
quality of the information was compromised or unavailable.
This is the key area of value creation and is usually least understood.
This is why it is critical for Enterprise Business Architects and Enterprise
Information Architects to work closely together.
The business functional decomposition will show you where all the
data points are exposed to users by process/procedure and task if
that level of detail is required. This creates a blueprint of the company
processes, inputs and outputs - independent of technology.
Identify the processes in your business as a high level mud map or as a
full business process decomposition. Look at company profitability in
relation to each process. Some processes will be more critical than
others in realising profit. Focus on these processes first when you
investigate the value of the associated information.
Any corporate control mechanism is likely to be an important influence
of process value. Look for all processes associated with methods,
policies and frameworks. These are likely to be the high-value
processes and the critical risk challenges to the organisation.
For example, if there is a Safety Plan, chances are there is a compliance
requirement to an external industry Safety standard. If you are non-
compliant, the value of the associated business process is negated
through ‘shutdown’; inability to perform or complete. If there is an
assessment on process completion, resources may be wasted if they
perform the process up to a point but are unable to achieve Safety
signoff. It is likely that information produced or consumed at the point
of potential failure is of significant risk and value to the organisation. It
could be as simple as a safety checklist but if it is incomplete, of low
quality or wrong it puts the whole process at risk.
Non-Standard Document Formats
Don’t forget to investigate non-standard document formats such as
images, videos and drawings. If the organisation has a lot of these they
are often stored in specialist systems.
For example, engineering drawings associated with a project are
critical information assets for the project as well as the organisation
who has created the drawings or who purchased the design.

Conversations and Collaborations
Increasingly, organisations are filling up with forums, wikis, feeds,
discussions and of course, they were already full of email.
Conversations and collaborations environments need to be registered
per collection in the register. Their value comes about when you are
either mining the conversations for innovation, evidence or proof of
knowledge expertise.
Metadata, Taxonomy and Tags
Metadata is descriptive information about your information assets. You
don’t need to record individual metadata attributes within the
Information Asset Register, but it is important to make note of any of
the standards being used to govern the classification of your
information collections.
For organisations using large content management systems such as
SharePoint or Documentum, it is also important to note any
customisations to artefact identification and classification. Hopefully
these are already documented somewhere (maybe as a design
specification) and those documents can be highlighted within the
register (eg. content type configurations used to manage your
information which may be unique to your organisation).
If you have any specialist vocabularies, glossaries or taxonomies in use,
they are likely to also be already documented in unstructured
documents. These should be acknowledged in the register.
Specifically highlight documents such as the Business Classification
Scheme which is one of the key information governance documents
within an organisation.

If your organisation is using lots of conversations, Web 2.0 conventions
for tagging information, again it is important to capture the logic of the
tagging system. The tags themselves and the systems being used to
manage the tagging are not required to be in the Information Asset
Register; the system will be recorded in the Enterprise Application
Register if there is one.

Gathering Detail
The way you gather the detail needs to target key uses of the
Information Asset Register first.
Engaging with Stakeholders
When trying to uncover all of the information in an organisation don’t
feel like it is a job to be performed alone. Engage with the business
and you will uncover key information faster. The business knows what
is important better than anyone as they use it all day
long.
General Survey
Some organisations conduct a general survey asking the
organisation which information is most important to
them on a daily basis. In this type of survey list the key
information systems and collections within the
organisation and get a sense of how often they are
accessed and how important to which business processes.
Enterprise Survey
If you are working on a larger Enterprise Architecture one technique to
use is an Enterprise Survey. The survey is a structured interview with
key stakeholders to map their business processes and information use
all in one session. Work closely with an Enterprise Business or Strategic
Architect to run these sessions and record all of the information.
Work with IT Infrastructure and Applications
Your application and IT infrastructure support teams are likely to have
access to different reporting tools which can be used to scan drives,
count files and indicate where high traffic events are occurring. Ask
them to generate as many reports as they can to help you highlight key
issues of overlap and duplication but also get a clear sense of the size
of the information eco-system under management.

Desktop Scans
If your organisation does not have the resources to run reports across
systems for you perform your own desktop scans. Look through
fileshares for repeated folder and file names or areas where there are
high numbers of document versions.
Information Owners Working Together
One of the common points of failure in an organisation is where two
or more teams they believe they ‘own’ the same information – or
worse – no one claims ownership.
IMPORTANT:IMPORTANT:IMPORTANT:IMPORTANT: No one person ‘owns’ the information in an organisation.
It all belongs to the legal entity behind the business. You may need to
stress this point during your research to ensure all information is fully
disclosed. Where possible discuss custodians and stewards to get
people used to the independence of the information.
Make a note of any information assets where joint ownership is likely. It
may be necessary to augment current governance documents to
include procedures for joint stewardship of information, highlighting
who is responsible for what per cent of maintenance budgets or
which teams resources are responsible for management and
maintenance.

What to Include
It is often confusing to know what to include in your
Information Asset Register.
There are two main ways to address the Register’s scope:
If your information asset register is for a specific purpose, focus
on the descriptive detail of that purpose only
For a greater enterprise Information Asset Register, capture as
much information as you can.
You can never know too much about the information assets but you
can definitely know too little. Historic information and data may not
have as much information available about it as newer information
collections. Focus on providing answers for as many dimensions of the
data as possible.
Important information to record in the Information Asset Register
includes:
Identifying information – naming and numbering, project names
or numbers, author/creator
Management information such as versions, revisions, extent and
other lifecycle information
Location, terms of access or use (offline and online), collection
or domain in which the information is stored
Parties involved (business function, company etc.) and nature
of relationship, target internal or external audiences
Any specific security, rights management, ownership or
authority
Relationship of the information to business intelligence activities
Jurisdiction, spatial or temporal location including use in
historical business events
Standards and compliance relationships
Relationship of this information to other information

Information asset value where known or likely calculation or
valuation method
Identifying and Descriptive Information
Identifying information attributes are generally used to when looking
for, creating or storing information, ie. the title, document name and
other descriptive information – including nicknames. The context of the
register or your current enquiry will give you a sense of how much
information you might require.
For documents and data, common attributes related to identity
include:
a unique business identifier for a dataset or document
collection
a name of the dataset or document collection
with datasets indicate whether it is a master, replica, near
replica, derivation or single-source of truth
the primary subject and/or (where possible use a value from a
business unit controlled vocabulary)
a description of the information collection including what types
of information are stored within it and how they are used by
the business
GOODGOODGOODGOOD DESCRIPTIONDESCRIPTIONDESCRIPTIONDESCRIPTION BBBBAD DESCRIPTIONAD DESCRIPTIONAD DESCRIPTIONAD DESCRIPTION
PDF and Word documents
relating to the purchase of
telecommunications equipment
in 2005
Telco docs
Extent
The extent of the information is to do with scale and
influences/parameters to use.
Common attributes related to extent include:
The size of the document, collection or dataset
Jurisdictional coverage if known
Format of the document, collection or dataset (eg. PDF,
MSWord, SQL, Oracle)

Language if other than English
For datasets, the minimum software and hardware requirements
to run the dataset if it required re-establishing.
Data Sets
When investigating datasets ensure you gather information regarding
current operations, eg.:
Frequency of data update
Date last updated
Last known backup date and destination
Disaster recovery protocols
Operating age of the dataset
The system/application with which it’s hosted
Any associated data logic, data models, information
architecture, information standards, business models that the
data is modelled on
Known integration, interaction or inter-relationships with other
databases of applications
Any reporting capabilities.
Data sets suffer from performance issues so if mentioned, make notes
regarding current performance eg.:
current performance levels
known issues reported by users or support.

Using the Register
Information Asset Registers are common tools in an
Enterprise Architecture team but have other operational,
strategic and tactical benefits across the business.
These include areas such as planning, system redesign and innovation
as well as demonstrating the actual value of certain information
collections.
Planning
Commonly, Information Asset Registers are used to record the
availability, currency and value of information. This supports internal
information management planning activities.
Reviewing the register for high value, high risk information sets that have
similar issues. Highlight areas where a business case for clean-up,
process improvement or system enhancement may be required. The
value of the assets impacted is used to inform the business case and
justify resourcing requests.
Key themes to see emerge include:
ISSUE:ISSUE:ISSUE:ISSUE: CONSEQUENCE:CONSEQUENCE:CONSEQUENCE:CONSEQUENCE:
Too many copies of
the one set of
information
Invest in a de-duplication activity
If it is hard to tell if the information is a clear
duplication look to archive old versions and
minimise confusion
Issue new policies for information use and a
single-point of truth
Review architectural issues causing
duplication
Potentially purchase tools to assist in de-
duplication and duplicate monitoring
Multiple information
quality issues
Identify key areas where information quality is
costing the business (eg. 7 different versions
of the one company data in the CRM – none
up to date or correct)

Improve information governance procedures
Issue new policies for information use
Look to potentially improve system controls
More training for key users of the information
Assessing risk and costing maintenance and
cleansing activities
Understand common data maintenance and
cleansing methods
Schedule regular information integrity reviews
Improved reporting on information
management and quality initiatives
Not enough known
about a critical
historical information
collection
Order a detailed investigation
Ensure a backup of the information is
available and managed for disaster recovery
Interview past employees or vendors
Confusion over who
‘owns’ the information
Review Governance rules
Communication plan regarding information
stewardship
Procedures for working on information
maintenance initiatives that involve joint
ownership
Ensure information steward succession plans
are in place
Potential breaches in
compliance
Investigate information management
obligations and requirements
Re-educate the business in the best way to
manage the information compliantly
Major data or
information overlaps
Streamline critical information sets across the
business
Potentially combine with de-duplication
activities
Major information gap
or lack of granularity to
the data
Plan to extend the information or dataset
Create a new data set to address the deficit
Review Business Intelligence requirements
related to the information
Information hard to
find
Archiving and cleanse as much information
from the business to bring a focus back on
what is high value
Once the cleansing is complete look to

introduce taxonomical structures for storage,
classification and search tuning which match
and are consistent across all systems and all
information domains
Look for opportunities to introduce more
navigation paths or streamline existing ones
removing any ambiguities
Re-architecting systems and processes
When systems go through upgrade, decommissioning or streamlining
there are likely to be several architecturally related activities required
relating to the information stored in the systems and the processes
consuming and producing the information.
A common issue with information and business system re-architectures
is the perpetuation of existing issues. Moving from a current to a future
state is usually seen as a next step in a system evolution rather than a
total redesign. This is relevant for applications and infrastructure to a
point but not information and business process. Always be critical of
the existing process and look to re-engineer for optimisation,
extension of value and ease of use.
ISSUE:ISSUE:ISSUE:ISSUE: CONSEQUENCE:CONSEQUENCE:CONSEQUENCE:CONSEQUENCE:
Information overlaps
suggest siloing of
systems
Identify the cost of lost opportunity from
system confusion or information separation
Understand which processes are impacted
by fragmentation
Review support and maintenance issues
related to the systems before redesigning
Count the collections and domains
overlapping, cost of systems, storage
Look for a core system to which information
can be moved and make other systems
redundant or look to replace all with a
system more suited to the desired business
outcome
Information gaps
suggest lack of
granularity or missing
systems
Review business processes looking to
optimise the current information and
processes prior to considering the extension
Look first to extend existing core systems
Augment systems with a new information set

Business process
optimisation
Review the impacts of business changes on
the information consumed and produced
Modify information to reflect process change
requirements
New technical system
conventions
Impact analysis of the requirements of the
new system on the existing information
A new system is likely to require new
metadata requirements, new collections
management requirements, more reliance on
lists and data sets or taxonomy to automate
information and business processes
Review the impact of the changes on access,
search and discovery
Ensure changes in logic are communicated
to users
Discovering Innovation
The information in the organisation holds value. Current value is in the
way things currently run. Innovation is the hidden value if certain
information is found or rediscovered or re-coupled and its value
exposed to the right processes to optimise the business.
KEY AREAKEY AREAKEY AREAKEY AREA:::: RESEARCH ACTIVITIES:RESEARCH ACTIVITIES:RESEARCH ACTIVITIES:RESEARCH ACTIVITIES:
Sales pipeline Research the potential cost of lost
opportunity
Look at how the current sales pipeline
information is used and for opportunities to
optimise the flow of information to speed
sales realisation
Look for opportunities to better visualise
what is happening in the sales pipeline for
the business to highlight trends in sales
Customer value Model potential profitability
Feed external information about the
customer activity (eg. news feeds and RSS)
into a common profile area to highlight
potential opportunities
Clearly represent customer historic to the
sales force including trends across industries
Look for opportunities to better visualise
what is happening in the sales pipeline for

the business to highlight trends in customer
activity
Knowledge
Contribution
Report top content creators by functional
area and use the findings to promote reward
or formalise their knowledge into new
products and services
Look for obvious omissions – where
someone who is a big talker or considered
strategic to corporate value but is actually
not formally contributing to the IP of the
organisation
Bring as much order to knowledge
collections to aid discovery and use
Look at growth and change in topics of
online conversation – reflect changing use of
terminology, growing use of new
terminologies as ‘accepted’ speak in
navigation, metadata tagging
Report areas of new interest where
suggesting new products and service
opportunities are emerging
Research and
Development
Mine research and development information
related to leading products and services and
look for opportunities for derivation, imprint
branding or cross-brand promotion
Look for opportunities to bring two or more
sets of information or data together from
different projects to innovate on new
products and services

Register Management
Every organisation is different. The true value and use of the
Register will become apparent as it is populated and
exposes trends, patterns and issues.
The information eco-systems of your organisation will continue to
change. Keep the register alive and current, reflecting this ongoing
change.
Where possible try and centralise the position of the register and make
it accessible to all key information custodians. In this way they can
assist each other in the regular upkeep of Register detail.
Ensure the governance around the use of the register is understood
and that there are information related committees or regular meetings
where the business can highlight new issues, new maintenance
activities, opportunities for consolidation, change and review.
Remember the register is an information asset in its own right. The more
you use it to inform information management activities the more value it
creates.
Keep track of its use to inform business cases and activities and report
that value against information management activities annually.

About this Guide
This guide was authored by Janet Brimson, Lead Architect and Director
of InfoRED Consulting. The guide is intended to help educate
Information professionals in the value of an Information Asset Register
to their organisation.
This guide is one in a series of InfoRED guides on best practice
information management.
About Janet Brimson
Janet is an enterprise, information and business architect. Her
architectures centre on what the user wants and the business needs to
deliver. Her designs include taxonomies, knowledge systems, portals,
web sites, digital learning environments, performance support
solutions and multi-tiered information architecture and artefact models
for resource directories and information asset management systems.
Her broad knowledge of business models and ability to creatively
express the vision of an organisation make her a highly regarded
strategic business advisor. She is a solutions innovator, providing
targeted insights into information process improvement.
More information about Janet Brimson, InfoRED Director & LeadJanet Brimson, InfoRED Director & LeadJanet Brimson, InfoRED Director & LeadJanet Brimson, InfoRED Director & Lead
ArchitectArchitectArchitectArchitect is available at LinkedIn ....
Other Resources
For further information on how to work through the business process
decomposition of your organisation and build your Information Asset
Register, we recommend Enterprise Architecture Planning: Developing
a Blueprint for Data, Applications, and Technology by Steven Spewak.
This is a highly practical guide book to enterprise architecture practice.

About InfoRED
InfoRED are a leading team of Australian Information Architects working
on global information solutions. We believe that the Information Age is
about being smart about information, not drowning in it.
We understand:
the power of information
how to guide its presentation, storage and use
how to empower staff as information workers.
Well-designed content and information systems help organisations be
innovative, organised, responsive and efficient. Our information
architectures are visionary and practical.
InfoRED delivers online information and content architects working on
web sites, intranets, portals and other large information management
and governance projects. We also provide content support
professionals for migrations, cleansing and new builds.
Contact UsContact UsContact UsContact Us
email: info@infored.com.au
phone: +61 7 5474 2404

Information Asset Registers: A Short Guide

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