Comments on: Enterprise Information Architecture: A Semantic and Organizational Foundation

By: michaelbeavers

michaelbeavers — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is a really interesting viewpoint for exploring roles and stratifications for “information” professions and a great follow-up to James Robertson’s earlier Boxes and Arrows article.

In larger enterprises, there tends to be more budget and infrastructure for lots of different people with different job titles, and more clearly defined roles and responsibilities. However, most organizations lack suffient resources to hire all these people, sometimes requiring, for example, IT professionals to also be information professionals in the IA sense.

You wrote that EIAs should probably not be seen or take responsibility for being change agents. However, you also wrote that “…EIAs should not just be involved in the enterprise’s information architecture, but also involved in the information architecture of the enterprise. They should apply IA skills to understand, model, and support how information and knowledge flows within the enterprise.”

Is this not being an enterprise change agent with grand visions, or is it more reflective of an EIA pointing out simple matters of improved efficiency?

I don’t know the answer to this question, but I believe that most companies, if they respect IA as a profession and the people they hire are really good at what they do, then EIAs will indeed be “change agents”–even at the enterprise level where budgets and resources are less limited than those of smaller organizations.

But, heck, that’s just a semantic distinction.

By: treamy

treamy — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks and good question. The answer is that EIA’s can and should be change agents — but then so can everyone. What I was getting at was that I don’t think that change agent is something that should become a part of the definition of what an EIA essentially is. In part this is because the term has no discrimintive power (everyone is/can be a change agent) and in part because I don’t see it as an essential part of what an EIA *is*, rather it is a description of the impact that an EIA can have.

That being said, considering an EIA as part of a semantic infrastructure rather than part of this or that intranet project, has the potential for truely powerful change.

By: michaelbeavers

michaelbeavers — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Yep, I’m with you. I just turned to the appropriate semantic relationships chapter in my Polar Bear copy and started thinking about IA and EIA as alternately inset circles. Focus is a good thing!

By: crislc

crislc — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Nitpicky typo:

“we should remember that they not really information professionals.”

should read

“we should remember that they *are* not really information professionals.”

By: putchavn

putchavn — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The article uses terms or phrases like “Information”, “Information Architecture”, “Knowledge”, “Wisdom”, “Semantics” “Semantic Infrastructure” etc. When we look up the definitions of these terms in the publications of computer science or information technology or Wikipedia we come across many definitions which are not consistent.

It would be helpful for readers if the authors declare what definitions they are relying on. If they have their own definitions of the key terms or phrases, they should be kind enough to define and support them. Over time, the community of authors and readers should be able to arrive at most comprehensive and widely accepted definitions and use them for building more complex concepts and systems.

By: austingovella

austingovella — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Cris,

Thanks for catching that! All fixed now.

By: marciamorante

marciamorante — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hi Tom -

UI design (or Interaction Design) is an important qualification for most of the IA job descriptions that I’ve recently seen. How would this look on an EIA job description?

Thanks.

By: vera

vera — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I would so like to see an expanded definition of knowledge in IA. The word knowledge linked to information in this article appears, to me, to have a fairly narrow definition, representing, for example, the natural result of appropriate combining of information. As a non-programmer businessperson, my concept of knowledge encompasses the full spectrum of understanding.

The limitations of data management are what they are, but would not an attitude focused on building bridges between the 2 definitions and uses of knowledge offer far greater potential application of technology in our activities and endeavors? There must be more (says I) to user knowledge than what marketing and usability managers typically focus on eliciting.

Vera

By: ethergan

ethergan — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I agree that there is a change coming with how IA works within Enterprise systems. In my current position as and IA I find my self having to develop strategies and infrastructure not because I want to but IA seem to be the only one with an understanding of both technology, usability, and to some extent business analysis.

Working in a large corporation you often find your self as the point person in places where an IA should not be however as business and technology evolves IA evolve with it. And as an IA grows in there craft why not include EIA and the next level in that evolution.

By: rayray

rayray — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Architecture is an enterprise activity. Enterprise architecture is composed of Business Architecture (Strategies, Processes and Models, Roles), Information Architecture – Information supporting the Business (Typing, Modeling, Organizing, Structure, Frameworks, Governance, Data Architecture), Application Architecture – Solutions delivering information to the business (Application Portfolio, Application Data Mapping), Tecnical Architecture (Infrastructure dupporting the apps, and info environments)… There are slight variations on this.
If businesses, and/or government departments need to organize information at the enterprise level…. What is the business benefit? What are the enterprise goals that would make an organization see this as imperative?
Possible points of view could include Business Flexibility, Change Impact Analysis, the ECM virtues (Enhanced reliability, better decisions, maximize reuse)…
I am the converted, but it continues to be a tough sell in many areas, and not whisper of a thought in others. We need an ROI model. How to measure the Cost of not having EIA and how to measure the benefit of subscribing to it, which becomes a modus operandi vs a one time affair.