In today's computer-driven world, it's not how much data one generates that counts. It's the ability to take that raw data and give shape to it, so the information--even if it comes from multiple sources--can be applied successfully to meet a need or solve a problem. Information as Product: How to Deliver the Right Information to the Right Person at the Right Time provides proven techniques for optimizing data management and developing vital information products when and where they are needed.
"A vague understanding of consumers will produce a generic product that provides vague benefits (or hopes to provide benefits). So, the key point here is that you must have a desire to create information and not data. Since information is useable data, you must be able to answer: 'Useable to whom?' and 'How is it useable?… The value of information cannot be measured by its production, only by its consumption."
Created by author Michael Daconta, a former homeland security official and veteran IT expert, Information as Product examines a twenty-first century paradigm that focuses on information as consumer driven, explaining how what is most vital for companies is to create consumer-centric information products in the same way that physical products are produced, and to recognize that IT can learn how to do this by mimicking those industries and companies that successfully produce and deliver tangible products like automobiles and consumer electronics.
To create a process of reliable information production takes real-world experience--something that Daconta has in spades. He led the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) Data Reference Model (DRM) working group. In conjunction with the Department of Justice, he launched the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM.gov) to provide a reusable set of core XML components for rapid information exchange. He previously served as the Chief Architect on the Defense Intelligence Agency's Virtual Knowledge Base Project and also designed the SmartDoc® electronic mortgage XML standard for Fannie Mae.
Daconta tackles the age-old problem of how to deliver relevant information in real time--which means anywhere at any time. There is a dramatic example in Information as Product that brings the point of Daconta's book into sharp focus: The day was September 9, 2001, when a Maryland state trooper pulled over a motorist driving 90 miles per hour in a 65 mile-per-hour zone. The driver was Ziad Jarrah, a Lebanese national in the country on a tourist visa. The state trooper issued him a $270 speeding ticket and let him go. Unfortunately, the trooper was unaware that Jarrah had been questioned at the request of the U.S. Government in the Dubai Airport in January of 2000. Nor was he aware that Jarrah had attended flight school without adjusting his immigration status, or that he had overstayed his tourist visa. So even though the Trooper had the technical ability to receive such information, he was left unaware. "Unfortunately, as we all know by now," Daconta writes, "that Ziad Jarrah was the terrorist who two days later crashed United Airlines Flight 93 into a field in Pennsylvania."
Information as Product also explains the important role metadata plays, which is not, as some computer geeks define, simply "data about data." By providing effective techniques for metadata design, Daconta shows how metadata actually manages and improves the use of data, thereby turning it into a strategic information asset.
Information as Product: How to Deliver the Right Information to the Right Person at the Right Time is a must-read for IT professionals interested not only in understanding the importance of optimization of data in the present but the role data may play in our future.
Author Michael Daconta is the Chief of Enterprise Data Management for Oberon Associates, Inc. He is a well-known author, lecturer and columnist, with ten technical books, numerous magazine articles and online columns to his name. Daconta is the former Metadata Program Manager for the Department of Homeland Security, where he managed the DHS Metadata Center of Excellence. In that capacity he was selected into the "Federal 100" by Federal Computer Week magazine. His career has afforded him a unique blend of operational and technology experience. He earned his master's degree in computer science from Nova Southeastern University and his bachelor's degree in computer science from New York University. His books cover XML, XUL, Java, C++ and C. His previous book was The Semantic Web: A Guide to the Future of XML, Web Services and Knowledge Management.
For more information or to contact the author, visit www.outskirtspress.com/Daconta