Author Archives: BIR Journal

NHS White Paper

This week’s talking point comes from the government’s White Paper, Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS.

Full of messages about information, the document should excite all those whose role is concerned with information and knowledge management in the NHS today. Soundbites that warm the opportunistic heart include: ‘Putting patients first through an information revolution’; ‘A culture of open information, active responsibility and challenge will ensure that patient safety is put above all else’; and ‘The Department is committed to evidence-based policy making and a culture of evaluation and learning’.

Most importantly the White Paper highlights the need for an information revolution in the NHS. This heralds a vast improvement in the availability of comprehensive and accurate information on conditions, treatments, and lifestyle choices as well as the prospect of online communication between patient and practitioner.

One could be cynical about the chances of success in delivering such major organisational and service change but the principles in the White Paper adhere to the common sense thinking of Muir Gray, the first CKO for the NHS, and the vision driving the NHS Direct Online service. Although the information strategy for the NHS is scheduled for the year end, the implications of ‘Putting patients first’ suggest major changes in the way that library and information services are organised to deliver the published information and information management skills that evidence based practice and patient information access demand. These were previously highlighted by the Hill Report.

There is bound to be much angst over the prospects for change and a focus on potential threats to current library and information services. People involved in published information supply, in information literacy training and in practical application of knowledge management must respond to the White Paper with imaginative approaches to ensuring that the NHS has access to the information it needs and makes the best use of its own knowledge and experience. Cutting bureaucracy and administrative costs is a key message for the NHS but is not incompatible with the required level of excellence in information and knowledge related activity, without which the NHS service will be at high risk of failure.

Bad information!

A survey conducted by SLA and Dow Jones has confirmed what many information professionals have suspected – that bad information is bad for business. The survey found that the dangers of unreliable information on the free web include making bad business decisions, missing opportunities and wasting time double checking facts.

You can see the press release and the report here.

More ammunition the next time someone tells you there’s no need for information professionals in the age of Google!

The real value of high cost websites

Rory Cellan-Jones continues to uncover the costs of government websites in his blog. In his latest piece, he tries to unravel just exactly how a website (Business Link) can cost £35 million pounds a year to run.

Take some time out to read not just this article, but [some of] the many readers’ comments: from website developers who quote considerably less for the same work; from those who attempted to introduce freeware solutions inside government (to no avail) and those small-and medium-sized providers who lost out to the ‘big boys’ when bidding for government projects.

As we are all aware, the days of freespending on large projects should be well and truly behind us. In our September issue we will be publishing an article about cloud computing and its potential, not just to help organisations contain costs but also to help them build organisational capability.

A moment’s madness

I attended the excellent Library and Information Science Research Coalition conference at the British Library this week. The well designed programme enabled both audience participation and expert input from speakers. The one-minute madness strand really made an impression and demonstrated yet again that we should all be ready to share important messages in as punchy a way as possible (elevator speech anyone?).

Delegates used the opportunity to share information about their research interests and to find others who had similar interests or who could provide help and support. Most impressive was the ability of almost everyone to speak for exactly 60 seconds without the need for the Chair’s 2010 version of ‘the gong’ – the i-phone vuvuzela app – to hurry them along.

Lessons to be learned at the Department for Education

For those looking for an example of poor information management practice, how about the Department for Education’s announcement about the closure of QCDA?

The first thing you might notice is the poorly formed URL, one which surely won’t survive any future changes in the content management system.

Then you might realise that the PDF has been published with no metadata. In addition, it has been scanned but not OCR’ed so cannot be indexed by Google.

So much for the principles of open linked data!

Knowledge management and creativity

Gary Hamel, the author of Competing for the Future (and co-creator of core competencies) is featured on the BBC’s World of Business podcast this week. In his wide ranging conversation with Peter Day, Hamel suggests that organisations can ‘buy knowledge’ relatively easily these days and that they need to focus more on how they can attract and support the creative individuals that can give them a competitive edge.

Interestingly enough, in June we are publishing an article by Sara Smith and Scott Paquette that discusses the connection between knowledge management, chaos theory and organisational creativity and innovation. The article looks at how Pixar and Google support creativity, knowledge creation and innovation.