Exploring information flows at Nottingham City Homes

International Journal of Information Management 33 (2013) 291–299

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International Journal of Information Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijinfomgt

Exploring information flows at Nottingham City Homes Alice Jones, Alistair Mutch ∗ , Néstor Valero-Silva Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom

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Article history: Available online 5 January 2013 Keywords: Information audit Information policy Public sector Housing

a b s t r a c t This article presents the results of an information audit carried out in a public sector organisation in the UK. The value of the exercise in raising otherwise hidden issues for action is confirmed. The lack of responsibility for information and the importance of context in conferring meaning were significant findings. The process was a catalyst for new thinking about the importance of information in crossfunctional working. Some limitations of the information audit process are considered, with emphasis on the need to be sensitive to context. The necessity of relating such tools to the broader literature on organisational politics is suggested, especially in the context of responsibilities for classifications. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The management of public services is increasingly looking at how overall social outcomes for a local area can be achieved through a range of public services being delivered to the population. For example, in relation to the provision of housing services, changes in such services can have important outcomes in other areas of service users’ lives, such as health improvement or crime reduction. Increasingly, there is recognition that the historic emphasis on internal efficiency measures in the measurement of performance needs to be balanced with wider measures of the outcomes of such services. Assessing such outcomes requires partnership working and sharing of information at both an internal and inter-agency level. However, the instigation of such processes often reveals problems with the definition, creation and maintenance of information, making it often either unavailable or unfit for sharing, even if other barriers to sharing, such as confidentiality, can be overcome. So, for example, in exploring inter-agency working to provide services for children in Sheffield, UK, Signoretta and Craglia observe that most agencies failed. To develop a policy for information (which is not the same as an IT policy) identifying how the use of information contributes to their organisational objectives, and on this basis then develop strategies and information management plans to achieve these objectives including a clear understanding of what information to share or disseminate, under what conditions, and for whom (Signoretta & Craglia, 2002, p. 72). In considering the nature of information policies, the work of Orna (1990, 2005) is central to understanding how information can

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 115 848 2429. E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Mutch). 0268-4012/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2012.11.012

be used to achieve strategic objectives. The policy setting process needs to start with the explication of business objectives, followed by an audit of the resources needed to achieve those objectives and those actually in place. As well as revealing gaps, such a process ‘can suggest wholly new developments which would not have become visible if each information activity were considered in isolation’ (Orna, 1990, p. 124). Her detailed examinations indicate the degree to which, in part because ‘information’ is conflated with information and communication technology (ICT), organisations lack awareness of the information they create; they may duplicate it, create barriers to sharing, and fail to provide definitions that would enable shared understanding. Orna’s work approaches the problem from the domain of library and information science; however, there has also been recognition (albeit partial and belated) from the information systems (IS) disciplines. Thus Earl’s (1988) original threefold division of what he termed an ‘information strategy’ actually paid no attention at all to the very nature of information, with the ‘information management’ dimension being concerned with matters such as IS project management. In correcting this omission in a later version (Earl, 2000) he added a dimension of ‘information resource management’, although this failed to address concerns about treating information as a resource (Eaton & Bawden, 1991). Orna notes with approval the work of Marchand and collaborators, whose notion of ‘information orientation’ had, she argued, ‘established the nature of the relationship between information use and business performance’ (Orna, 2005, p. 45). Closer examination of this work, however, indicates that it is developed at a very superficial level that does not account for the complexities of information use (Marchand, Kettinger, & Rollins, 2001a, 2001b). What we have is a relationship between the perceptions of senior managers about information practices in their companies and the perceptions of the same people about business performance. Whilst the authors argue that this means that the information practices cause the business performance, we could argue that if we were looking for causality

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it could go the other way, that is, because we are successful (in our perception) we must have successful information practices. Beyond pointing our attention to the consistency between senior managers’ perceptions (which might be of interest in its own right if perhaps predictable) the research turns out to tell us little about the causal link between information practices and business performance. One means of bringing to the surface such complexities is by exploring just what information is produced and shared in an organisation. This may then act as the foundation for building an information policy. Such is the approach outlined by Buchanan and Gibbs (1998, 2007, 2008a, 2008b) in a series of articles outlining facets of an ‘information audit’. Consideration of the practicalities and outputs of such a process lies at the heart of this article. Rather than outlining the nature of an information audit, the article embeds consideration of the various stages in the outline of how the methodology was used in practice. In order to achieve this, some detail on the context of application must first be supplied. Given what is known about the way information is embedded in its context of production and use, this is a vital first stage. The process undertaken is then outlined, starting with setting information in the context of the strategy of the organisation. A discussion of how processes and their associated information were selected and explored is given, followed by some key findings. This enables us to discuss our findings about the value of information audit in the context of organisational change. Our hope is that we provide a rich picture of application, which will provide guidance to others concerned with the lack of detailed consideration of information in organisational life.

2. Scope and methodology The information audit was carried out as part of a two year Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between Nottingham Trent University and Nottingham City Homes (NCH). The scope of the information audit was determined by the information issues pertinent to one of the organisation’s core functions, described in the following section to establish the context for the audit. NCH is an Arms’-Length Management Organisation (ALMO) established to run and maintain the social housing provision of Nottingham City Council. ALMOs were an initiative by central government to seek to introduce private sector management practices into housing provision (Pawson, 2006). They involved the removal of the functions of maintaining and operating housing stock from direct local authority control, through the mechanism of a multi-year management agreement. This still preserved the overview of provision in the hands of the local authority while giving greater freedom in operational matters to the ALMO. Nottingham City Homes was established as an ALMO in 2005 to manage the 29,000 houses owned by Nottingham City Council. ALMOs were established in a period of strong central government emphasis on performance management through target setting (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011). A bundle of performance targets were used to establish a ‘star’ rating for organisations, policed by an inspection regime under the Audit Commission. The aim was to use these ratings to force organisations to adopt new forms of management. Funding was tied to the achievement of these star levels, assessed against Key Lines of Enquiry including, for example, housing income management, tenancy and estate management, stock investment and asset management, value for money, resident involvement, access and customer care (Audit Commission, 2012). Measures of internal efficiency became particularly central in the delivery of a significant national programme of social housing improvement, known as the ‘Decent Homes’ programme, to be delivered by ALMOs. Recognising that much of the social housing stock in the country was old and not up to modern standards, central government in 2000 launched the

Decent Homes scheme. This set a number of standards for factors relating to the state of repair, safety and security, energy efficiency and modernity of facilities, against which to measure the modernisation of the housing stock. Funding for such modernisation was to be obtained through a process of competitive bidding. Part of such bidding was based on the assessment of the existing stock against the standards, thus establishing the need, but there was a clear aim to concentrate funding on those organisations able to demonstrate an ability to deliver. Here, the star rating became a proxy measure for the quality of internal management processes, with ALMOS having to achieve a two-star rating to gain access to funding. The immediate context for NCH was that it achieved a two-star rating in its inspection in 2008; while this was sufficient to access the Decent Homes funding, a key strategic aim was to increase this to a three-star rating, towards preserving funding and enhancing the degree of strategic manoeuvre such a rating would enable. The scale of the investment programme – totalling initial funding of £91 million and to include fitting replacement windows on 15,300 properties, improving heating in 19,700 properties, and fitting new kitchens in 17,000 and new bathrooms in 12,700 – meant that new processes for managing relationships with suppliers and information required for project management and monitoring were introduced, to successfully manage a project of this scale. The company knew, therefore, from its internal performance measurements that it was successful in implementation. However, NCH was also aware that relatively little had been done to evaluate the impact of such programmes nationally (Gilbertson, Green & Ormandy, 2006). As a report from the National Audit Office observed, ‘lack of data on these wider benefits means that it is not possible to identify the Programme’s true impact throughout its life’ (National Audit Office, 2010, p. 36). The ability to produce evidence about such impacts constituted, it was felt, a key element in raising its performance in future inspections but it was recognised that the current information systems were inadequate for the measurement of social outcomes. NCH thus sought to raise its performance to a new level by becoming known not only as an efficient ALMO, but also as one with expertise in evaluating the social outcomes of its work. As it transpired, the inspection regime was to be abolished, although the desire to build evaluation into organisational activities remained. This took the company into areas, such as crime and health, in which it lacked expertise; accordingly it entered into a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with Nottingham Business School. The overarching aim of the KTP project was to develop a capability to measure the impact of NCH’s Decent Homes programme on certain social indicators, and to embed such knowledge and practices into its decision making processes. The project took an action research approach to measuring outcomes, in which specific areas, such as the impact on crime, were examined. The learning was then monitored by regular project meetings and rolled over into further areas. A key learning point from the first pilot study under the KTP, investigating the reduction in burglaries following Decent Homes work, was that it revealed a number of weaknesses in internal information processes. However the pilot study also confirmed to the company the importance of such an evidence base; the evidence of a reduction in burglaries, a direct result of the higher security standards of the newly fitted windows as compared with unimproved stock in otherwise broadly comparable areas, was cited in housing debates in the UK Parliament, a factor to which is attributed NCH’s subsequent success in attracting continuing funding under conditions of financial constraint. In addition, the evidence had a direct impact on the strategic direction of further rounds of spending in pointing to the need for a replacement door programme. The value of this type of evaluation therefore confirmed the importance of further investigating the weaknesses in internal information processes revealed

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through the process, and an information audit was agreed as part of the KTP project. The scope of the project was therefore focused on the internal information relationship between the operational delivery team responsible for managing the Decent Homes programme, and the strategy team responsible for the ALMO’s business development. The audit was conducted based on the guidance given by Buchanan and Gibbs (1998). The first step undertaken was to identify the organisational context and process-based structure, through a review of key company documentation, e.g., business plans, strategy documents, and team plans. Doing so clarified the objectives of the organisation and each directorate, and provided an initial outline of the formal structure and processes. Secondly, interviews were conducted with members of staff from both teams regarding the processes/activities of their role, the information flow in relation to these processes, and the information resources used (Buchanan & Gibbs, 2007). The interviews were semi-structured, each lasting around 30–60 min, and were carried out with 12 members of staff from across the two teams including directors, heads of service, programme managers, and officers. Interviewees were asked about the processes and activities they undertook in their daily role, and further probed on their information needs, use and supply to other sections of the organisation. They were also asked to comment both on barriers to information flow and on good practice. Members of staff were asked to evaluate these information resources and highlight any issues or best practice. The final stages were to analyse and report on the findings, relating these back to the objectives stated above. The next stage in action research was to seek to implement the findings. To this end, an information policy workshop, facilitated by the university and attended by senior managers from across the organisation was held. The findings of the audit were presented and used to prompt discussion on key barriers to information flow. This workshop was then followed by a series of interviews with senior managers and a focus group of operational staff designed as part of the larger project of introducing outcomebased performance management. This article draws on some of the responses in this latter phase in so far as they shed light on the information audit, but the findings of the audit remain the main focus.

3. Information audit: process This background shaped the scope of the information audit. Davenport (1997) argues that seeking to map all aspects of a business is misleading and inappropriate. Rather, he suggests, businesses need to select a domain to map and ‘drive detail with usage’. In this case, the success of the evaluation project in showing what was possible and the centrality of evaluation to shifting the strategic aims of the organisation directed the focus onto the Decent Homes programme. That meant that the organisational focus was on two teams: one was the Decent Homes team responsible for contractor management and also the asset management strategy; the second was the Business Improvement and Development team. Reporting to the director for strategy and partnerships (the sponsor of the KTP), this latter team was set up in response to the demands for information generated by the inspection regime. However, that remit had grown such that the team’s practice was seen as central to understanding how information was used in the organisation. The first stage of the audit was to establish the strategic context. In addition to the changes brought about by a shift to ALMO status, it was also important to place the organisations activities in the broader social and economic context, given that the organisation remained a public service delivery agency. Nottingham is a city with

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a population of 306,700 in the English East Midlands (Nottingham City Council, 2011). It is a city with a wide economic base, although one in which manufacturing jobs in textiles and light engineering have progressively been replaced with business services. The city is the headquarters for major services companies such as Boots (retail), Capital One (financial services) and Experian (business and consumer information). This shift has brought prosperity to some yet has left the city with pockets of major social deprivation. Historically, many jobs in the city were too lowly paid for affordable housing and there was a legacy of poor quality housing stock thanks to the particular historical geography (Beckett, 2006). Accordingly, the city possesses a large number of council houses dating from different eras. The city council has been under the control of the Labour Party since 1989, giving the city a relatively stable political complexion, one committed to social housing. There has been a focus in the city on partnership working across agencies such as the police and health service providers, with the agency One Nottingham coordinating activities (and providing support to the KTP). Given this external context, the next phase was to review key company documentation. The examination of the three-year business plan covering the period 2010–2013 indicated that NCH had undertaken a number of significant service reviews to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its service delivery. This is particularly pertinent in the current economic climate, as NCH will be expected to make efficiency savings of 22% over the next two years in line with the reductions to funding to the City Council. NCH was therefore entering into a period where it was moving towards playing a more strategic role within the city in defining and contributing to wider city objectives. NCH was also developing its business model to achieve efficiencies and develop its offer in potentially new areas of the market (one of which might be offering evaluation expertise to other organisations). This implied that information would therefore increasingly be required to meet the needs of these developments, i.e., in providing information and evidence on NCH’s impact upon the city’s strategic objectives, and to identify and support business development opportunities. This overarching business plan was underpinned by supporting plans for the service areas, in which the importance of information was implied. For example, the Asset Management business plan noted that a key task was ‘Maintaining effective stock condition data and relevant attribute information within a suitable asset management database’. This was clearer in the plan for the BID team, which spoke of ‘Improving our information base’. However, what was significant was the fact that there was no link to plans about how this might be achieved; the organisation lacked any structure resembling an over-arching information policy. What it did possess was an ‘information strategy’, which declared that: There is a requirement to develop an IS strategy with clearly demonstrated links to the business strategy and associated business information requirements. The IS Strategy will then support the delivery of a more effective and business-focused ICT service. However, the problem here lay in the lack of links to the business strategy, in terms of the information requirements from a business perspective. In their place was a detailed information blueprint that laid out the key information entities. This was a high-level map of application systems. As in so many cases, the so-called information strategy was actually an information systems strategy. The review of paper strategies indicated a key gap in the definition of information requirements. These were implied in business plans yet were not specified, although taken for granted, in the IS delivery plans. Accordingly, the next stage was to examine the processes in more detail.

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Table 1 Decent homes team core functions and processes. Core functions

Description

Indicative processes

Stock condition surveying

Professional survey of all properties, covering health and safety hazards, energy efficiency, asbestos Delivery of work programme, managed by streams and delivered by partner contractors Procurement of goods and services for company, including capital projects Medium and long-term planning for stock management

Surveying and reporting findings

Decent Homes delivery Procurement Asset Mgt. planning

Notification of work Support in sourcing suppliers, producing invitations to bid, assessing bids and drawing up contracts Capital programme planning

Table 2 BID team core functions and processes. Core functions

Description

Processes

Performance management Business Improvement

Monitoring and reviewing company performance by team Implementing the quality management system across the organisation Understanding and responding to strategic developments in the housing sector, and local and national policy developments Engaging tenants and leaseholders, and providing opportunities for influencing and shaping the housing services

Annual business planning cycle Customer satisfaction surveying

Strategy development

Tenant and leaseholder Involvement

The first phase was to establish the core functions and processes of the two teams. Tables 1 and 2 indicate these, thus enabling overlaps to be identified. (The processes in the table are indicative only, for the sake of brevity; the set produced in the audit was comprehensive.) Having established these core functions and processes, based on an extension of the documents reviewed above – particularly the organisational charts that supplied an outline structure to frame the individual processes – the next stage was to explore information flows in greater detail. This was performed by means of detailed interviews. To understand the relationship among these processes revealed through the interviews, a map of the processes of the Decent Homes team, alongside processes where the Decent Homes functions interact with those of the wider Asset Management and the Business Improvement and Development teams, was constructed. The map indicates the critical pathways for the processes and their context with regard to other processes. The map is divided between aspects related to delivery and those related to the management of the programme. The process map was then overlain with details on information resources used in relation to each process, as shown in Fig. 1 in the appendix. Doing so provided additional detail about what information flows between the processes and how it flows, and indicated some of the key information resources facilitating these processes. Details on all information resources were included in a resource inventory log; it gave details of the purpose, context, format of and access to each resource, as well as feedback from staff on its importance, quality and utility (each category was awarded a score out of 5, where 1 is ‘very poor’ and 5 is ‘very good’). The creation of the resource inventory log, as well as the concept of scoring each resource against a number of criteria, was developed from the methods and case studies described in Buchanan and Gibbs (1998, 2008b). Three of the processes were selected for further examination in detail: 1. Project/contractor management. 2. Performance reporting/management. 3. Programme management. These three processes were chosen because they are the main points of interaction between the Decent Homes and BID teams, the

Information gathering

Area-based work with tenants, residents and local agencies

scope of this information survey. They were mapped to indicate, as advised by Buchanan and Gibbs (1998, 2008b), the information resource inputs, process owners and information outputs (A sample map is included as Fig. 2 in the appendix.) Tables, again following the format suggested by Buchanan and Gibbs, were drawn up, showing the purpose of each process, the activities involved, and any problems or difficulties with this process. Table 3 gives one example. 4. Information audit: findings From these tables, used to shape a report for further internal action, some underlying themes may be extracted. They emerge from what are often reported as problems with ICT-enabled systems, but which actually, on further exploration, turned out to be information issues. This feature surfaced in particular in connection with the core housing system. It was recognised as being central to activities, although a source of considerable frustration. Aspects relating to the system itself are considered below; however, when asked about the value of information, on the five-point scale noted above, users scored it at averages of: Importance: 5; Quality: 3.5; Utility: 2.5. When these low scores were explored certain important issues were uncovered. A simple example illustrates these. An interviewee explained how when entering or searching for the number of bedrooms

Table 3 sample results. Project/contractor management Purpose: Maintain the effective running of the Decent Homes programme, ensuring it runs to time, cost and quality requirements. Key activities: Oversee management of each stream of the programme against the planned work schedules Support partnership working with contractors and ensure they deliver contractual performance targets Handle issues raised regarding technical specifications or tenant relations (through management of Technical Officers and Project Liaison Officers) Problems/difficulties: Difficulties creating interfaces between operational software programmes Key databases that inform day-to-day activities (not web-based) so information is not real-time Information sharing across work streams is sometimes ineffective

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within each property within the system (a basic and fundamental item of information about the housing stock) “there might be four fields for number of bedrooms, so when I get prompted which field do you want to use for number of bedrooms, it seems counterintuitive to chose the field that’s spelt ‘BDZ’, but that’s what I have to do – and that’s only because I’ve been told”. This example indicated that there was no guidance on how such ambiguity might be resolved; there was no designated role with responsibility for providing such guidance. The consequence was that field selection was down to personal predilection, making the data held of no value for extracting information. Such a lack of consideration of the nature of the information collected led to significant gaps in information, gaps that were uncovered by the information survey. A key gap related to tenant profiles. Data were held on the main tenant, while that on household members was limited and unreliable. Of course, for operational purposes, main tenancy information was sufficient; in order to be able to respond to changing strategic objectives, it needed to be enhanced with data about occupancy. In addition, data on incomes and economic status would enable more finely tuned service provision. In this way, NCH was in a similar position to those organisations moving towards a customer orientation, where previous levels of data, gathered for operational purposes, proved inadequate (Day, 2003). In the NCH case, the problem was that data gathering activities were lagging behind strategic objectives. Despite the declarations in strategy documents, there was no process for relating changing strategies to new information needs. Instead, the latter tended to be driven by the needs of operational applications. In other areas, the survey revealed multiple and often overlapping information-gathering activities. Thus, for example, information on specific tenants or areas was collected by Tenant and Resident Officers, Housing Patch Managers, Decent Homes Project Liaison Officers, or contractors’ Tenant Liaison Officers; however, their information was neither shared nor collected centrally. For example, while contactors were in tenants’ homes delivering the Decent Homes programme, they collected valuable information such as up-to-date contact details and occupants’ disabilities, but did not have the resource or access manually to update the central housing management system with this information – which would be highly valuable to the rest of the organisation. Some of the information was gathered then not applied. One example was where data on scores for health and safety hazards were collected from property surveys to address repair issues, but overwritten with updated scores once the work was completed; the initial scores were not retained for future analysis. This meant, for example, that analysis of the change in health and safety ratings of properties before and after Decent Homes work could not be completed. In other cases, multiple requests for the same analysis and information from the Performance Team were made by individuals across the organisation because they lacked access to data stores. As one interviewee observed, “A lot of the statistics, profiling is done ad hoc and round the organisation; could we have somewhere where info is stored, updated, accessible?” This indicated a concern that there was no definition of what might be regarded as corporate information, available to all and intended for local purposes. While the boundaries between the two might shift in line with changing needs, there was no forum where these issues could be debated. However, underlying this issue was a deeper concern, related to the contextual, and potentially political, nature of information. As one interviewee put it, “In theory it would be best if we could interrogate the data directly – but need to be able to interpret it, so need the expert/specialist opinion.” That is, respondents were wary of sharing data externally because the information needed to be kept updated and its use and interpretation monitored. For example, the nationally reported performance measure for Decent Homes

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counted the number of properties meeting all of the criteria for decency; however, Nottingham’s choice to deliver the programme on an element-by-element basis (i.e., completing all of the windows across the stock, then the heating, etc., rather than taking a wholehouse approach) meant that this figure did not reflect the overall progress of the programme, as houses were not counted as ‘decent’ until the last element had been installed. Thus, officers responsible for the delivery of the programme were reluctant to share this figure without the necessary contextual interpretation, out of concern that the apparently high level of ‘non-decent’ properties would reflect badly on the department. These information issues came to light through analysing responses to what were often presented as system issues. Of course, this is not to claim that concerns about such systems did not exist. As is the case in many organisations, NCH, too, experienced a problem with the integration of data across numerous incompatible systems. For example, information in paper format (such as the dates entered onto Gas Safety certificates) is currently scanned into a system to be stored electronically; the information must, though, be manually updated in the central housing database. In the absence of integration at the application level, integration had to be carried out at the level of job roles, and access limitations often hindered possible integration. A case in point concerns the data stored on the project management system for capital programmes: it is not accessible to the Performance Team should they wish to gain access to information on core company KPIs, such as how many (and which) properties have received Decent Homes work. In this case, the data have to be extracted by a member of the Decent Homes team and emailed in a spreadsheet on a monthly basis to the Performance Officer. Training was also a problem in this regard, as specialist expertise on each system was needed for data successfully to be extracted and understood in context. This was particularly true for the core systems, which demanded, felt the interviewees, not only training, but also day-to-day use in extracting information effectively. Given that resource constraints and the operational effectiveness of these applications mean that the systems are unlikely to be replaced in the short to medium term, some form of intermediate decision-focused layer would be valuable. The survey also indicated that some of the problems attributed to either information or systems were actually related to the structure and nature of the teams involved. One core problem was the degree of physical separation, with the two teams being housed in buildings three miles apart. This meant that opportunities for discussions to promote mutual understanding were limited, giving rise to suspicion about motives for seeking information. As interviewees complained, “No one from that team contacts us, we don’t really engage with each other” and “I don’t think they understand what we do”. While these might be common complaints, the situation resulted in information requests not being prioritised for completion and delays in responding to information requests, because of a lack of understanding of what was needed and why. The information survey was effective in bringing to light some of these concerns. Addressing them, however, was problematic. In part this was because other pressures, especially in a business so dependent on competitive bids for external funding, constantly took priority. As Orna (1990, p. 50) observes, ‘As a rough rule, I have found that enterprises which employ qualified information professionals at junior management levels only are not likely to be suitable cases for developing information policies’. Recent NCH experience would seem to lend some support to this observation. The workshop that was eventually held, involving people in a range of roles across the organisation, was thought to be highly productive. Structured around Day’s (2003) framework of orientation, configuration and information and Orna’s (1990) thoughts on information policies, the event produced some concrete actions. In particular, discussion about the nature of

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access to information prompted by the survey results resulted in focused guidance on data protection. Consideration of information sharing informed the use of forthcoming software changes to develop a directory of expertise. Most significant, however, was the consideration of the legacy of target setting from the previous performance management regime and its impact on information use. A recent development was cross-functional management training; the incorporation of an information orientation to this was seen as a positive way to enhance a more cooperative working culture. Orientation here is used in the fashion explored by Day (2003), who relates it to values, culture and behaviour. However, the tension here was between putting a broader orientation towards information as meaning into practice and the powerful legacy of the performance management routines which had been inculcated by the target setting culture engendered by the previous inspection regime. In the words of one senior manager, reflecting on the whole project. I don’t think EMT’s [Executive Management Team] ever fully had that conversation about what that means for how we do business, the way in which we procure, the way in which we monitor and manage our performance. While the audit, that is, had been a catalyst for new ways of thinking, it still took place in a context in which information was broadly equated with data and the setting of key performance indicators. 5. Discussion Three areas for more general consideration emerge from the experience of surveying information use at NCH. One is to do with the process itself, the second with the absence of responsibility for information that the process revealed, and the third to do with the vital importance of context in giving information meaning. These factors remind us that information is not a technical matter, but something firmly embedded in a social and political context. This latter point is then further developed. Orna observes that audit is [A] very acceptable metaphorical use of the original accounting concept of accounting: an authoritative examination of accounts with verification by reference to witnesses and documents - particularly since “accounts” were originally oral, because the information audit depends greatly on face-to-face discussion (Orna, 1990, p. 44). However, this is to downplay the performative impact of our use of language. That is, terms are not neutral and technical, but produce particular responses. This has been at the heart of recent debates about the nature of the ‘Audit Society’, in which concern has been expressed at the spread of the term and its consequent effects in organisations (Power, 1997). Those effects include the shaping of organisational activities to meet the perceived demands of audit, resulting in the privileging of those activities that can be rendered in terms amenable to measurement. In the case of NCH the concerns could be expressed in more pragmatic terms, ones of suspicion and apprehension about the inspection activities of the Audit Commission. Although this body was abolished during the course of the research reported above, it was still judged expedient not to call the investigations an ‘audit’; rather, the term ‘information resource and process survey’ was employed. This is a reminder that information cannot be divorced from its context of creation. While the broad guidelines laid down by Buchanan and Gibbs are of considerable value in supplying a guide for action, they need to be implemented with sensitivity to the context. There is perhaps still a residual notion of information as simply a product to be counted

in some of the literature, perhaps derived from origins in the study of libraries, where the custody and classification of artefacts was historically important. A weakness of Buchanan and Gibb’s methodology identified by other users (Buchanan & Gibbs, 2008b, p. 159) was the ‘lack of instructional depth, particularly with regard to tools and techniques’. This was also identified in the implementation in this case; while the approach was helpful in identifying the importance of both information inventory and process-based flow analysis, there was less practical guidance on the ‘how’ of implementing the ‘identify’ and ‘analyse’ stages. In this case, the details provided through further case studies (Buchanan & Gibbs, 2008b) provided some of the detailed examples of tools and analysis methods on which the approach for this audit was based. The intention of this article is therefore partly to fulfil the need identified by Botha and Boon (2003, p. 37) that ‘more methodologies need to be tested in practice’. What was also important was the way in which the survey was carried out, with managers feeling that a university connected project had advantages over both internal staff and external consultancy. As one member of the executive team observed Getting people to commit to meetings and time, to think things through to bring them on, is always really really tricky in an operationally driven outfit. And the beauty of the KTP is by having university people that you’re working with and deadlines to that, is you’ve got that commitment. . .we would make it happen. There were other examples of where we were trying to do stuff internally, where you just couldn’t get that level of commitment. The lack of clearly defined responsibility for the nature of information was a second finding. While the IS strategy contained details of entities, they were in the language needed for the creation of databases. The information was restricted to the IT function in practice, and so would have had little meaning to operational teams even if available to them. What staff needed was practical guidance on core definitions, in order to engender commonality of use and thus higher data quality. This point raised important questions about the ownership of information. A lack of ownership leads to complexity, duplication and proliferation, with a lack of strategic overview of what the company needs to know and the coordination of information across systems. It suggests the need for appropriate governance of information, as opposed to information systems (Kooper, Maes and Lindgreen, 2011, p. 197). Finally, the question of context became clear. Resistance to sharing information was often grounded in a fear that it would be abstracted from its context and thus used improperly. As Kooper et al. (2011, p. 197) point out, the centrality of interaction is a distinctive feature of sense-making with information. As they note, ‘The property of “exchanging information” is not a property of statements, but an interaction of people, situations, and knowledge.’ This suggests that an information audit needs to be about much more than formal data definitions and has to tackle the difficult and complex problem of conveying context. The challenge here is that it is relatively easy to conceive of governance arrangements for the conventional resources possessed by an organisation. They fit within existing organisational arrangements and present clear and concrete problems for solution. By contrast, information, especially information conceived as the product of interactions, fits less comfortably. In the present case, it was all too easy to slide back into existing conceptions revolving around ICT strategy. This certainly enhanced those strategies, but fell far short of the vision that Orna and others project for the centrality of information in organisational decision-making. The information audit was a very useful tool in furthering the aims of the KTP, although Buchanan and Gibbs’ (1998, p. 46)

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caution that: ‘The scale of the exercise and associated resource requirements may make it impractical for organisations’ sounds an appropriate note. Such awareness worked well in the context of a specific project into which it had been built at the outset. Of more importance, however, was the difficulty in ensuring that the results were promulgated in effective organisational changes. Here, the assumptions from the library discipline about information as stocks and of a linear process from strategy to operations may be belied by both the pace of change and by broader issues of power and culture in organisations (Mutch, 1999). The very pervasiveness of information is a problem, as it becomes in effect everyone’s responsibility and therefore that of no one. Despite arguments that information professionals would be well placed to fill the need for information management roles, such roles do not sit comfortably in existing organisational patterns. Perhaps the need is to combine a focus on information audits and policies as useful enabling devices with broader insights from the literature on organisational change. Boland (1987, p. 377) argues that, ‘Information is not a resource to be stockpiled as one more factor of production. It is meaning, and can only be achieved through dialogue in a human community. Information is not a commodity. It is a skilled human accomplishment.’ If we accept this argument, then the challenge facing organisations is how to create the appropriate environment for debating meanings. In work on the implementation of an ICTenabled Product Data Management application in an engineering company, D‘Adderio (2004) displayed how it brought to the surface previously hidden distinctions in meaning. In her case, an Engineering Parts List, designed to unify and integrate design and production engineering proved only to present differences of interpretation. As she notes, ‘It follows that supporting the formation of shared meanings across the organisation is not simply about ensuring smooth information and communication flows across functions, but also, and most importantly, about integrating meaning structures’ (D’Adderio, 2004, p. 121). The challenge, of course, is that such meanings are bound up with the power that attaches to the creation of particular meanings. As Bowker (2000) has indicated, in the field of scientific endeavour, there is no such thing as raw data. He notes that ‘[I]n the field of science studies we have in general focused attention on what scientists do with data, rather than on

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the mode of data production and storage’ (Bowker, 2000, p. 661). He notes here that the vital processes of taxonomic classification are granted rather low status yet are of vital importance in endeavours such as the mapping of biodiversity, ones that increasingly rely on large bodies of data. Such an observation is redolent of Orna’s (1990) observations about the low status attaching to works of editing and classification in the organisations she studied. To take one specific example: there is considerable difference between the definitional work needed to construct fields in an ICT-enabled system and that attached to the derivation of meaning. However, the first is attached to a specific organisational function, while the latter is often taken for granted. In such a circumstance, it becomes possible, by default, for technical definitions to subsume broader meanings. Bowker’s insights into the politics of data help to draw such matters to our attention; aligning them with the practical guidance on the conduct of information audits might be one way of addressing these complex issues. 6. Conclusion Our aim in this article was to provide a detailed account of one experience of the use of an information audit, with a view to informing others and assessing the value of the technique. We affirm the value of the approach, but recognise the challenges. One challenge for us was the simple notion of an ‘audit’, which had negative connotations in our context. The findings from our ‘information resource and process survey’ were of greatest value when seen as part of a process of engaging with key stakeholders, helping us to raise a number of otherwise hidden issues. However, this in turn brought us up against barriers relating to existing organisational roles and responsibilities. Finding ways of building consideration of information, as opposed to information technology, into these remains a major challenge. Acknowledgments Our thanks to all those members of NCH staff who participated in the information survey and associated activities. In particular, thanks to Steve Hale, Assistant Director for Asset Management, for his constant support of the Partnership.

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Appendix. Sample process maps

Fig. 1. Information flow map.

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Fig. 2. Project/contractor management information map.

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