Why is information delivery so bloody hard?

Cri du coeur

Are you frustrated with how difficult it can be to find information? What makes this more irksome is that the vendor community seems to have just woken up to the fact that there's a lot of information 'out there' to manage. Translated, this means that some of the larger vendors have recently got their act together with information management solutions (IMS) technology. The rest of the world has dealt with the challenge since time immemorial.

In our company, no doubt like many others, we are collectively working on how to do a better job of storing, collecting and delivering information. But we are mere minnows in the information sea. What must information delivery be like for much larger and more complex organisations?

Having asked that very question recently, we know that most people think they spend too much time looking for the information they need to execute a task or make a decision. They don't know if they have found everything that exists pertaining to a specific question, and they don't always know if what they find is the latest or de facto version of what they thought they were looking for.

From where you're sitting at the coal face, you may or may not be feeling that an increased level of emphasis is being placed on information delivery from certain parts of the organisation. The current state of the economy may be placing new demands on what previously passed as a perfectly acceptable set of capabilities around getting information to people. Or not.

Ultimately, how well do you feel that the information needs of users are really being met? Put another way, when it comes to having a handle on information, is your organisation the equivalent of the weird kid with the perfectly neat and tidy bedroom, or the normal kid who has the entire contents of his cupboards and drawers on the floor - perfectly happy living in a pig sty, but forever winding his mum up because it takes him forever to get ready for church?

As usual, we'd love to know what all this means from your point of view. Wade in here.