It takes a wide variety of skills to effectively
use information in today’s technology-enhanced work environment. Think
of the most skillful information user you know. Chances are he or she
can:
- clearly define a problem or question
- find and select information that addresses
it
- select appropriate information management
and analysis tools
- recognize and account for weaknesses
in both the tools and the data
- conduct analysis and interpret results
- communicate meaningful results to different
audiences
- be a discriminating consumer of information
produced by others
Take, for example, a program manager we
know in the welfare department. In the mid 1980s the welfare caseload,
as measured by individuals receiving benefits, was steadily dropping.
But the total cost of benefits kept rising. Since the benefit schedule
had not changed, something else was at work.
The manager began to look
for other ways to understand the data. She posed new questions, sought
out the detail underlying the standard statistical reports, and performed
some new analysis. It turned out that the number of individuals on welfare
was indeed dropping, but the number of households was rising sharply.
Those new welfare households were usually composed of a teenage mother
and one child—a social policy problem of important proportions. Once recognized
and understood, this information contributed to a welfare reform agenda
that is still underway today.
Like people, organizations use information
too. Huge agencies and small work units alike use information to design
programs, manage resources, make decisions, and evaluate services. Your
organization may want to create a full-scale internal data repository,
launch a Web resource for public use, or devise a new program evaluation
process.
If you’re lucky, you’ll have a full team
of program, research, management, operations, and technology experts.
But you may have to make-do with a smaller staff, perhaps with outside
consultants. Or, you may have to go it alone.
Regardless of the size and makeup of your
team, you have to do well the same things as the talented person you thought
about earlier, including:
- analyze a situation and identify the
problems it contains
- find, assess, and use information and
technical tools to address the problems
- produce and communicate a usable product
- evaluate the results
And unlike the lone information user,
you may have to
- manage a project that probably involves
many people from more than one organization
The
"big five" skill sets
Every project needs to put five kinds of skills to work. They
are hard to separate in practice, but they do represent distinct abilities
that are worth understanding:
- analytical skills
- information management skills
- technical skills
- communication and presentation skills
- project management skills
Analytical
skills
Analysis and interpretation skills are necessary at every stage
of an information project (or any project, for that matter). They start
with problem definition, the process by which an organization describes
current symptoms and uncovers the processes, policies, and practices that
are contributing factors. At this stage, process analysis, system audits,
stakeholder analysis, customer satisfaction surveys, performance reviews,
statistical trending, and similar activities are needed. They help answer
the question – "what’s really wrong here?"
In later stages, analysis of user needs,
business process alternatives, work flow, and information flow become
more important. Research into what other people and organizations are
doing to solve similar problems is also critical. These analyses help
you design and build the system or solution.
When a new system is prototyped, tested,
and implemented, the analytical skills of system users increase in importance.
Can they use the information in the system to perform analytical tasks
such as tracking cash flow from a financial management system, or caseload
dynamics in a welfare system? Do they know how the data were collected,
what its strengths, weaknesses, and quirks might be? Do they apply appropriate
analytical tools to answer the questions they and their leaders have about
the underlying program or process? Do they know when the data in the system
are not suited to their questions?
Information
management skills
People skilled in information management know how to treat
information as a valuable organizational resource. They know that its
content, quality, format, storage, transmission, accessibility, usability,
security, and preservation all contribute to its value. With so many factors
to consider, information management skills show up in many job types.
- Program managers and staff are likely
to have the skills and knowledge that ensure valid content, clear data
definitions, solid meta data, and many kinds of data quality.
- IT professionals have to be counted
on to create the formats, files, and databases that we use to represent
and organize information. They also handle the interfaces and security
features that assure both usability and integrity.
- Archivists and librarians are skilled
information managers, especially when it comes to classification, searching,
and preservation.
- Researchers often work with program
specialists to construct data definitions, design data collection processes,
and institute quality control measures. These activities ensure that
data are suitable for the analyses they have in mind.
- Many kinds of staff are involved in
developing and implementing mechanisms for information sharing among
agency staff and with other organizations.
Clearly, good information management demands
a wide array of competencies. Here are a few resources that cover some
of them.
Technical
skills
Depending on the type of problem your organization is facing,
higher order technical skills will probably be required to implement the
chosen solution. Many information use issues can be solved by:
- managing databases and the individual,
program, service, and other data they contain
- designing and implementing systems
that are compatible with the existing technical infrastructure
- developing user interfaces that make
it easier for users to find and use information
- transforming data from one system or
format to another so that it can be "fit for use" in new ways
- designing and administering networks
of computer systems
- creating data repositories that integrate
information from various sources for easy retrieval and wider use
It takes highly trained technical experts
to do these things. Some government organizations have enough of them,
but most do not. This is the skill set that you are most likely to have
to "buy" from private contractors. And when you make this purchase,
you need another kind of skill, contract and contractor management, to
make the best use of it.
We’ve found two useful guides to material
and training resources for some of these higher level skills. One focuses
mostly on data warehousing and the other
on knowledge discovery and data and Web
mining.
In the effort to craft a technically powerful
system, we sometimes forget that the technical skills of users can limit
its effectiveness. This is especially prevalent when the system will connect
to many different organizations. In the Homeless Information Management
System (HIMS) case, the new system needs to be used by scores of nonprofit
service providers, many of them small and unfamiliar with networks and
computers. A serious training effort will be needed to be sure that staff
in each of them can:
- operate a computer
- use e-mail
- use a Web browser
- manipulate word processing and spreadsheet
software programs
- manage electronic files
- understand basic security policies
and procedures
All of these are pre-requisites to understanding
and using the applications that HIMS will offer.
The California
State University Technology Training Guides are good online resources
to learn how to use basic office applications, create and publish a simple
web page, and perform other basic technical tasks.
Communication
and presentation skills
Throughout a project, you need to communicate its goals, progress,
issues, and results. Presentations about your project are an ongoing requirement.
You may need to meet with legislative or executive leaders to obtain initial
and continuing funding and support. Meetings with stakeholders can explain
how they will be affected and encourage their buy-in and participation.
Newsletters, e-mail lists, and formal reports are all ways to communicate
about a project.
Presentation skills extend to more than
preparing and delivering a talk, with or without visuals. They also comprise
the ability to take complex data and distill it into information that
is useful for a particular audience. In our projects on real property
services, the statewide accounting system, and the NYC intranet, workshops
generated thousands of individual responses to key questions. These needed
to be categorized, summarized, and turned into briefings that conveyed
the important facts without oversimplifying or drawing conclusions that
were beyond the underlying supporting data.
There are many good resources for becoming
a skilled presenter and communicator.
Project
management skills
We recently conducted a survey about the information strategy and management
skills that all government managers need in order to be effective. Project management was ranked
number one by both statewide and agency-level respondents. Why? The size, scope, complexity,
and cost of government projects that depend on IT present many risks for failure. These risks
can be better understood and managed, or even minimized or avoided, by applying finely honed
managerial experience.
Books, courses, and whole training businesses are devoted to
the topic of project management. Project management skills include the
ability to plan, organize, estimate and allocate resources, negotiate,
track progress, measure results, troubleshoot and, most importantly, to
communicate. Another way to think about project management is the way
you handle scope, time, cost, quality, and risk. No matter the size of
your project, these skills will be needed to guide the work to a successful
outcome.
Some well-regarded resources are:
Getting
the skills to do the job
No organization has the perfect mix of skills, abilities, and
experiences for every situation. Start by giving assignments to people
with the proper skills to carry them out. Or assign activities to those
who have the aptitude, desire, and responsibility to develop the necessary
skills. Skills can be acquired through training, mentoring, brokering,
contracting, or outsourcing. Consider these sources:
- Traditional classroom instruction:
Employees can take seminars, workshops, and classes on any number of
subjects. You can send staff to training centers, or have the instructor
come to you and provide a more customized lesson to a whole group. Hardware
and software vendors usually offer training and technical assistance
for their products – be sure you include these features in your contracts
with them.
- Computer-based training:This
growing trend is often a cost effective option, particularly useful
for structured topics. Participants can complete the lessons on their
own computers and at their own pace.
- Intranet or Web-based classes:These
can have the same features and benefits as computer-based training,
but their real value is in programs that add real time and off line
interaction among instructors and students.
- Learn by doing: Many people
learn best in a practical situation, as long as the situation allows
for the inevitable learning curve. When staff acquire a new skill this
way, an experienced mentor can make an important difference. Mentors
transmit the often tacit contextual knowledge that goes along with a
particular skill.
- Buy skills: You can also acquire
skills by hiring outside consultants, contractors, and vendors. Use
their expertise to supplement what already exists in your agency. Let
them do the work that you can’t, but add contractor management to the
list of skills you need to have in-house.
- Broker skills: Government agencies
are often in a position to help one another with specific tasks. Small
agencies can be assisted by larger ones with more diverse skills and
resources. Agencies can share vacant training slots, lend expertise,
and form peer review groups to help one another with unusual or risky
tasks.
Practical
Examples
Analytical
skills pay off
Bringing in the right
kind of analysis at the right point in the process helped the NYS
Department of Transportation’s carry out its new IT investment program.
The new method links investment decisions to agency goals and dollars.
As a result, project proposers have to link their ideas to business problems,
staff analysts compare proposals according to a common framework of required
information, and decision makers are responsible for choosing projects
that support programs and operations across the whole agency.
Finding
the story in the data
In the case of the state central accounting system, staff had to compile,
analyze, and interpret thousands of data points from 13 workshops
in order to find the most important user needs. Different
data collection and analysis methods revealed needs related to financial
management systems.
Managing
knowledge and information for the benefit of users
When the New York City Department of Information Technology
and Telecommunications took on responsibility for the City’s new strategic
information technology plan, it knew that much of the information that
would help agencies move toward their goals already existed. They just
couldn’t find it in any reasonable way. Their project to create intranet-based
knowledge repositories based mostly on information agencies already
have demands information management skills of many kinds.
Technically
complex projects demand serious technical expertise
The Kids Well-being Indicators Clearinghouse project presented
a number of technical challenges. The biggest was combining data from
the 13 member agencies of the NYS Council on Children and Families with
different standards and definitions into one Web-based information repository.
This task required team members
with strong technical skills in data analysis, database management,
and Web-based information access technologies.
Communicating
through a business case
The Division of Municipal Affairs in the Office of the State
Comptroller set out to change the way its regional offices interact with
local governments and each other in the Municipal Affairs Contact Repository
Operating System. The envisioned changes would rely on a very different
set of information rules and resources that would change everyone’s job.
This idea had to be "sold" to many people and units in the agency.
Would it be cost-effective? Would it result in better service? Would it
help local governments become more capable of managing their financial
affairs? To answer these and other questions in a coherent, convincing
way, the project team developed a complete business case and presented
it to agency leaders and staff alike. It was so successful in communicating
the goals, alternatives, and benefits that it has become a model for
other projects.
Recruit
the people who have the skills you really need to succeed
It takes a lot of different experiences, skills, and knowledge
to bring a project to successful completion. So when it comes to assembling
the project team, it’s important to recruit the right people at the right
time. The NYS Bureau of Shelter Services worked
hard to select people with in-depth knowledge of the data issues,
homeless services programs and providers, and state systems. These people
were tapped to work on various phases of the project when needed. The
Homeless Information Management System project succeeded in great part
because the right people were involved from the beginning.