Information Management

Information management studies data as a governed organisational asset: ownership, quality, life cycle and accessibility of data, independent of the specific system holding it. The field asks what information is needed to support a decision, before any system is discussed.

FM generates and consumes large volumes of data — condition, consumption, contract, ticket — spread across multiple systems that rarely talk to each other. Without information management, every new system becomes its own island, and the question 'what is the single truth here' stays unanswered.

• Who owns this data element, and who is authorised to change it?
• Is this data current enough to base a decision on, or is it a snapshot being read as continuous?
• Is there one system of record per data type, or do multiple systems compete for the same truth?

• DAMA-DMBOK (Data Management Body of Knowledge) — the generic framework for information management.
• ISO/IEC 38505 — governance of data.

• A CAFM implementation without prior information management repeats the data chaos inside a new system.
• Data ownership must be assigned to a role, not to a system administrator.

• CAFM & Information Management

• Data quality management and master data management

• Regieorganisatie — managing organisation / intelligent client function

  Multiple suppliers with their own systems increase the risk of conflicting sources of truth; oversight must enforce a single version of truth.

• ISO/IEC 38505-1:2017 (data governance); DAMA-DMBOK (industry framework, not an ISO standard).

The standards section arrives in Part 7.

• Information management confused with IT system administration: the former concerns meaning, ownership and quality of data, the latter technology and infrastructure.

The rise of AI applications in FM dramatically increases dependency on data quality, because a model does not correct errors in source data but amplifies them; information management thereby becomes a precondition for AI, not an add-on to it.

• DAMA International, DAMA-DMBOK2.
• ISO/IEC 38505-1:2017.