Chapter 3 – Data and knowledge Management 

How ya going

This blog will talk about data and knowledge management.

All businesses have data. They must ensure that their data is of high quality. That is, it must be:
- accurate
- complete
- timely
- consistent
- accessible
- relevant
- concise
On top of these, a business' data is increasing exponentially. This means that it is crucial that data is managed. To manage data effectively, a business must always update its data, manage different sources and secure its data.

Data governance refers to an approach to managing information across an organisation. Mast data management is a strategy of data governance and allows organisations to store, maintain, exchange and synchronise its data in a consistent, accurate and timely fashion.
A great way to manage data is through databases, which have changed throughout the past half-century, starting with storing in many places evolving into the mainframe database approach. The move to databases reduces data redundancy, isolation and inconsistency. Databases also maximise data security, integrity and independence.
When designing a database, a data model is helpful, outlining an entity and its relationships. Attributes of a relationship can be primary and secondary keys).

Database management systems, or DBMS), are a set of programs providing users with tools to add, delete, access, modify and analyse data. A relational database is the most popular architecture and is used by employees

A data dictionary defines the necessary format to enter data into a database. This creates standard definitions for attributes and provides data resource inventory for effective management. A way to continuously improve this is by normalisation, the process of streamlining a database's design. This helps streamline complex groups of data, minimise redundancy and maximise integrity.

Now on to an overview of knowledge management. Knowledge is contextual, relevant and useful information in action. There are 2 types of knowledge:
- Explicit knowledge, which is objective, rational, technical and documented, and can be distributed or transformed into a strategy
- Tacit knowledge, which is a cumulative store of subjective or experiential learning, and is personal, imprecise and costly to transfer

Knowledge management helps organisations manipulate important knowledge part of the organisation's memory. Knowledge management systems use IT to systematise, enhance and expedite intrafirm and interfirm knowledge management. It uses the best practices as the most effective and efficient ways of doing things.

 

Reference from:

Management Information Systems 1st Edition

Gray, H., Issa, T., Pye, G., Troshani, I., Rainer, R. K., Prince, B., & Hugh J. W. (2015). Management information systems. John Wiley.