The Information Supply Chain: Delivering the right information, to the right person, at the right time.
In this fast-paced, Blackberry infused culture, high level executives increasingly need the right information delivered at the right time; similarly, emergency responders need the right information delivered at the right time to succeed in missions. Often times, information flows across a supply chain of systems as opposed to an open, centralized, enterprise information management system. Boosting emergency response capabilities requires an understanding of this supply chain and the related supply chain principles to improve government performance.
Particularly in mission oriented operations, existing applications do not supply information to every stakeholder in an operation. Operations at headquarters can be significantly out of sync with operations at field units, and the centralization of information is not always feasible or necessary. Furthermore, for security reasons, information cannot always be centralized in a warehouse for collective access. As public organizations evolve with information technology, there is an increasing need for communication between these disparate information systems.
To address this issue, organizations should be prepared to investigate and analyze information management with a supply chain lens. As an example, in one organization, the focus may be on improving the accuracy of mission information as it moves from a set of field operators to central command. In this case, supply chain principles such as Six-Sigma, may be used to quantify the quality of information transfer from one location or person to another. In a different organization, there could be challenges in physically moving information from one system to another creating large cycle times. In this case, the analysis of cycle times in physical supply chains could be applied. The concept’s implementation would be tailored to each organizations’ mission and goals though the principle is the same.
To execute these investigations and analysis in organizations, leveraging supply chain management personnel is the obvious choice for improving operations. Concurrently, technical expertise from systems integration personnel and enterprise applications experts may be required to understand how disparate systems can better utilized or how they can plug into existing enterprise applications to improve the flow of information. The combination of the appropriate service professionals would help clients understand how information flows from end-to-end in their organizations.
At end, the idea of an information supply chains only provides the framework. To leverage this framework, organizations must have concrete strategies and objectives with respect to their missions so that the appropriate personnel are employed to complete the job. Stakeholders from the top and the bottom of organization must buy into the idea that end-to-end examinations of the information supply chains can greatly improve the quality and quantity of the data reaching key decision makers. This engagement of mission personnel can create a better, more holistic understanding of information while providing services that can improve their mission performance. In this day and age, front line personnel should be provided the right information at the right time.
