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Information Overload & Improving Intranet Findability

by Jeff Carr (September 29, 2010 - 1:44 GMT)

In this month's article on information agility (via CMSWire) we take a look at the so-called problem of information overload and how the real challenge lies in creating appropriate filters that improve findability. 

Information management agility is about being able to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time. But what if there's just so much information that we are caught in a battle trying to find the things that are relevant to achieve our goals? There is a way to get past this information overload and improve findability.

We’ve been hearing about the problem of information overload for years now. The exponential growth of information within our organizations is deemed as so problematic that it negatively affects employee productivity and ultimately results in increased levels of operational costs as a result of an inability to easily sift through it all.

Intranet platforms, like those built on products such as SharePoint, often result in the construction and proliferation of overly complex environments as more users come online and more information is added. A lack of information strategy and governance lessen our ability to mitigate the effects of the sheer volume of content and enterprise search, often seen as the silver bullet, fails to deliver on expectations derived as a result of user experiences acquired through the use of commercial search technologies such as Google.
 
The question is however, is it the abundance of the information that is the problem, or a general lack of maturity in approaches to designing effective organization and access mechanisms? In his presentation at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City, Clay Shirky referred to this idea as “Filter Failure”. He describes information overload as the normal case and that it’s not necessarily the quantity of information that’s the problem, it’s our ability to filter through what’s there that’s the real issue. He goes on to quote Yitzhak Rabin with saying that “if you have the same problem for a long time, maybe it’s not a problem. Maybe it is a fact.” Information overload has been around for a while now so perhaps it’s time we take a step back, regroup and look at it from a slightly different perspective.