The World Bank is a vital source of financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world. Their mission is to fight poverty and to help people and their environment by providing resources, sharing knowledge, building capacity and forging partnerships in the public and private sectors. The organization needed a metadata strategy to organize content and knowledge resources as well as integrate unstructured and structured information sources. The goal was to improve findability of content and allow for consistent integration of a variety of systems.
EIS completed a detailed review of multiple systems, applications and processes across the Bank through system analysis, walk throughs and user interviews. The EIS team developed a metadata strategy and roadmap that honored the authority of the enterprise taxonomy, and also met the needs of the Bank for user experience, content findability, and' Voice of the Bank'. The strategy made clear distinctions between metadata used for “aboutness” and for “flow” of content to specific “sites”. It built upon existing investments in controlled vocabularies and metadata , related to other taxonomies.
EIS helped the World Bank develop a detailed roadmap for success that detailed the required costs and resources to realize key benefits. The team prioritized remediation plans and quantified specific returns so the Bank could determine the appropriate plans and investments. EIS also assisted in creating organizational structures to enable sustainability and implement consistently over a multi year timeline.
