Information Overload: The Impact of Too Much Data

Capstone Seminar

for

Master of Applied Science

Information and Communications Technology

Michael Reese

University of Denver University College

January 28, 2015

Instructor: Holger Weinhardt

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Abstract

Information overload has been an intrinsic condition of the human experience since the advent

of communication. As new mechanisms for collecting and analyzing data have evolved, so too

has man’s appetite for more information. In conjunction with the easy availability of

information to a broader audience, the incidence of information overload has increased. In

addition, the explosive growth rate of information and the value of information to the success

of businesses, have both contributed to that increase which affects individuals, enterprises, and

governments. This paper investigates the implications of unfettered data growth, evaluates the

effect information overload has on organizations, and considers what steps organizations

should take to remain competitive in the rapidly changing world of the digital universe.

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Contents

Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ ii

Project Definition ...............................................................................................................................1

Introduction ...................................................................................................................................1

Project Foundations ...........................................................................................................................3

The Value of Information .................................................................................................................3

Enterprise Data Growth ...................................................................................................................6

The Issue with Too Much Information...............................................................................................9

Analysis Approach and Results ......................................................................................................... 11

The Analysis .................................................................................................................................. 11

The Results ................................................................................................................................... 12

The Problem of Information Overload .......................................................................................... 12

Dealing with Information Overload.............................................................................................. 14

Case Studies……………… ............................................................................................................... 16

Discussion and Recommendations.................................................................................................... 22

Discussion .................................................................................................................................... 22

Recommendations ........................................................................................................................ 26

References....................................................................................................................................... 29

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Project Definition

Introduction

Information has become the mainstay of most enterprises in today’s business world. It

drives business value by reducing risks and costs, and increasing competitiveness and customer

interests. In addition, people have an instinctive need to know, to uncover new information

from which to glean knowledge. Laurence Sterne, an Anglo-Irish novelist and clergyman from

the 18th century, described this relentless pursuit when he stated, “the desire of knowledge,

like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it” . Modern technologies have

enhanced man’s ability to gather, store, and share information at prodigious levels that show

little sign of abating. We now live in a digital universe, completely surrounded by, and wholly

dependent on, immediate and accurate access to information from a plethora of sources.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) is a premier provider of global market

intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications,

and consumer technology markets (IDC 2014). Since 2006, they have conducted an annual

study, in conjunction with storage provider EMC, that quantifies and forecasts the amount of

data produced annually throughout the world. Their most recent report is both informative,

and potentially alarming for businesses and individuals. It predicts that the volume of

information is growing at an exponential rate that they consider to be “doubling in size every

two years” (EMC 2014).

The result of this proliferation of information is a phenomenon known as information

overload. Alvin Toffler originally coined the term in his 1970 book Future Shock, which

“examines the effects of rapid industrial and technological changes upon the individual, the

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family, and society” (BarnesandNoble.com, s.v. “Future Shock,”

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/future-shock-alvin-

toffler/1100191736?ean=9780553277371 [accessed July 20, 2014]). It occurs when people

must cope with more information than they can easily process, which psychologist recognize

more accurately as “cognitive overload” (Tartakovsky 2013). Gleick writes,

Our world is built on the science of information theory, created by engineers and mathematicians in the 1940s, but hard on the heels of information theory have come "information overload", "information glut", "information anxiety", and "information fatigue". This last was recognised by the Oxford English Dictionary in 2009 as a syndrome for our times: "apathy, indifference, or mental exhaustion

arising from exposure to too much information, especially (in later use) stress

induced by the attempt to assimilate excessive amounts of information from the media, the internet, or at work". (Gleick 2011)

For enterprises, information overload translates into a loss of productivity, a surge in employee

anxiety, increased business risk and costs, and an increase in IT investment to manage the data

controlled by the organization. In addition, information overload, or the pressure of dealing

with the glut of corporate information, will affect corporate strategy. Hemp (2009) describes

research that “suggests that the surging volume of available information—and its interruption

of people’s work—can adversely affect not only personal well-being but also decision making,

innovation, and productivity”. This increases the need for organizations to develop and

implement a data governance plan that will aide them in managing current, and future data

stores. Such a plan will allow enterprises to define the data that can best support the strategic

goals of the organization, and assist them in their efforts to combat the incidence of

information overload, and to maintain their strategic competitiveness.

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Project Foundations

The Value of Information

In business, information is data defined as being:

1. accurate and timely

2. specific and organized for a purpose 3. presented within a context that gives it meaning and relevance 4. can lead to an increase in understanding and decrease in uncertainty

(BusinessDictionary.com, s.v. “information,” http://www.businessdictionary.com /definition/information.html [accessed July 7, 2014])

The advent of technological advances has resulted in a massive increase in the amount of data

businesses must process. As a result, organizations, through necessity, must deal with

numerous data sources and data types (emails, RSS feeds, social networking posts, etc.) that

may reside within a number of different organizations or teams. As Isson and Harriott (2013)

denote, “getting data to inform strategic decisions that cut across departments and data

sources can sometimes be a painful process for executives”.

In today’s rapid, constantly changing business environment, enterprises need “a steady

flow of fully-integrated, actionable information about all key business areas, including

production, customer service, supply marketing, sales, and HR” to remain competitive (ACM

Digital Library 2014). In addition, the ability to access and analyze this information quickly is

critical for the successful fostering of innovation needed to gain that competitive advantage.

Often, the success or failure of an organization is dependent on its ability to obtain, analyze,

and make decisions from numerous sources of information. That some of these decisions are

based on fact, and some on personal experience and capability, is a situation that concerns

many CIOs and CEOs (Bhatt and Thirunavukkarasu 2010).

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Advancements in technology have, in some cases, helped to facilitate the management

of information, and many enterprises have

made significant investments in

information management technologies.

The IDC digital universe study from 2011

found that, while the cost per gigabyte has

decreased significantly, enterprise

investment in information technologies have risen; a trend that is projected to continue in the

future (Gantz and Reinsel 2011). According to the IDC report, “enterprises are finding new

sources of data, new ways to analyze data, new ways to apply the analysis to the business, and

new revenues for themselves” (EMC 2014) aimed at adding more value to the organization. In

addition, the report claims that “before organizations can begin to turn the promise of the

digital universe into reality,” (EMC 2014) organizations must implement several initiatives, key

among them being an improvement in the use and management of data warehouses, along

with the application of data analytics at all levels of the organization. Survey data produced by

Pricewaterhouse Coopers supports this premise in finding that 44% of respondents viewed

business analytics as their primary initiative for 2014 (PwC 2014). Such findings as these clearly

highlight the value of information management and business intelligence to the viability of the

enterprise.

The demand for ever-faster systems that process information to enhance business value

escalates the increased focus on advanced analytics. A 2010 survey conducted by the MIT Sloan

Management Review and the IBM Institute of Business Value produced the following:

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The use of business information and analytics differentiated top performers over

their less successful peers.

Top performers were twice as likely to use analytics to guide future strategies.

Successful organization use analytic insights more frequently in guiding day-to-

day decisions.

Decisions based on rigorous analysis

were twice as prevalent in top

performing organizations as in those

that were less successful. (LaValle et al.)

This increased reliance on business information has led to the rise of big data methodologies,

and a need for better analytical tools such as “data visualization . . . process simulation . . . text

and voice analytics, social media analysis and other predictive and prescriptive techniques”

(LaValle et al. 2010). These techniques and methodologies are becoming increasingly more

important as the volume of data continues to grow.

Enterprises, much like individuals, are enamored with information – with uncovering the

unknown and getting to the “truth” of things . In addition, numerous sources in both academia

and the popular media tout the value that information, and information technology, has in

gaining and maintaining a competitive business advantage. In an interview for TDWI, Swoyer

quotes McKnight’s assertion, stating,

"Information is only growing in importance for companies. We thought it was pretty important five years ago, but now we're seeing [its importance] in the way

organizations are aligned -- or realigning [themselves]," he says.

"[These companies] have different information management groups and central

information management groups, and it's hard to imagine any application that

Source: LaValle et al. 2010.

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isn't revolving around the information it manages, that it serves, [and] that it

distributes to users." (Swoyer 2013)

However, information alone is not enough. Buytendijk (2010) suggests that companies

can increase the value of their information by sharing information with their customers,

“turning [their] customer base into a community” (Buytendijk 2010), enhancing the information

via interpretation, and by implementing a pricing model that is consistent with the immediacy

of the information.

Enterprise Data Growth

The 2014 digital universe report estimated that the volume of data throughout the

world would exceed 44 zettabytes (ZB) by 2020 (EMC 2014). That is equal to 44 trillion

gigabytes. To put that into perspective, if one gigabyte is equal in volume to an 11-ounce coffee

cup, a zettabyte would be equivalent to the entire Great Wall of China. To relate that to the

expected volume of data of 44 ZB, consider that “the most popular new smartphones today

have 32 Gigabytes (GB) or 32 x 230 bytes of capacity. To

get 1 ZB you would have to fill 34,359,738,368 (34.4

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billion) smartphones to capacity. If you put 34.4 billion Samsung S5’s end-to-end (length-wise)

you would circle the Earth 121.8 times” (Oulixeus 2014). While that number is comprised

primarily of content created by individuals, such as pictures , tweets, Facebook posts, and

watching TV, enterprises are responsible for approximately 85% of it (EMC 2014).

Along with the explosive growth of data, our capacity to store information has also

grown, at nearly the same exponential rate. In 1985, the typical disk drive was capable of

storing a mere 5 MB of data. Ten years later, capacities had increased by a factor of 60, to 120

MB. Over the next decade, that number rose to 40 GB, and today, capacities have grown to

more than 6 TB per disk (Hutchinson 2011). During that time, “the average cost per gigabyte fell

from $437,500 in 1980 to $0.05 in 2013” (McLellan 2014). Expectations are that these

capacities will

continue to increase as new technologies extend the life expectancy, and usefulness, of the

traditional hard disk drive. Adding to the proliferation of data within the enterprise is the

adoption of new, more affordable storage technologies such flash storage, optical disks, and

Definitions Estimations

Gigabyte: 1024

megabytes

4.7 Gigabytes: A single DVD

Terabyte: 1024

gigabytes 1 Terabyte: About two years’ worth of non-stop MP3s. (Assumes one megabyte per

minute of music)

10 Terabytes: The printed collection of the U.S. Library of Congress

Petabyte: 1024

terabytes 1 Petabyte: The amount of data stored on a stack of CDs about 2 miles high or 13

years of HD-TV video

20 Petabytes: The storage capacity of all hard disk drives created in 1995

Exabyte: 1024 petabytes

1 Exabyte: One bill ion gigabytes

5 Exabytes: All words ever spoken by mankind Source: Data from Haggar 2011, table 1.

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cloud storage services. That many of the key industry leaders—such as Microsoft, Amazon, and

Google—back the growth of cloud technologies helps to hasten the adoption of those

technologies within the enterprise as well (McLellan 2014).

However, for enterprises, the problem extends beyond just sheer numbers – it also

entails the handling and management of the data. The 2011 IDC study noted that “less than 1/3

of . . . information . . . can be said to have at least minimal security or protection” (EMC 2011),

and that only one-half of the “information that should be protected is protected” (EMC 2011).

In light of several, high-profile corporate security breaches of late, the implication is that the

predicted increase in data volume over the coming decade will only exacerbate the problem.

Additionally, Mason suggests that organizations are obligated to protect the information they

process, and contends that the “ethical issues involved are many and varied” (1986). Even so,

he considers the following four items in particular as being worthy of special attention:

Privacy: what information about one’s self or one’s associations must a person reveal to others, under what conditions and with what safeguards? What things

can people keep to themselves and not be forced to reveal to others? Accuracy: who is responsible for the authenticity, fidelity and accuracy of

information? Similarly, who is to be held accountable for errors in information and how is the injured party to be made whole?

Property: who owns the information? What are the just and fair prices for its exchange?

Accessibility: what information does a person or an organization have a right or a privilege to obtain, under what conditions and with what safeguards? (Mason et al. 1986)

Though Mason posed those questions over twenty years ago, they are still relevant in

today’s digital universe. In the 2014 digital universe study, IDC identifies the Internet of Things

(IoT) as the fourth “major growth [area] for the digital universe in modern memory” (EMC

2014). Indeed, the advent of IoT—“the migration of analog functions monitoring and managing

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Source: Nikravan 2011)

the physical world to digital functions involving communications and software telemetry” (EMC

2014)—will only increase the burden on organizations to store, analyze, and protect

information from a multitude of additional sources generated in various file formats and types.

The Issue with Too Much Information

“A majority of workers in every market — 62

percent on average — admitted that the quality

of their work suffers at times because they’re

unable to sort through the information they need

fast enough. Further, 52 percent of professionals

surveyed reported feeling demoralized when

unable to manage all the information that comes

their way at work” (Nikravan 2011). A survey of 1,700, white-collar workers from five

industrialized countries found the following:

1. A majority of those surveyed stated that the information handling demands of

their jobs had increased in recent years.

2. “Between one third and one half” of the information they processed was not

important to their jobs.

3. They lacked adequate resources to prioritize the information found via search

engines. (LexisNexis 2010)

One of the conundrums for knowledge workers today is the expectation of being informed.

Technology advancements provide us with a myriad of resources for staying abreast of new

information, while “we are simultaneously and compellingly confronted with the impossibility

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of ever being fully informed, . . . at the very moment when we are told that being informed is

more important than ever before to our livelihood, our security, and our social lives”

(Andrejevic 2013).

Another challenging factor is an observation regarding the amount of information an

individual can retain or process. In 1956, Princeton

Professor and psychologist George A. Miller

published an article in which he describes “some

limits on our capacity for processing information”

(Wikipedia 2014). Known as Miller’s Law, “it is

often interpreted to argue that the number of

objects an average human can hold in working

memory is 7 ± 2” (Wikipedia 2014). While some consider this pronouncement more of a rule of

thumb than a statement of scientific fact, what they do not dispute is that each person has a

limited capacity for processing information (BusinessDictionary.com, s.v. “Miller’s Law,”

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/Miller-s-Law.html [accessed July 28, 2014]).

Dean and Webb (2011) contend that this is especially true for senior executives who

desperately require “uninterrupted time to synthesize information from many different

sources, reflect on its implications for the organization, apply judgment, make trade-offs, and

arrive at good decisions”. This surfeit of interruptions and distractions leads to increased

pressures, and a need to multitask, all of which are key factors that cause information overload

(Spira 2011b).

Source: John Nosta, Forbes.com, June 13, 2013.

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Experiments conducted by Buser and Peter (2012) on multitasking found that

“multitasking significantly lowers performance as compared to a sequential execution”, and

that “the costs of switching [tasks], which include recalling the rules, details and steps executed

thus far, outweigh the benefit of a ‘fresh eye’” (652). A survey of the literature on multitasking

by Otto et al. asserts,

The research that has already been collected through experimentation was found to have four main topics that were consistent through all the articles. These include the capacity one has to effectively carry out tasks, multitasking can both increase and decrease productivity, time management is more effective than multitasking, and the higher one climbs in the management structure the

more tasks there are to complete, which leads to an increase in multitasking.

(Otto et al. 2012)

The above references exemplify the impact that information overload can have on

individuals, and on the organizations for which they work. Failure to assimilate all of the

information needed to function manifests within the organization in poor decisions, a lack of

innovation, missed opportunities, and errors, which can influence an organization’s bottom

line.

Analysis Approach and Results

The Analysis

Determining the impact of information overload on the organization requires that one

first understand what information overload really means, its symptoms, and the effect it has on

the individual. This is pertinent to the organization because anything that affects the well -being

and productivity of the individual will have a direct impact on the business . A survey of

academic and popular sources resulted in a wealth of discourse on all three topics, however

what was less evident were documented case studies detailing how effective information

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overload remedies were at mitigating the problem within the enterprise. One speculation for

this is that, even though the impact of information overload on the individual is well researched

and documented, the affect it has on the enterprise varies depending on a number of disparate

factors. Hence, the specific technique for alleviating the problem must remain unique to each

individual organization and situation. However, such techniques must be grounded in a set of

generalized options applicable to all organizations.

Becker proposes another possibility for the paucity of solutions for managing

information overload in the enterprise. One conclusion she drew from her research was that,

“while Information, computer and communication technology companies (IC3T) advertise we

are just one product away from nirvana; . . . [her] study shows some technology based

solutions have actually exacerbated the problem, driving us deeper into the information

overload abyss” (Becker 2009). In addition, she considers the problem from a systems theory

approach, and suggests that Russell Ackoff—an organization theorist and a pioneer in

management education—was correct in believing that “the key is not in finding the right

solution, [but rather] in uncovering the real problem” (Becker 2009). Nonetheless, this paper

presents a few examples of empirical data that provide some insight into the role that

management has in mitigating the impacts of information overload within the organization.

The Results

The Problem of Information Overload

Information overload—or more accurately, the inability to process all of the information

from an over-abundance of information sources—is not a new problem, but rather one that

dates back to Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. Burke (2002) goes into detail about

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the problem, quoting Tennant’s description of the aftermath of Gutenberg’s invention, noting

how information would spread “in unprecedented amounts and at unprecedented speed”.

Edmunds and Morris (2000) describe how the invention of the telegraph and the telephone

changed the way business was conducted. Moreover, the Schumpeter Blog, in a 2011 issue of

The Economist, noted,

The Victorians fussed that the telegraph meant that “the businessman of the present day must be continually on the jump.” And businesspeople have always had to deal with constant pressure and interruptions—hence the word “business”. (Schumpeter 2011)

Numerous references exist about the problems that stem from having to cope with too

much information. The Schumpeter Blog further describes three main worries caused by

information overload “at a time when companies are trying to squeeze ever more out of their

workers” (Schumpeter 2011):

Information overload can make people feel anxious and powerless .

Overload can reduce creativity. Overload can make workers less productive (Schumpeter 2011).

In addition to the detriments that information overload can cause, the situation is even

more insidious because it does not manifest as a single problem. Spira states, “it must be seen

as an amalgam of multiple problems and issues”, which he outlined as email overload,

unnecessary interruptions, the need for instant gratification, and the perception that

everything is urgent (Spira 2011b).

Hemp (2009) reports, “Researchers say that the stress of not being able to process

information as fast as it arrives—combined with the personal and social expectation that, say,

you will answer every e-mail message—can deplete and demoralize you”. In addition, he

further notes that interruptions—such as responding to a new email or an instant message—

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took most workers an average of “24 minutes to return to the suspended task”, a situation Intel

researchers say cost that company $1 billion annually (Hemp 2009). Research by Spira supports

Hemp’s claims regarding the financial impact of information overload, and he presents these

additional statistics:

A minimum of 28 billion hours is lost each year to information overload in the U.S.

Processing 100 emails can occupy more than half of a worker's day.

58 percent of government workers spend half the workday filing, deleting or sorting information, at an annual cost of almost $31 billion dollars.

66 percent of knowledge workers feel they don't have enough time to get all of

their work done.

94 percent of those surveyed at some point have felt overwhelmed by information to the point of incapacitation. (Spira 2011a)

Eppler and Mengis (2004) surveyed the topic of information overload across the

disciplines of organization science, accounting, marketing, MIS, and consumer research with the

intent of identifying “similarities and differences among the various management perspectives

and show to what extent they have discussed information overload”. Their research did not find

much evidence of interdisciplinary work on the subject, and their conclusion was that such

collaborations would result in better coping solutions for both individuals and organizations .

Nonetheless, they determined that the primary causes of information overload resulted from

two main factors: “information processing capacity (IPC)—which is . . . influenced by personal

characteristics—and the information processing requirements (IPR)—which are often

determined by the nature of the task or process” (Eppler and Mengis 2004).

Dealing with Information Overload

Much of the existing literature on information overload contains suggestions for how to

cope with this ever-increasing problem. However, most of those suggestions offer corrective

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actions that pertain to the individual rather than the enterprise. One documented approach

suggests that one should

decide what is most important for themselves;

restrict oneself to a minimum set of resources that are effective;

disconnect from information sources when feasible;

allow oneself to delete information that is of no value;

use time management principles to control one’s connectivity (Managing

Information Overload 2009).

From Savolainen’s perspective, there are two main strategies for coping with

information overload: filtering and withdrawal (2007). Savolainen described filtering as the

process of systematically weeding out useless information sources from those that have merit,

and withdrawal as a way to keep “the number of daily information sources at a minimum”

(Savolainen 2007). McCafferty suggests practicing “information triage” – that is, sort

information by importance rather than the medium, being explicit about how others should

best communicate with you, and by making sure that one’s own communications are short and

non-trivial (McCafferty 1998). Pijpers argues that the key to managing the influx of information

begins with self-evaluation—in knowing one’s own predilection for handling information

(Pijpers 2010). Eppler and Mengis, in their survey of the literature on information overload,

compiled a list of tools for dealing with the problem that “range from general suggestions

concerning attitude to very specific software tools (such as filtering agents, automatic

summarizers, or visualization algorithms)” (Eppler and Mengis 2004). Beath et al. (2012) places

the onus of resolution on senior management, and claim that management must identify

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“sacred data”, understand the specific tasks required to process unstructured data, and

champion the implementation of data analysis functions to enhance business processes.

Case Studies

Intel

In 1995, Intel began an initiative to investigate the “impact that interruptions and

distractions [were] having on their bottom line” (Spira and Burke 2009). In their research, they

equate information overload with interruptions because the overabundance of information

from multiple sources—“e-mail, instant messages, text messages, Web pages, discussion

forums, RSS feeds, wikis, blogs, phone calls, letters, magazines, and newspapers” (3)—resulted

in interruptions that led to a loss of worker productivity.

Intel’s earliest efforts at managing information overload, initiated by IT staff member

Nathan Zeldes, revolved around managing email effectively (8). Began in Israel, the success of

the program led to the development of a corporate-wide program called YourTime that was

“comprised of three components; awareness training for e-mail etiquette; discussion sessions

within teams to improve communication and reduce overload; and . . . training for the efficient

use of e-mail software” (9). Recent initiatives by the company revolve around three pilot

programs:

Quiet Time—“a weekly four-hour block of uninterrupted time with minimal distractions”

No E-mail Day (NED)—which mandated that groups would have one [day] in which they were required to communicate without email

E-mail Service Level Agreement—“a policy agreement that extended the acceptable time frame for replying to e-mails to 24 hours, instead of the

ingrained expectation of an almost instantaneous response that required constant monitoring in inboxes” (10-11)

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Spira and Burke reported that, though the early results were encouraging, survey results

ranging from “the feeling that such rules were unnecessary to the belief that they were

fundamentally flawed” could affect the long-term effectiveness of the experiment (28).

Morgan Stanley

Max Christoff, executive director of information technology at Morgan Stanley, is also

aware of the impact of information overload, and considers finding a solution a means to

gaining a competitive advantage (Spira and Goldes 2007). Taking a groundbreaking approach,

the company is attempting to measure the workload of knowledge workers (16), which some

(Drucker 1991; GSA 2011) have reported as being a difficult and not-well-understood task. One

example of this effort is a study Christoff conducted of five senior bankers to determine their

“mean time to reply to a client, associate, managing director”, or others (16). Another company

initiative used a team of developers to create a software tool to distinguish “urgent messages

from those that may be important but don’t require immediate attention” (Hemp 2009). At the

Information Overload Awareness Day conference in October 2010, Christoff spoke about the

ongoing programs at Morgan Stanley. Cody Burke, a Basex senior analyst, made this

observation on the conference blog regarding the success of those programs: “While some

workers were lukewarm to the automatic filtering system (they did not quite trust it to capture

all important messages), they liked the redesigned interface for managing alerts”

(http://www.basexblog.com

/2010/10/28/what-we-learnt/).

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Motorola

One novel approach to the problem of information overload investigated at Motorola

involved the use of social media. Tasked with determining “the amount of communication

overload Motorola was experiencing”, Lucic used online surveys and interview questions to

“gather insights about Motorola’s internal communication channels and their effectiveness

from the point of view of the employees” (Lucic 2010). Her findings were consistent with other

views, which she summarized as follows:

On any given day, more than 30 percent of respondents had at least 30 unread e-mails, while more than 40 percent of respondents spent more than half their day on e-mail.

25 percent of participants were aware of the internal proprietary social networking tool (similar to Facebook), while only 9 percent of participants

indicated that they were familiar with the internal microblogging tool. Employees are open to using new technologies but need help to understand

them better. Some employees are satisfied with updates sent via mass distribution (e-mail) as

they appreciate the push, but there are those who find it too much to deal with in addition to all other communications with which they must contend.

More than 70 percent of participants strongly agreed that they would be able to manage their communication overload if fellow colleagues followed sensible rules for communicating (e.g., applying e-mail etiquette).

To adopt social media tools as primary communication channels, the company would need to encourage more self-service in terms of finding and pulling the communication that employees need themselves.

To make specific tools such as microblogging successful, leaders who use them need to have an authentic voice. (Lucic 2010)

These results led Lucic to conclude that most Motorola employees were unfamiliar with many

of the social networking tools available, but they were not opposed to trying them. In

conclusion, Lucic believes that Motorola management needs to explicitly support the use of

social networking paradigms, foster more effective training programs to promote tool use

among a wider number of employees, and implement steps to “help reduce inbox clutter”

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(Lucic 2010). Spira (2011b) seems to support this approach, and posits that business-focused

social software could potentially eradicate some of email’s shortcomings through the linking of

“communications with relevant background material”.

The Government

Spira proclaims,

. . . the problem of information overload in government is distinct from the problem in the private sector in two ways, namely the cost (which is footed by the taxpayer) and the potential for Information Overload to adversely impact military, counterterrorism, and law enforcement operations, which in turn can result in the loss of life and the erosion of national security. (2011b)

Canton ( 2014) reports, in Emergency Management, that large amounts of data, while having

“improved government’s situational awareness, . . . has paradoxically created a situation where

there is so much information available that a clear picture of a crisis can sometimes be difficult

to obtain”. In InformationWeek, Thomas Claburn comments on the information overload

challenges facing the U.S. military based on a report written by JASON, a defense advisory

panel. He reports on how the “massive amount of sensor and imagery data being gathered” is

putting a heavy burden on defense systems to store and analyze that data (Claburn 2009).

Further, he quotes Pete Rustan, an MIT defense research scientist and member of the JASON

panel, who claims in that report that “seventy percent of the data we collect is falling on the

floor” (Claburn 2009).

Art Kramer, from the Beckman Institute, made this comment in a New York Times

article: “There is information overload at every level of the mil itary – from the general to the

soldier on the ground” (Shanker and Richtel 2011). In the article, Shanker and Richtel report on

an incident that occurred in Afghanistan in February 2010. The report documents an event in

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which 23 Afghan civilians died as a result of a Predator drone operator who “had failed to pass

along crucial information about the makeup of a gathering crowed of villagers” (Shanker and

Richtel 2011). The authors blamed this horrendous incident on information overload, and

wrote,

“Information overload — an accurate description,” said one senior military officer, who was briefed on the inquiry and spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case might yet result in a court martial. The deaths would have been prevented, he said, “if we had just slowed things down and thought deliberately.” (Shanker and Richtel 2011)

Spira expounds further on the seriousness of information overload in government

agencies. He attributes such incidents to the reality that many government agencies must

“compete for resources, mindshare, and prestige” which leads to “poor information and

knowledge sharing” (2011b). Interagency knowledge sharing is “hamstrung by outdated and

somewhat nonsensical classification systems, incompatible tools, and a culture that promotes

extreme siloing of information” (Spira 2001b) which, coupled with the increase in the “sheer

volume of content” (Spira 2001b), aggravates the problem. Spira goes on to give several other

disturbing examples of how information overload—or the failure to process the information at-

hand properly—could have led to other cases involving the loss of life, and concludes that

“quantity does not trump quality” (Spira 2011b).

Healthcare

One industry in which information overload is more treacherous than others is

healthcare. Thomas and Rosenman (2006) point out how “physicians have struggled with the

management of patient data for a long time, [which] intensifies as we attempt to juggle

increasingly large and complicated volumes of information during a 24-hour day”. The reason

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why this has become such a troubling issue for healthcare providers is because the “ability to

gather information [has become] more sophisticated” (Thomas and Rosenman 2006), as has

the quantity and quality of the data that clinicians have to ingest. According to Zeldes and Baum

(2011), “most practices are inundated with an excess of information” which “results in

distractions and a loss of productivity”. Their assessment is that the leading causes of

information overload in healthcare are consistent with similar views found in business, but

contend that the situation is aggravated “by the arrival of professional literature that needs to

be read and digested” (Zeldes and Baum 2011). To illustrate the severity of the problem for

physicians, Zeldes and Baum cite the following statistics from The Checklist Manifesto: How to

Get Things Right by Atul Gawande:

The total number of medical informatics MeSH-indexed publications in 2003 (8859) was more than twice that of 1994 (3768).

The number of unique journals represented among those publishing 25 or more articles totaled 44 in 2003 as opposed to 26 in 1994.

There are almost 700,000 medical journal articles per year that clinicians have to

contend with. (Zeldes and Baum 2011)

Hinman (1996), reporting for CNN, paraphrases Dr. John Kostis, from the Robert Wood Johnson

University Hospital: “Many patients aren’t receiving the care they should be”. Hinman also

makes note of the work performed by Dr. Clifton Lacy, also of the Robert Wood Johnson

University Hospital: “Some doctors are missing the latest medical news [causing them to]

respond too slowly—if at all—to new research developments” (Hinman 1996). More recently,

Dowling exclaimed,

While sophisticated electronic health record capabilities hold great promise for improving patient care, it is becoming increasingly clear that our ability to collect

data is far surpassing our ability to absorb and understand it. In the not-too-distant future, health care organizations may be drowning in the seemingly

Reese-22

endless volume of data that will give them the capacity to deliver the highest

level of care to patients. (Dowling 2014)

Dowling further contends, “the marvels of medical technology that promise to enrich the

quality of our lives even further cannot take precedence over the human interactions between

patients and caregivers” (2014). This is a sentiment echoed by Dr. Jesse Hoey, an AI expert and

researcher in health analytics, when speaking about IBM’s supercomputer Watson. Hoey is

quoted in CMAJ saying, “Doctors are not just data-processing machines, they’re humans that

talk to other humans and they operate on gut feeling some of the time. . . . The way people

want to be cared for in hospital, their sort of emotional needs, is incredibly important and I

don’t think Watson’s [sic] able to do that” (Miller 2013).

Discussion and Recommendations

Discussion

Pick any point in human history since the advent of communication, and one will likely

find evidence of information overload. Seminal inventions have intensified the problem, and

the more capable technological developments of recent years have made it more prevalent

within the masses. The explosive rate at which the volume of data is increasing raises questions

about what, if anything, people, organizations, and governments can do to mitigate the

problem. Left to their own devices, people will do what they have always done – learn to cope.

However, given the importance of information to the success of the business, can the

enterprise merely rely on the habits of individuals, be they knowledge workers or senior

managers, to handle critical information in ways that are both ethical, and supportive of

organizational strategies? What strategies should organizations consider, and what are the key

initiatives available to the enterprise that will offer the best chance of success? From their

Reese-23

research, Edmunds and Morris conclude, “it is unlikely that one perfect answer can be found to

reduce or eradicate the problem of information overload” (2000), thereby increasing the scope

of the problem. Nonetheless, organizations that fail to take a proactive approach to information

management are playing Russian roulette with their futures.

Therefore, it

behooves an organization to

consider a multi-faceted

solution that addresses the

various aspects of

information overload by

encapsulating those

remedies, policies, and

procedures into a data

governance plan. Studies

have shown that a

comprehensive information management system can:

improve operational efficiency

enable corporate performance management

maintain IT cost control and increased revenues

improve customer satisfaction (Bhatt and Thirunavukkarasu 2010)

According to Bhansali, “effective data governance . . . facilitate[s] high-quality data” which

“improves data safety and security, improves data quality, and ensures compliance with data -

focused regulations [while helping] an organization manage and use its data effectively”

(Bhansali 2013). Zhang further supports this idea, and states “When enterprise information is

Causes of information overload Source: T.D. Wi lson, Health Informatics Journal, June 1, 2001

Reese-24

complete, accurate, and accessible, it can empower users to make better decisions, drive

operational excellence, ensure regulatory compliance, and minimize IT costs” (Bhansali 2013,

71).

One important element in an organization’s data governance plan is determining what

information is most critical to the business. Sewell and Alhaji propose considering the fol lowing

factors when determining what information to capture:

the type of information required;

the quality of that information;

the quantity of information;

the time involved in collecting, storing, retrieving and disseminating the information;

the accuracy of information;

the cost of collecting, storing, retrieving and disseminating the information. (Sewell and Alhaji 1989)

Additionally, the organization’s data governance program should

“be able to demonstrate business value” (Smallwood 2014);

ensure that the data is the responsibility of, and owned by, the various business

units, not IT;

be managed differently from other business assets based upon “its unique

qualities” (Smallwood 2014);

focus on future data to avoid spending cycles on old data that exhibits “bad

behavior, mismanagement, and [a] lack of governance” (Smallwood 2014);

incorporate a program to ensure employees have adequate training on the

implementation and benefit of the data governance program (Smallwood 2014).

Reese-25

In laying out the above guidelines, Smallwood first describes the relationship between data

governance and information governance (IG) as, “a newer, hybrid quality control discipline that

includes elements of data quality, data management, IG policy development, business process

improvement, and compliance and risk management” (Smallwood 2014). As this explanation

implies, data governance is not a simple undertaking. Nor is it something that can be “knocked

out” in a couple of days. However, the value it affords the organization is widely discussed by

academic and popular media sources, and as such, demands that management view it with the

level of importance it requires.

On the other hand, governance alone may not be sufficient. Peter Drucker, in 1946,

wrote, “The great challenge to management today is to make productive the tremendous new

resource, the knowledge worker. This, rather than the productivity of the manual worker, is the

key to economic growth and economic performance in today’s society” (Drucker 1993). That

premise is as true today as it was then. Today, information processing is the cornerstone of

many organizations, and according to Mason (1986), we live in an information society in which

“more people are employed in collecting, handling and distributing information than in any

other occupation”. Further, given the importance of information to business success, the rapid

growth of the volume of information and the increased debilitating effects of information

overload on the knowledge worker, the need for action by the enterprise is becoming ever

more critical.

Hemp suggests that the solution to information overload will require a combination of

technology and a change in corporate behavior. He states that the solution for enterprises

begins with education, supported by the establishment of “organizational norms for electronic

Reese-26

communication, either explicit or implicit” (2009). He adds the following suggestions for how

organizations can accomplish this:

Set aside uninterrupted work periods such as a weekly “e-mail—free morning[s]”

(Hemp 2009).

Specify what types of information employees should not share via email as a way

to “speed [up] decision making” (Hemp 2009).

Having IT shutdown email services after a specific time.

Disabling the ‘Reply All’ function.

Symantec offers some additional suggestions for managing the information explosion:

Give security practices high visibility – Reinforcing company security policies around mobile devices.

Prepare infrastructure – Implementing solutions that are able to de-duplicate and archive appropriately, automate processes and monitor and report on system status across a number of different platforms is critical.

Understand business users – When and how employees are accessing their

information will dictate how data is both indexed and categorised. Prepare staff – Streamlined IT policies that educate people on company

policies will ensure that they can take charge of information control and maintain productivity and efficiency.

Encourage staff to switch off as well as on – Although it’s possible to be always-on, the pressure to maintain this can be damaging. It’s vital for

employee welfare that they have some downtime in order to avoid overload. (SC Magazine 2012)

Recommendations

From the abundance of information on the topic, information overload—by any of the

various names by which it is known—is a real problem in today’s society. If the predictions by

IDC regarding the rapid growth of information today, and over the next decade, are true, the

problem will continue to worsen. Granted, this issue is not new, and has existed (most likely)

since the evolution of modern man. Even so, the world lives on. However, like most things in

Reese-27

Nature, there are limits. To assume that this situation can continue in this way ad infinitum

seems foolish in the extreme.

Moreover, individuals—and the corporate entities that emulate them in many ways—

will continue to gather every modicum of data available in the unending search for knowledge.

For businesses, that search is intended to provide a strategic, and competitive, advantage over

competitors, and to maximize profits. For that to continue as the wealth of information grows,

and the pace of business quickens, enterprises must be proactive in creating an environment

built to maximize the value of that information for themselves and their customers. Therefore,

organizations must consider developing a data governance model that defines policies and

procedures for data and information management that addresses the various ways in which

information overload can occur.

Edmunds and Moore suggest that additional research is required “to determine the

extent of information overload currently being experienced and what strategies are being

used” (Edmunds and Moore 2000). To that end, the Information Overload Research Group

(IORG)—a non-profit organization founded in 2007 by Microsoft, Intel, Google, and IBM—seeks

to examine the flood of data regarding information overload, and search for methods of dealing

with it. Their mission is to “bring together research, solutions, and people to help reduce the

impact of information overload” (IORG 2014). Their website contains research resources and a

blog, and each year they host a conference to bring together industry leaders , and interested

parties, to discuss the problem, and potential solutions. Ideally, future research into the

syndrome of information overload will encapsulate the data gathered in multiple disciplines so

that the outcomes will be broad reaching and comprehensive. In addition, the analysis must

Reese-28

evaluate viable solutions not just for individuals, as the complex nature of the problem

demands an extensive, more consistently measurable solution that offers remedies on a

corporate scale.

Data governance, while not a panacea has proven to be effective, and most

organizations, regardless of size, would benefit from such a plan. Tallon (2013) provided a

succinct summarization of this premise when he stated “finding data governance practices that

maintain a balance between value creation and risk exposure is the new organizational

imperative for unlocking competitive advantage and maximizing value”.

Reese-29

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