Content
on Top
Joe Gollner
Managing Director
Gnostyx Research Inc
@joegollner
• Government Financial Reporting Mechanisms
• How performance is measured, reported & monitored
• Major Area of Technology Investment
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems
• Business Intelligence
(BI) Systems
• Executive Dashboards
• In reality, reporting
is communication
• Editing, adapting,
positioning, publishing
Case Study: Enterprise Reporting Systems
• It should have been
a quiet project
• A Discovery Portal
for Canadian Farmers
From Humble Beginnings….
• A solution driven by XML metadata
& aggressive usability testing
• Explosively well received
• Led to executive level interest
• Led to unexpected requests…
• The result was an immediately
successful discovery site
“better than Google”
was one Farmer’s feedback (!)
The number of participating
partners began to grow rapidly
Other stakeholders became
interested in the collected
content as the best data
source available
Single Source of Program Information
• Success Factor #1
Focus on the Content
Clients need
• Success Factor #2
Simple & extensible
use of XML, metadata
& Web technologies
• Success Factor #3
- Iterative development, testing, refinement
- Flexible approach to engaging content partners
Key to Success: Tools that are simple & effective
• Something in the Discovery Portal hit a nerve
• Can we have something similar for our financial reports?
• Can we use this to make sense of our performance data?
• Can we offer something similar to other stakeholders?
• Can you make sense of all our financial data?
• Me:
Sure, I guess
• But…
Strange Requests Followed
• These Departments had spent millions on financial
systems, business intelligence applications &
executive dashboards (hundreds of millions actually)
• These systems
were intended to
track low-level
financial events
& provide detailed
reports on
progress against
objectives
What about your Management Systems?
• Human resource systems,
• Case management systems,…
And there were other systems in the same boat…
None of these
systems seem to
provide
executives
with the
information
and insights that
they were
intended
to provide
None of these
systems were
trusted…
So where is the real information?
The real information
lived in documents
that were formally
signed & submitted on a monthly basis
Management
systems were updated to align
with the documents
…to the extent that
this was possible…
Obvious question: Why do you need to do this & how do you do it?
• Real Events rarely, if ever, go according to plan
• Serious exceptions cannot be reflected in
planned information systems
• Exceptions
are recorded
externally
• Explanations
are provided as
references to documents
One Reason: Complexity
• Management
systems provide
a lot of data
but very little
information
• Largely devoid
of the context that can give data
relevance
Second Reason: Lost in Datatopia
• And that they saw in the
Farmers’ Discovery Portal?
• Two Things:
• Client-centered context
that organizes the data in
ways that aligned with what
the clients saw as important
• Straight-forward metadata &
plain-language descriptions
that helped stakeholders to
understand key details –
especially exceptions
What were the Executive looking for?
• An Army of Financial Analysts
• Pulled data from various systems
• Added missing exceptions and explanations
• Packaged, polished, & published the Management Reports
How did the Management Reports get prepared?
The reports went
through an
elaborate review
& revision process
The opportunity
for manipulation
was more than
a little scary
• Expand the content discovery solution to contain
more types of data from a wider array of sources
• Provide a managed environment within which
to prepare, track and deliver management reports
• Support exceptions
in a controlled way
• Support introduction
of client-centered
content views
• Support addition of
contextual metadata
• Support provision of
explanations…
A New Project is Born
• Essentially
the Lunatics are
running the Asylum
• The Financial &
Management processes
rely utterly on their
content management & publishing activities
• These activities are often hugely inefficient & risky
• These higher echelons desperately need:
• Content Management technology & techniques
• Formalized communication practices
What does all this mean?
• We can do this
• Communication
practices &
content
technologies
can fill the gaps
in these
management
systems &
processes
The Good News
Harvesting Information
• Based on, and linked to, the real information
A Real Executive Dashboard
• Enabling the vertical flow of real information
is essential for effective institutions
• Widespread failures in this area have led to the
breakdown of institutional accountability
• Fixing the problem demands
• Effective communication
practices
• Adaptable content technology
• Open & extensible content
• Without this, Digital Dashboards
are essentially useless or worse misleading…
Why is this Important?
CONTENT
INFORMATION
• Content is what
we manage
in order to deliver
highly effective
information
• Content can
handle the
complexities
associated with
real events
• Exceptions
• Extensions
This Tells Us Something about Content
By managing & leveraging the content we can
make the sea of data understandable & useful
Making Connections
Joe Gollner
Gnostyx Research Inc.
www.gnostyx.com
Twitter: @joegollner
Blog: The Content Philosopher
www.gollner.ca
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