When Data is Free

As the custodian of the Management Database, the Computer Center confronted a major challenge in supporting the organization's need for data. While the Computer Center aggressively kept pace with the trend of electronic data and paperless operation, most workers in the organization still heavily relied on printed data reports. The Computer Center soon realized that its existing budget for data preparation could not support the expensive staff time and supply costs for producing printed data reports. The functional units faced the same dilemma of attempting to support the management mandate to distribute data without additional funding. However, the users have expected the availability of data reports as a free service. In a furious race for data reports, users freely requested printed reports, not giving thought to the costs of data report preparation. Delays in receiving data reports triggered the users to repeat multiple requests for reports to all available sources. The uncoordinated efforts to hunt down data reports often resulted in multiple requests for the same data report from different members of the same department. This resulted in the duplicated production of data reports for a single usage. Many data reports were never used. Some users relied on personal connections and arbitrary mandates to obtain reports for personal projects. The uncontrolled data requests eventually convinced the functional units more than ever to avoid data distribution activities that could be a bottomless drain on the limited functional resources.

Challenge Five: The increased complexity and frequency of usage of information reports is in reality, a severe drain in budgetary resources, and management needs to develop a mechanism to track data usage and adjust resources appropriately. This could be more challenging under cultural environments that lack sophistication in information processing.