On Information and ECM Architecture

So here I am at the 2008 AIIM Conference and it has been a busy day networking, viewing presentations and getting a feel for who is who in the Vendor trade floor. From discussions that I have had today I am ever more convinced as far as ECM Architecture goes there is a gaping hole in this part of the fabric of ECM.

Sure there are probably companies that are doing it, but over all there is not much best practice to go on, or should I say consistent and industry recognised best practice.

The best examples that I have seen of Information Architecture at work and relating to the overall Enterprise Architecture is work that has been done by Roger Evernden. Roger built an Information Framework in the 80's which is licensed to IBM. Dealing with the financial sector it non the less provides some interesting insight to Information and Architecture.

Roger has also written a book called Information First, which I have in my library and continue to refer to from time to time. My question is however, why has Architecture for Information and ECM in general not become mainstream. Well there may be some answers in the conversation that I had with Alan Pelz-Sharpe where we were talking about business analysts and the fact that a lot of these people do not have the necessary depth of skills that are required to be a good analyst. Given that information and ECM are relatively new I believe that there is just not the body of knowledge and or the people around with the experience and skills en masse to pull this all off. Therefore we will have to suffer part time players with a thin veneer for time to come.