Intranet versus Other

I just got a question from a reader:

....My internal communications manager is pulling together a report on the intranet and had the following question:" In general, what ratio would information be stored on the intranet versus other options such as mail/folders/blogs/wikis etc. ?"....

My response is that the question cannot be answered as it is phrased. But here is my answer anyway...!

1. Blogs and wikis - an integral part of an intranet.
Blogs and wikis should not be a parallel, "underground" intranet. They serve very specific purposes within an intranet and require life-cycle management policies:

• Wikis are often used for co-creation of content. At a certain point, content may become finalized and then would logically enter the "official" or "reference" area of the intranet and not be tucked away in a wiki.
• Blogs must have a purpose. Depending on the purpose they will eventually be removed (event blog) or archived (project blog). An expert blog might remain on line forever!

So the question is unanswerable because they are an integral part of the intranet.

2. Email - a very risky situation.
"Storing information" in emails is a destructive way to work. Information stored in emails is not findable, nor sharable, nor safe.

To answer the question, I'd say too much is stored there, and organizations in this case are running major risks from a legal, financial and commercial viewpoints.

3. Shared folders, a reaction more than a choice
This usually happens when the intranet is too rigid for local needs. It is a dangerous practice because, as in the previous point, this makes the information unfindable and impossible to share outside the local network.
Even when people say the information is only "for us", it is rarely true.

I once visited a country division of a global company. They showed me their shared folders which contained about 90 % of their information, and then their intranet with the remaining 10 %. I asked how this had come about. The answers was very simple: "The intranet navigation and categories are unworkable for us."

Enough said!

Comments

[Samuel de Saint Laurent]

on your point #2 I do not totally agree - it now exists products like ours (G2B for email) that help you find information the same way as in an intranet. Email is becoming by default the largest platform to exchange information.

[Jase Wells]

About shared folders... I’d say most of our knowledge is stored in our intranet, and it’s all nicely categorized, structured, and searchable. Yet there are still gigabytes of stuff on various shared folders — temporary working documents, archives of stuff, and general dumping grounds for miscellaneous things.

Although we have “workspace” areas on our intranet, I think lots of people just want a simple drag-and-drop place to work on docs and exchange files — rather than download files, edit them, then upload them back to the intranet. And so the shared folders persist.

I’d love to hear how others have addressed this — either with simplicity, education, or technical solutions. For example, I’ve looked into sharing our intranet document repository via Windows shares so people can mount them and drag/drop files. But then we’d lose the ability to ask for structured metadata about the files when they’re saved, so it’s not an optimal solution.

[Jane]

Good question, Jase.
Could some other readers contribute their experiences with shared folders versus the intranet?

[Kurt]

Regarding Jase's question I would consider a document management system. I currently work in a law firm and the situation Jase describes what we run into with document production, storage and management. We use a system built specifically for document management and there are a range of options available based on the size and structure of the organization and amount of documents. This would give you the ability to share/restrict access as needed, group documents by area/function/whatever your structure requires and setup profiles to manage and control the document metadata. This may or may be integrated with your intranet.

Regarding the comment about email - I am on both sides of that arguement. The legal industry is learning a lot about email right now in terms of electronic discovery related to litigation and general records management. Consider the business decisions you make via an email conversation. Do you have an obligation to keep and archive that conversation for regulatory or other purposes? What do you do with email and people come and go? If I am new to your organization, I do not have (necessarily) access to those prior conversations. If I leave, what happens to my email which may contain conversations which contained or were used to make business decisions? I do not think email should be considered a method of sharing information like a blog, wiki or any other website. However, it needs to be managed properly like any other process you use to make decisions and carry on business.