Justifying Investment in Information Resource Management

Information Resource Management (IRM) is the management of information as a corporate resource rather than as the property of individual systems or users. While many organisations have established IRM functions to address this goal, there has been little formal measurement of their effectiveness. A recent survey of IRM groups in the U.S. showed that only 13% of groups have implemented procedures for measuring their performance. Such measures are essential for justifying the existence of the group, maintaining management support and continuously improving IRM practices. This paper discusses the need to measure IRM effectiveness, identifies key criteria for a measurement program, and proposes some candidate metrics. Further research is in progress to refine these metrics and empirically validate them with practitioners