What is an Information Asset?

An Information Asset is organized Information that is valuable and easily accessible to those who need it.  Information Assets comprise a wide range of corporate product, service and process information. 

In raw form Information may be nonarchived product data, uncaptured customer information, a partially documented Engineering process or unshared corporate intellectual property. In typical day-to-day business activity, products are designed, services are sold, customers are supported and the necessary Information moves in a more or less efficient fashion to facilitate these actions. Quite often a business will rely on informal Information procedures to accomplish mission-critical tasks with the accompanying risks of inefficiency, inconsistency and limitation for delivering their product or service to their customers. 

Developing an Information Asset requires defining the issue to be resolved, identifying the needed Information, capturing the Information through a documentation process and constructing a framework to allow easy access to the Information for the groups who would most benefit.

Ten Characteristics of an Information Asset

1. An Information Asset is any organized documentation or data incorporated into a communication structure that empowers the organization to have a better chance of reaching its goals.
2. An Information Asset is created by organizing Information to resolve an important issue in the organization.
3. An Information Asset may exist entirely within a single department or may be spread across the entire organization.
4. An Information Asset may be part of an Enterprise Application or may be entirely separate.
5. An Information Asset may be an organized and maintained data archive.
6. An Information Asset may be as simple as a monthly updated spreadsheet on a shared network drive or as complex as a development project ROI dashboard updated on a weekly basis.
7. An Information Asset increases in value according to the number of people able to make gainful use of the Information.
8. An Information Asset increases in value according to the amount of information it aggregates.
9. An Information Asset increases in value according to the amount of analysis it performs converting low level Information into more refined Information.
10. An Information Asset is maintained by people working in a consistent and cooperative manner.

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