Internal Data Markets: The Opportunity and First Steps

While organisations readily accept the significance of data as ¿key assets of information age¿, those organisations and managers often do not treat their data as such valued assets. Too many sets of data are simply incorrect, out-of-date, poorly-defined, or otherwise unfit for use (Redman 2008). Despite the penetration of enterprise data warehouses, multiple copies of data are stored by different departments within organisations, without any systematic approaches for classification of data for future use. Many organisations are not sure what data they have, where those data have come from, and which are the most important. This issue reflects the poor state of ¿meta-data¿ as well as the wastage of important assets. This paper tries to explore and develop the concept of the ¿internal data market¿ as an effective means to improve data, information and knowledge management in modern organisations, and to resolve the problems noted above.