Achieving Professional Excellence for a New Century.

• Author: BENNETT, JAMES C.

With the increasing importance of records, information, and knowledge as corporate assets, the role of the information professionals who must manage these assets is more critical than ever before. Also, the qualifications needed to manage these corporate assets will be more demanding, especially if the various challenges of the new century are to be met. In this article, the author, a distinguished educator in the field, discusses these critical qualifications and gives some suggestions on how to achieve them.

Since the mid-1950s, the information age has "swept across history," as Alvin Toffler observed in his book The Third Wave (1980). During these 40 years, increasingly rapid changes have had a profound effect on the records and information management profession. Paperwork management was transformed into records management and then into information management, and now another transformation involving knowledge management, seems to be emerging. In his book Powershift (1990), Toffler suggested, "[I]t is now indisputable that knowledge, the source of the highest-quality power of all, is gaining importance with every fleeting nanosecond."

An additional perspective on the accelerating changes of the future were presented in an interview in a Los Angeles Times article (Proffitt 1998) with futurist Peter Schwartz. He said," People simply know more today and have more information surrounding them than ever before. The ubiquity of the media and the `24-hour news cycle' are all part of that. And there is simply more knowledge out there. At the middle of this century, it took about 20 years for the sum total of human knowledge to double. Today, it's roughly every five years. [At this increasing rate] in 2020 it will be every 73 days!"

A recent article in the Harvard Business Review suggested that in today's economy every business is really an information business (Evans and Wurster 1997). According to the authors, "[I]n many industries not widely considered information businesses, information actually represents a large percentage of the cost structure. About one-third of the cost of health care in the United States -- approximately $300 billion -- is the cost of capturing, storing, and processing such information as patients' records, physicians' notes, test results, and insurance claims. More fundamentally, information is the glue that holds together the structure of all businesses."

Now that we are on the brink of the new century and realize that records, information, and knowledge are major assets in business and government, the role of the manager of these assets will be more sophisticated and more critical than ever before. Also, the professional qualifications of this manager are -- and will be -- more important than ever. Some of these qualifications are very similar to those of the past and the present, but many of them will be quite different.

Those who are successful in managing information assets must have educational qualifications that are comprehensive enough to enable them to deal with all of the varied problems that are anticipated in this new knowledge age. The demands on the teachers and the organizations that must deliver this needed education are also more pressing than ever. Because of the rapid changes, especially in technology, educators must continually ask themselves: "What must we teach our students today that will not be obsolete tomorrow?"

An information professional in the next century must continue to have an eclectic background as well as highly specialized knowledge and expertise. This educational background will consist of several definitive components:

* a clear perception of the impact of the information age on a rapidly changing world

* a knowledge of the functional areas of a business organization

* a strong view of organizational behavior

* excellent communication skills

* a specialized understanding of the basic fundamental concepts of information management that may be applied to information created in any medium

* a mastery of computer applications with a clear perception of the impact of the computer in the future

In addition to this educational background, information professionals must have a high level of ethical sensitivity, a strong interest in professionalism, and a commitment to life-long ]earning. Information professionals who possess these qualifications, along with the needed education, will realize a true competitive advantage for their own personal success as well as for the success of the organizations for which they work.

Understanding the Impact of the Information Age

To be successful, information managers must have a clear understanding of the concept of the "information age" and how this age is impacting a rapidly changing world. John Naisbitt, in his book Megatrends (1982), suggests that we actually entered the information age in 1956 when, for the first time in American history, white-collar workers outnumbered blue-collar workers, and most people were working with information rather than producing goods in a factory. He also contended that the beginning of the globalization of the information revolution began in 1957 when the Russians launched Sputnik. Toffler referred to the information age as the "third wave of civilization," and used such terms as "space age," "electronic era," and "global village" to describe the breadth of his concept.

Since the information age is having such a major global impact, the social, economic, and scientific implications of this impact must also be understood if information is to be managed effectively. A very important aspect deals with the intercultural changes that are occurring in our own communities as well as the international changes that are having a profound effect on virtually all business organizations. The current international financial upheavals must be watched closely. Some current ticking bombs in the world according to Jonathan Peterson of the Los Angeles Times (1998) are the future of Brazil, Japan's...