Information Management in the 21st Century

This report explores the various aspects of information management in the 21st century, highlighting the role of IT and ICT. It discusses the challenges and applications of information management and provides expert insights and analysis on information management in the digital era.

Running Head: INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
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IT Write Up
Information Management in 21st Century
(Student details :)
6/14/2019

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Abstract
This report is focused on various aspects of information management in the 21st century while
highlighting the power of IT and ICT for an effective information management. In this era,
there are countless ways through which information can be communicated in mass amount
over long distances within milliseconds. This paper is going to cover the fields covered by the
IM along with the ICT challenges for the IT companies and other firms worldwide. In this
way, it has been found that the managers of 21st century should be capable to understand IM
tools and resources for effectively leading the competitive firms by approaching success,
accomplishing goals and beyond.

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Contents
Abstract......................................................................................................................................1
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Information Management (IM) in the 21st Century....................................................................3
The role of IM in the 21st century organizations....................................................................4
Analysis of the topic with the statistical evidences................................................................4
Use Cases...........................................................................................................................5
The Info abilities framework..............................................................................................5
Info Sources.......................................................................................................................5
Applications of IM in the 21st century....................................................................................6
Mobility..............................................................................................................................7
Change management..........................................................................................................7
Enabling strategic management.........................................................................................8
Motivation and good decision-making...............................................................................8
Effective running of 5 functions of management...............................................................8
Challenges to IM in the 21st century......................................................................................8
Cyber attacks......................................................................................................................8
Data Breach........................................................................................................................8
Identity theft and Identity fraud.........................................................................................9
Technology literacy............................................................................................................9
Unemployment...................................................................................................................9
Digital privacy and protection............................................................................................9
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9
References................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
The report is based on research on the topic of ‘Information management in the 21st century’
in order to contribute towards online discussion forums over a range of research topics. To
conduct research over the mentioned topic, this discussion will consider every aspect of
information management in the 21st century for the community people, organizations, IT
firms, and hackers. In this context, the paper will demonstrate understanding as well as
awareness of the generation and flow of digital info and statistical data effectively. In
addition to that, identification of the relevant useful info resources will be done within this
paper. This discussion will demonstrate the capability to choose, analyze and process raw
data into meaningful information. Apart from this, within this report identification of the key
functionalities within information technology will be done. In this way, an understanding of
how information technologies are used for processing and presenting information in the 21st
century will be effectively demonstrated.
The 21st century has started changing the entire scenario of info science for the users,
institutions, IT firms, and societies (Agwu et al., 2014). Now, technology has made it
possible to communicate required info in huge amounts while using different means of info
technology across long distances. Although, the current info age is facing many challenges
because of rapid technological advancements yet without modern information management
techniques survival is not possible at present and in future as well (Watson et al., 2010).
Thus, a detailed analysis of the topic is going to conduct while supporting them with
statistical evidence.
Information Management (IM) in the 21st Century
In this digital era, information management techniques and tools have created a new wave of
opportunities in order to use information into virtually all human pursuits. To assess
information management in this century all developments need to be observed critically and
deeply. It is well known that the power of information has taken over greater dimensions
within this info based society. In the context of information technologies for management, it
can be said that IT does not only comprise the software and hardware but also the
management tools which are used to process as well as handle information. Since the
beginning of the 21st-century rapid advancement within the area of IT has caused

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communication revolution while raising a new social condition that is being known as
‘Information Society’ (Drucker, 2012).
The role of IM in 21st-century organizations
IM in this era uses information and communication technologies (ICT) while managing
international organizations. It is a well-known fact that almost every organization is using
ICT for efficiently managing their organizational operations (Hulten , 2018). Besides, in
order to help managers while making better decisions as well as achieving competitive
advantages while facilitating seamless external and internal communications with the
customers, employees, business partners, and other stakeholders IM through ICT is essential
(Cai et al., 2018).
As we know that the aim of modern companies is to become internationally competitive
through leveraging the abilities of advanced ICT thus IM is playing an important role in
implementing the above. Importance of IM within this digital era suggests that modern
organizations can utilize ICT for providing the best products and services of better quality at
economical prices as well as high-rated consumer service. In addition to that, IM with IT and
ICT are becoming more popular in the 21st century because it helps the IT and other
companies to entrée novel markets by using e-commerce business platform. Successful
information management has enabled collaboration, globalization, and integration is the new
drivers of the competitive digital era. Moreover, IM is playing leading role presently because
MNCs and other big companies are investing huge amount within contemporary information
systems such as ERP software for sustaining competition. In this way, an effective IM
integrate the numerous functional areas of the modern business and hence offer continuous
real-time info and data to execute fast and right decision-making (Gupta & Shakya, 2015).
For example, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems can effectively manage the
organizational operations all across the globe while preserving the redundancy of important
information (Vacca, 2012).
Analysis of the topic with the statistical evidence
In this context, one needs to know the main difference amid data, content, records, and
information while managing them for effective business operation. The present world is using
completely new ways of capturing, working with, sharing and consuming information from
anywhere in the world. In this way, IM has created new levels of accessibility through
inventing different information sources through leveraging consumer devices (Watson et al.,

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2010). On the other hand, new levels of usability have also created through inventing better
interfaces between user and providers for greater understanding. As we know that info
without understanding is worthless hence IM offers greater opportunity for deriving desired
values in the modern digital business environment (Yeh & Chang, 2010).
Source: (Drucker, 2012)
In this way, IM in the 21st century addresses 3 key transformations as follows:
Use Cases
The use cases of the IM in the 21st century suggest that emerging info uses and the major
changes present information uses usually represent the new values to the international
enterprises. IM requires info to be available all across use cases than being locked in only one
use case (Peffers et al., 2009).
The Info abilities framework
While moving towards the deployment of application empowering, info repositories as well
as reliable sources, and information infrastructure recent organizations can easily handle
several data types than the only infrastructure devoted to data types (Cai et al., 2018).

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Info Sources
In this context, leveraging the info continuum while having a steady approach to info
management as well as governance of multi kinds and multi internal or external info sources,
organizations may expand info volume, variety, velocity, and complexity. In this way, there
are a lot of ways to get reliable information while executing its management for
organizational or personal purposes. These information sources can be online or offline
documents, social media, transactional data, images, IT, texts, audio, videos, mobile phones,
and search engines (Agwu et al., 2014).
Therefore, above-mentioned three transformations need a profound modernization of present
IM infrastructure and hence they will be part of the modernization which many companies
will pass through within the upcoming 5-10 years. For example, IM is effectively improving
customer intimacy and loyalty of the mobile users through offering contextual services on the
basis of time, location, social content and preferences of the consumers (Obrien & Marakas,
2009).
On the other hand, information management based on the info capabilities framework in this
era are contributing to multiple areas like IM is enabling business growth by enhancing the
timeliness as well as the quality of decision-making by providing access to a more versatile
set of info sources. Besides, recent IM approaches are boosting business growth while
improving the agility of enterprise procedures. Moreover, IM with ICT is improving the
capability for predicting new challenges or opportunities by pattern matching, seeking and
discovery in the context of business growth. In the context of digital era enterprises, IM is
effectively reducing the risks through enhancing enterprise compliance with the help of
policies and regulations while also improving info governance and quality. Apart from this,
facts and figures are showing that IM in this digital era is efficiently reducing the cost
through minimizing the budget of locating, storing, and mashing info with the help of the info
continuum (Drucker, 2012).
Applications of IM in the 21st century
By using effective IM within this 21st century, many useful and critical tasks can be
efficiently accomplished (Gupta & Shakya, 2015). For example, information management
also includes protection and hence it increases the information security into this competitive
world. Some of the major applications of the IM within this digital era are mentioned below:

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Source: (Statista, 2019)
Mobility
It has been observed and recorded that an increased number of smartphones and tablets are
being sold at a large level today rather than PCs. In addition, millennials better know how to
operate a smartphone than simpler machines in daily life. In this context, users’ mobile
devices are being used for interacting with each other as well as using the information
available on the web (Statista, 2019). Apart from this, mobility is the key to process
information which can drive modern businesses effectively. For instance, the above figure is
showing the statistics showing the number of mobile phone users from 2015-2020
worldwide. Here, by the year 2019, this number of mobile phone users is forecasted to reach
at 4.68 billion (Statista, 2019).
Change management
Change management is an emerging trend resulted from IM in this on-going century. As we
know that IM has the ability to manage the change hence change management is one of the
applications of the effective IM in this century (Hulten , 2018). With the increased diversity
at the workplaces, it has become more challenging addressing each and everyone’s
uniqueness during the delegation of the tasks. In this way, information management offers
statistics and online control of the management operations which assist managers while
respecting their employees and treating everyone with equality (Dillon et al., 2010).

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Enabling strategic management
As we know that IM causes an increased competitive environment along with the broadness
of the tools to present within the 21st century this ultimately it helps the managers for being
strategic and visionary while setting an example for the rest employees (Farhadi et al., 2012).
Motivation and good decision-making
Even after recruiting the top skilled employees, the modern managers require motivating their
team as well as driving the company’s vision towards the organizational goals and outcomes
consistently, thus IM techniques help the mangers while doing so. The proper information
management provides the data for the comparison which ultimately allows managers to
motivate the whole team by showing the statistics about improvement or performance
decrement (Hung, 2019).
Effective running of 5 functions of management
The main management functions are planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and
controlling while managing any process or business operation. In this way, IM provides an
improved execution of the 5 management functions (Picanso, 2010). For an instance, reports
of a survey conducted by the EY financial accounting and advisory services (FAAS) suggest
that ⅔ of chief finance officers worldwide expressed that an increasing volume, as well as
pace of data, is typically influencing their capability of providing meaningful insights to the
boards (Drucker, 2012).
Challenges to IM in the 21st century
Apart from all useful applications, there are so many critical challenges which require to be
addressed by the IT experts so that future risks associated with the IM can be reduced to an
optimum level. These challenges are as follows:
Cyber attacks
Information management caused the information stored online software and digital websites
hence risks of cyber-attacks are increases. In the year 2016, 758 million malicious cyber-
attacks occurred and hence by the end of 2019 this number will break all previous records
(OutPost, 2018).
Data Breach
In this context, incidents of data breaches all across the world are increasing day-by-day
increasingly. For example, the social media giant Facebook reported 2-3 times data breach of

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their user's private data. Hence, more than 87 million users’ private information got breached
during one of the FB data breaches (OutPost, 2018).
Identity theft and Identity fraud
Data breaches usually cause identity theft and frauds at a huge level. For example, identity
theft and identity fraud risks are high for the users as well as drivers of the Uber Taxi
Company. The reason behind is that Uber has faced data breach of 57 million users and
drivers private information in the year 2017 (Lee, 2017).
Technology literacy
Technology literacy is also emerging as a huge challenge for the whole world in the 21st
century as IM and ICT usage is totally dependent upon technology literacy rate across the
world (Schultz, 2009).
Unemployment
While IM is enhancing the efficiency of the business operations and organizations at the same
time the unemployment rate is also increasing due to digital management information
systems. Thus, employment can be unaffected through IM when technology literacy and skill
development will increase with technological advancements (Farhadi et al., 2012).
Digital privacy and protection
When information is stored on the cloud or any other digital platform then the risk of privacy
and protection violation increases usually that need to be addressed effectively for future IT
development (Obrien & Marakas, 2009).
Conclusion
In whole, the report has successfully narrated the various major components of the IM in the
21st century. While narrating on the topic of information management in this digital era this
paper has demonstrated an understanding of the production as well as the flow of digital info
and statistical data worldwide. With the help of three main transformations of IM include use
cases, info ability framework, and info sources, this report has demonstrated the capability to
select, analyze as well as process data into meaningful information for smooth business
functioning and daily-life task execution. In this way, main findings of this report suggest that
information management has brought revolution in the field of effective management of the

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operations in the 21st century yet some challenges and risks require to be addressed by the
millennial IT experts so as to improve future technology executions.
References
Agwu, E., Okpara, A., Aigbiremolen, M. & Lyoha, F., 2014. The Impact of Information
Communication Technologies in the Strategic Management of Financial Institutions.
International Review of Management and Business Research, 3(3), pp.10-15.
Cai, Z., He, Z., Guan, X. & Li, Y., 2018. Collective data-sanitization for preventing sensitive
information inference attacks in social networks. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and
Secure Computing, 15(4), pp.577-90.
Dillon, T., Wu, C. & Chang, E., 2010. Cloud computing: issues and challenges. Advanced
Information Networking and Applications (AINA), 2010 24th IEEE International Conference,
IEEE, pp.27-33.
Drucker, P., 2012. Management challenges for the 21st century. London: Routledge.
Farhadi, M., Ismail, R. & Fooladi, M., 2012. Information and communication technology use
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OutPost, 2018. TOP 10 of the world's largest cyberattacks. [Online] Available at:
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