Personal information management now and in the future

Abstract

Decision makers today do often not have the problem of yesterday, lack of information. Instead they have an abundance of information flowing through their organizations and computers but the tools for managing this data are not good enough, much precious working time are spent organizing and locating data with inferior tools. The purpose of this study was to characterize the gap between the current operational tools for personal information management and the tools available in research laboratories. This was done as a case study at UNOSAT. The first conclusion of the study is that the researchers are far ahead in functionality. They have tools that adapt themselves to the user needs and they provide the user with a richer interface that saves time in all aspects of his personal information management tasks. Current tools don’t take into account the fact that it is the same person both storing and retrieving the information but rely instead on principles for general information management, structured in a way so anyone should be able to use it. The second conclusion is that the tools in the laboratories will soon be seen in common operating system and applications.