Information evaluation: empirical investigations in engineering organisations

The management of information in engineering organizations is facing a particular challenge due to the ever-increasing volume of information needs to be dealt with. It has been recognized that an effective methodology is required to evaluate information in order to avoid information overload and to retain the right information for reuse. By whatever approaches, information evaluation judgments are made in those engineering organizations in order to support businesses decisions. Investigating those practical methodologies would benefit the overall information evaluation research. This paper addresses this practical information evaluation issue firstly by briefly reviewing the idea of information evaluation, the definition of value, and related research work on the value of information in various areas. Then a series of industrial empirical investigation activities, based on interviews in engineering organizations, are introduced. The evaluation approaches in those organizations are analyzed and compared according to the nature of each of the organizations. The current practices are then summarized. Finally, several further issues including the impact of the newly developed information evaluation methodologies and the implementation issues associated with this evaluation assessment method are raised.