Tag: information management

The Risks of Nonspecificity in Work-As-Prescribed

There are a lot of ways to discuss uncertainty, and narrow down on vaguess and unspecificity, following Smithson’s model of Ignorance.

Different Kinds of Unknowns, Source: Smithson (1989, p. 9); also in Bammer et al. (2008, p. 294).

An alternative way to look at uncertainty is offered by Klir, which adds discord to the mix.

Work-As-Prescribed can be a real avenue for all three of these uncertainties. But by using risk management to examine the possibilities of these uncertainties we can truly interrogate. This is one of the things we mean by risk management and knowledge management being bound at the hip as enablers.

To do this we need to make sure that:

  • There is the management of information quality. Management of information quality is crucial in risk management because uncertainty is prevalent. Uncertainty, as a state for which we lack information, means that uncertainty analysis should play an integral part in risk management to ensure that the uncertainty in the risk management process is kept at a feasible level.
  • There is explicit management of either existing knowledge that can be applied to improve the quality of the analyses or to improve the knowledge acquired in the process that can be used in the follow-up process. Knowledge management is pivotal to ensuring an effective risk management process by providing context and learning possibilities. In essence, risk management is not just about managing risks – the entire context surrounding the risks must be understood and managed effectively.

Information Gaps

An information gap is a known unknown, a question that one is aware of but for which one is uncertain of the answer. It is a disparity between what the decision maker knows and what could be known The attention paid to such an information gap depends on two key factors: salience, and importance.

  • The salience of a question indicates the degree to which contextual factors in a situation highlight it. Salience might depend, for example, on whether there is an obvious counterfactual in which the question can be definitively answered.
  • The importance of a question is a measure of how much one’s utility would depend on the actual answer. It is this factor—importance—which is influenced by actions like gambling on the answer or taking on risk that the information gap would be relevant for assessing.

Information gaps often dwell in the land of knightian uncertainty.

Communicating these Known Unknowns

Communicating around Known Unknowns and other forms of uncertainty

A wide range of reasons for information gaps exist:

  • variability within a sampled population or repeated measures leading to, for example, statistical margins-of-error
  • computational or systematic inadequacies of measurement
  • limited knowledge and ignorance about underlying processes
  • expert disagreement.