Towards a Coprehensive Model of Information Strategy

Strategic information planning is an important topic in practice as well as in research. Work so far has focused mainly on the planning process itself rather than on the actual information strategy as its output. The paper points out different approaches to substantiating the concept of information strategy with perhaps the most advanced approach being the system of plans approach. However, existing approaches are not satisfactory regarding their structure, completeness and rationales. We propose a more comprehensive model of information strategy that is argued to overcome the deficiencies of the existing approaches. Our model introduces the concepts of information infrastructure and information function. It helps to clarify ongoing discussions devoted to information strategy as a functional departmental strategy, to strategic alignment as well as to the role of the CIO and allows the integration of separate views on information strategy from different disciplines.