Acknowledgements
Introduction | Acknowledgements | History

The "Information Management Body of Knowledge" (IMBOK) emerged from a research project launched in 2002 by the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, to whom we express our appreciation. This part of the research was undertaken in partnership with Cape Peninsula University of Technology (then the "Cape Technikon").  It was first published in 2004, and since then there has been extended work on a technique to survey organisational competencies to manage information well.  A prototype wiki was developed that led to a better understanding of how this kind of knowledge can be usefully shared, and it is (at the time of writing) currently being re-created in the public space.

We wish to acknowledge the interest and support of the many local South African organisations - too many to list here - that supported the early research workshops.  We hope that this text provides them with some assistance, in terms of getting started with information management and improving the prospects of success with information systems investments.  

Some of the ideas, tools and techniques presented here originate from work over the last fifteen years within the Information Systems Group at the Cranfield School of Management, in the United Kingdom.  Acknowledgements are due to Chris Edwards, John Ward, Joe Peppard and Rob Lambert, and the many others who have worked with this group over the years.  It is through their efforts that many of these ideas have emerged and prevailed, and it is hoped that this presentation of them, within a more ordered framework of management thinking than has been available before and in conjunction with other relevant ideas, will help the wider community to understand, adopt and enjoy working with this new "toolkit".

Having said that, any residual errors or omissions may be laid at my door, and I look forward to receiving comments and suggestions that will improve this work.

Andy Bytheway
Cape Town, July 2011

The "Information Management" research team

The following have worked with or within the research team at one point or another:

Thanks, everyone!

The IMBOK was a major deliverable from the "HictE" (ICT in Higher Education) project HictE was a research partnership between UWC and CPUT funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York