Business Information Backup Bank

The nation needs to explore information management possibilities

Ghanaians woke up on Thursday; October 22, 2009 to the bizarre news of a charred foreign affairs ministry with an attendant loss of vital information which invariably may be impossible to recover given the extent to which the inferno, which reminisces the much touted biblical hell fire awaiting a sinful world, swallowed up almost every physical material in its way up to the tenth floor of the ministry's edifice.

It is reported that essential documents dating as far back as the independence day of Ghana have also joined their “documentary ancestral world”. A situation which I presume calls for recourse to a backup facility to at least retrieve some of the missing information or data for reprocessing if the need be. If there is nothing like that in our public administration system, then we can only wish our lost information goodbye as they rest in peace, for the government to work on innovative and creative alternatives for a remedy to such unexpected state of affairs in future. In this day and age of information currency, the vitality of information cannot be overemphasized and therefore every effort must be made to save and secure them as they flow in and out of our business processes and activities, because who knows; may be your next multimillion pound, euro or dollar deal could come from a safely stored age old data.

The advent of information technology came with various data storage devices in electronic formats which have proven to be readily accessible and recoverable during their operational and attack situations respectively, and therefore many information mannered and minded business entities have taken advantage of this retrieval alternatives to reduce their information damage and loss risk, to enhance the perpetuity of their stay in business.

Business process outsourcing (BPO) has come to stay; with many time-redeeming and profit-optimizing conscious businesses cashing in on its prospects of productivity improvement and service efficiency. However inherent in the BPO concept are other business development practices like; vital business information backup management; an idea drawn from my study of the subject of Management Information Systems (MIS) during my Executive MBA programme, has not been explored intensively, at least in our part of the world where the reliability of information technology systems is nothing to write home about, not to talk about infrastructural deficiencies that make us susceptible to all forms of business risk in the face of inadequate remedial and combat facilities like; appropriate fire tenders (in the case of information threatening infernos), skillful and reliable security apparatus (in the event of information related burglary), disaster response and management equipment (in the event of data damaging natural disasters) etc.

As a business development consultant, I have come up with the conceptualization and framework for the exploration of this great idea which I call “Business Information Backup Bank”, BIBB for short. This concept runs on an information insurance scheme, which seeks to mitigate the risk associated with information handling and management by adopting a bank-like approach which serves as a fallback or backup system of last resort in the event of business information related danger.

The BIBB uses a two pronged financial operational approach in the fashion of a banking and an insurance procedure where a deposit of corporate and personal business information are securely saved over time on the basis of emergency retrieval and recovery in the event of personal custodial danger or loss. The BIBB institution operates both operational and archival units upon which information depositors or “information-insureds” can fall as and when they so require. The system is a fail-proof or loss-proof facility which is only subject to the event of the destruction of the earth as held by some religions.

The time has come for our nation to explore such information management possibilities, since this year has witnessed a couple of blazes in the public sector with the concomitant loss of vital information; the recollection bill of which the already burdened taxpayer would be required to foot. Private sector organizations that also deem their information base to be crucial to their operational existence should also begin exploring the prospects of the BIBB. For “provision is better than kiosk” as my unschooled grandmother will put it.

Credit: David Oheneba Wiredu
Email: [email protected]
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