INFORMATION SHARING
Data, information and knowledge are usually inter-woven by people trying to achieve a balance into their definitions. It is however important to distinguish between knowledge and information [1], by stating what gets transmitted electronically to be either data or information. For information to be transformed to knowledge, it must be acquired by someone who can give it meaning and context, and used within the specific time span of its relevance and currency [2].
Data is raw, which has no meaning beyond itself. It can be in any form which could be used or not, and it is in a discrete form. Information on the other hand is a processed form of data that has meaning behind it. It answers the W’s question of what, where, who and when. It could also be seen as a form of related data which gives an actual meaning that can be used on linked elements. Knowledge in the literal way is what we know and answers the question “how”. It is the collection of information for a useful means. It is a process with an example of it being the act of memorizing information.
Information sharing is the passing or exchange of information between two or more parties. According to Drucker, Information sharing is a very important element of total quality management and new organisation. Improved information sharing is very beneficial to organisations, by improving their efficiency, productivity, innovation, learning and understanding their goals and targets. This gives rise to the question of whether or not employees would share information across their organisation.
Information technology has empowered organisation by allowing easy means of sharing and collaboration. It has removed the boundaries through the provision of systems such as databases, blogs, social networking sites, information systems, knowledge managements systems, and so on. An example of a social network site is Facebook, which allows information sharing, communication such as chatting, sending of messages, uploading pictures and in general allows for interconnectivity with people all around the globe. These collaborative systems provide the promise of much increased information sharing within and across organizations and also encourage sharing of ideas in a free-owing method as well as in a form of structured repositories. These systems aid the exchange of both knowledge and information [4].
According to Bentley et al.'s, “Despite several years of research in the field of CSCW
(Computer Supported Cooperative Work), email and ftp remain the state-of-the-art in supporting collaboration within widely-distributed work-groups. Although such tools facilitate information exchange, but they provide little support for information sharing, whereby details of users’ changes, annotations and so on are made visible and available to all other participants”.
To Lauwers and Lantz, the ideal approach towards building systems that support real-time sharing of work would have to recognize each participant’s existence and his or her role in the collaboration. Such system is called “Collaboration Aware”. Leland et al gave an example where, “A groupware applied to document collaboration could: Recognize the roles of the primary writers, reviewers, and readers; adjust access permissions to reflect these roles; keep track of version differences; and enhance communications between the various collaborators”. These bring about the essentiality in maintaining or updating a shared application.
A number of design decisions must be considered when building or maintaining a comprehensive sharing system. The responsibilities of the system fall into four major roles [11]:
A. The View Manager: The distributed view of the running application should follow (more or less) the “what you see is what I see” (WYSIWIS) abstraction, in which everyone sees the same image on their screen or window. The View Manager is responsible for synchronizing and transmitting these views, such that participants merely have to tap into the application’s output stream and send a copy of that stream to each of the other terminals. Assuming that all connected participants are running compatible terminal types with the same initial terminal and screen configuration, each screen would then show the same image (Figure 1). For instance, accessing a “facebook” application on the phone (i.e. a terminal) is different from accessing from the computer (another terminal).
B. The Chair Manager: All participants should be able to interact with the application in a reasonable manner. Since the application is built to handle only one input stream, a floor-control mechanism that gives control to only one person at a time is usually desirable, thereby setting a queue of information or data that comes in. Imagine a set of participants trying to type at the same time in a chat-room; the queue of entry needs to be in place to control the flow of simultaneous insertion. The Chair Manager is however responsible for setting or changing the floor control policy, also for coordinating and enforcing turn-taking between participants and sending the selected input stream to the application.
Figure 1: A simple view-sharing system for homogenous computing environment [11].
C. The Registrar: Conference “registration” by the Registrar addresses four issues: conference set up and tears down; entry and departure of participants while the conference is in progress; access control; and feedback of the conference’s current status. An instance of this is when a set of people are involved in discussions in a forum; the registrar must be able to keep track of when people join and leave the discussions, and also synchronise old discussions with new entrants. The registrar also must be able to handle roles and permissions on the shared application.
D. The Meta Manager: Participants should be allowed to talk “around” the application through gestures and annotations without actually affecting the application. People will often talk around a shared view without interacting directly with the displayed application. Some of these “meta” actions involve:
· Directing the group’s attention to some aspect of the view (referring, retracing, emphasising);
· Allowing more than one person to gesture around the view at the same time (pointing);
· Providing feedback on the attentiveness of other participants;
· Augmenting verbal dialogue; and
· Leaving marks on top of the view that are transparent to the application.
The Meta Manager is responsible for separating and controlling these meta-interactions and handling these meta- level interactions between participants.
Suggestions have been made in recent years concerning communication participants being enabled to maintain and update shared application. With the amount of high technicalities involved in updating and maintaining shared applications; for instance on facebook, such suggestions do not only bring about the complexity in the shared application, but it also increases and creates more ambiguity into the understanding of technical terms. This does not also exclude the fact that the developers of the application would want to withhold such rights to them as it poses a great threat of losing their jobs. Though participants are major stakeholders in the development of shared applications, their involvement should be limited to influencing factors which determine and affect the updating and maintenance of shared artefact in order to enable sharing either in a social or organisational context. Among others, these factors include:
· Look at what people do together, not just their tasks but also their various activities and what they are trying to achieve.
· Consider how people communicate with one another (i.e. formal or informal), not just the communication channel.
· Evaluate the usability of the existing application, and see the fit between the user and the system.
· Make sure the system is easy to find and easy to use.
· Recognise the participants or users feedback.
· Also recognise that the shared application is not a project but a process that would keep updating with external factors put into consideration.
While the theory of information sharing builds on the interdependence notions of social exchange theory, the original social exchange theory did not consider information exchange [5]. People in organizations treat information sharing like other means of communication or substitution which is greatly influenced by their social and organizational factors [6]. “The context is important because it differentiates information sharing from those simple exchanges where individuals act simply from rational self-interest (“I help you if you help me“). The interdependence notion in social exchange theory implies that organizational context causes people to rise above their self-interest rational impulses to consider the long-term impacts of their actions. That is, the social and organizational context regulates information exchange via concerns people have for maintaining future relationships, the balance of power, image, and so on. The stronger the influence of the social and organizational context, the less likely people's behaviour is driven strictly by task or personal determinants of information sharing and more by social and organizational determinants” [4]. This also denotes the fact that people are more likely to share information when they feel obligated to engage in pro-social transformations, i.e., when they wish for good outcomes not only for themselves, but also for those working with them or the organisation in which they work. It shows that people are more willing to share information when they are happier with the people or organisation they work or within the context of information sharing, not neglecting the fact that voluntary help or out-of-role help is positively linked with organisational commitment and closeness to colleagues [7]. It is important to recognise that sharing of information requires trust, which is informal friendship or relationship and also realises the benefits that can be derived from it.
Collaborative Information is Dual Ownership
These are mutually owned information, which allows both parties the right to make use of the information. Considering facebook, the stream of information posted with photos and videos uploads, it is argued by some that they own the information and articles they upload on Facebook and therefore have the right to control the use of it. This is however untrue as Facebook also owns the information and control on their sites. We do not own the URL, Facebook does. In every instance where two or more parties interact or collaborate, both parties are co-creating that information, making both parties owners of the information. This is however easy to fault when we claim control ownership because Facebook which is the service provider has solid claims to the information stored in their database, just as we also do own the information we input or upload. The information we create on various sites we visit is co-created and co-owned by both us the visitor and the website owner. Every form of collaboration on the internet or web creates at least two owners on the information or data. This is supported legally by the courts, which gives the right to email providers to read the email of users as long as the email is stored on the provider’s server for a period of time.
Yours, Mine and Ours
When individuals collaborate to one course to produce a result, each brings along his own data which is exchanged. Taking the instance of buying a phone from e-bay (an e-commerce website for buy and selling various items), we can state that this involves three different layers of data:
· My data;
· Your data;
· Our data.
“My data” is the data that is unquestionably only within the province of an individual. Data that I have and it is directly related to me only. It is usually related to privacy of personal data. It is the data individual inputs on e-bay to search for a phone. This data include, brand, model, budget range and year.
“Your data” is the data owned by another person or organisation. It is the data that e-bay has knowledge of, which includes the cost of the phones, available number in the inventory, the available sellers.
“Our Data” is the data jointly available to both parties involved. It could be shared information that is as a result of the transaction to be performed. It is uniquely identified to both parties for a particular transaction.
It is usually easy to identify which data belongs to both parties, but when identifying “our data”, this brings about a major challenge. It could also become complex and complicated when we start associating every aspect of “my data” to “your data”. This occurs more when the other party is an individual and I bring “my data”, you bring “your data” and together we create “our” data. Both parties tend to mix up the data as theirs while the other party sees it as both of them. This therefore requires a broad approach that covers all aspects of data which belongs to me, you, ours and everybody. Regardless of this, the need to control the use of this data and protect the interest of the owners of the information from being copied over the internet is essential.
Conclusion
According to Constant et al theory which complements that there are “more economic perspectives to information sharing that deal with the logic of economic self-interest. Social exchanges of information and knowledge are similar to economic exchanges in the sense that there is an expectation of some future return for sharing, but unlike economic exchanges, there is no understanding of the value of what has been shared and no clear expectation of exact future return”.
However, it is essential to move from the context of information ownership to authority, responsibilities and rights over such information rather than building a framework for ownership of information shared. Though this brings about the issue of information protection but it also helps to address the issue of sole ownership. For instance, a university learning management system (by which lecture materials are uploaded, communication between students and lecturers are allowed) gives the institution an exploitation right over every material produced by the lecturers in the course of their employment, not also neglecting the fact that the institution owns the platform by which the lecturers upload their lecture notes. This gives the university joint ownership and rights to the information and recognises the author to be the lecturer. The university also possesses the responsibility of making these notes available to the students who enrolled in the course, with the lecturer, though the author having no right to make this available to students outside the institution. This helps to create a control that is of value to everyone, which aids participation from all parties. Also looking at the information by service providers of various networks, there are a lot of complexities as regard the privacy of Information Sharing. This remains a critical aspect to look at but it would require lots of investment in legal, moral, political above others to resolve. Sharing our personal information can be effective and begin once workable guidelines and rules are stated which help to control the sharing of information. It would help increase the ease of individuals revealing and sharing information and help control the abuse of information. Individuals want to share information but at their own terms to protect their interest.
