Data, Information, Knowledge

DATA. Data is the collection of raw facts, it is normally represent as number, letter or work. Bhatt (2001)

INFORMATION. Information is any collected. Organized, or processed data, which is also can be communicable and shareable. Information can be also understand as adding the context to the data. (Bollinger and Smith) 2001.

KNOWLEDGE. Knowledge is the result of daily learning, research, practise and built up process. To transfer the information into knowledge has to gone through the process of justify, true and believe. Armstrong (2003)

During the class, we argued, information is come from the related data and understand the information will become knowledge, but it is impossible transform knowledge into data. As the graphic below.

My colleague Pavan kumar stating that, information must gone through the process of understanding, in order to transform into knowledge. Due to understand will require the justify, believe and prove it is true. Therefore, knowledge can not be transform from data.
However, I do not agree with that. In my point of view, the data , information and knowledge should be at the same level, it will transform to each other with different needs. According to Alavo and Leidner (1999), information is a different way to represent data due to the different action act on it. Also, knowledge is a different way to represent information sue due to the different action act on it. Therefore, knowledge can actually reverse to information and data.

And I used the example of learning the language. First of all, data can be transfer to knowledge. For example, learning how to spell a work will require memorising. Assuming the letter ’A’ ’B’ ‘C’ are the data, language learner can memorise the different spelling of the word. The word will become the learner ’s knowledge. On the other hand, learning grammar will need the learner ’s understanding. Therefore, to learn the language will need both of memorising and understand. Through this method, the data can be transfer either to information or knowledge. I am going to explain how can data transform either to information or knowledge. letter ’A’ ’B’ ’C’ is data. They will become information when they are alphabet. When a English student who needs them to learn how to spell, they become knowledge to that student. In other word, data, information, and knowledge are at the equal level. Because it can be transform to each other according to the different needs.

The question is, what if those data, information, knowledge are totally useless to the user, and how does the data, information and knowledge transform to each other. I am giving an example below:Pizza hut (UK) LTD is using a computer system called Yum-IT. As one of the worldwide famous restaurant brand, the customer complain is the most difficult situation to dealing with. Therefore Yum-IT intranet have a section called ’customer issues’, this section is basically run by all the manager across the country. Within this section, user can find the real case and solution of all sort of customer complain. The process is like this, when a manager received a complain from the customer, the manager will need to speak to the customer and try to solve the problem. Then, at the end of the shift he or she will need to upload the case to the intranet, and the head office will then evaluate the result of the case and give feedback to the manager within a week. But the head office will not change what that manager had uploaded to the intranet. After day to day operation, the ’customer issues’ section is the knowledgebase for the management to find out how to dealing with the customer issues. Within this example, the data is the record of the case. Then it will be transform into information when uploaded to the ‘customer issues’ section. Last, those information will transform into knowledge when any manger needs the case to deal with the current situation. Therefore, as a record, the case is a data. It become information when we added context in it. And it will become knowledge, when others needs to learn or use from it.

To sum up, in my opinion, data, information and knowledge are at the same level, and they can be transfer to each other. The problem is how valuable are those three element to the users, and what if those are completely useless to the users. I.e. the customer cases will be pointless to a kitchen member.
Reference:

Alavi, M and Leidner, D. E. (1999), “knowledge management system: issues, challenges, and benefits,” communications of the association for information system.

Armstrong .m. (2003), “A handbook of human resource management practice” Kogan Page limited.

Bhatt, G. D. (2001), “knowledge management in organizations: examining the interaction between technologies, techniques, and people”, journal of knowledge management.

Bollinger A. S. and smith R. D. (2001) “managing organizational knowledge as a strategic asset”, journal of knowledge management.

Gene Bellinger, Durval Castro, Anthony Mills (2004) “Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom” http://www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm

Anthony Liew, “understanding data, information, knowledge and their inter-relationships”. http://www.tlainc.com/articl134.htm