The history of the management of information systems includes many ideas that were intended to
simplify the complexities of the management task, but there is still a great deal of wasted investment that
produces no significant benefits. Much of the thinking has been rational and structured, but it can be argued that
structured thinking will not solve the problems presented by the ever-increasing scope and depth of information
systems, the need for improved responsiveness and agility, and the need to deal with a range of requirements
that are sometimes behavioural and sometimes legislative. Three of the more frequently cited frameworks for
information management (Zachman, Henderson & Venkatraman, Ward), are briefly reviewed and found to have
common characteristics. They are combined into a new, simple arrangement of the central (and critically
important) ideas. This new framework has been used as the basis of a survey instrument that is introduced and
explained; it works at two levels - the "micro" and "macro" levels. It assesses perceptions of organisational
capability to manage information well, as seen by respondents who are normally employees working in different
roles with varying responsibilities. The survey instrument comes with an analysis and reporting package that is
found to be suitable for the needs of busy managers, and the way in which micro and macro data is presently
analysed and presented is demonstrated using data from a reference dataset, a CIO workshop, an investigation
within a real estate agency and a large financial services organisation. The contribution of this work to the
research programme from which it emanated is summarised and future directions briefly explained.Carnegie Corporation of New YorkInternational Bibliography of Social Science