I is widely claimed that we live in the "Information Age" reflecting both the volume and availability of information as a component of contemporary products and services which has had a profound and continuing impact on the way Australian business, government and individuals function. While this has undoubtedly brought great benefits, it has also brought great challenges.
Information technology has been most successful in assisting workplaces to manage large volumes of structured data such as financial details and less effective with other types of information formats such as emails, web pages, letters, memos, news articles, journals and reports that are context and user dependent. Technology has facilitated the ability to distribute lots of text information to individuals eliminating time, distance and hierarchical constraints, all of which supports the contemporary business focus on removing management layers and individual empowerment.

But the ease of creation, transmission, replication, and duplication of information in combination with diminishing resources allocated to administration activities has left individuals to locate and manage all this material the best they can.
This may seem relatively unproblematic from a management perspective until specific information, whether in written or oral forms, is needed to address issues vital to the continuance, improvement or development of the organisation as a whole, particularly in these times of considerable structural change and staff turnover.