informationcentric

Information-centric is an approach in information management and system design that treats information as the central asset around which policies, processes, and technologies are organized. It emphasizes the quality, discoverability, interoperability, and governance of data as foundational to value creation, rather than focusing on specific applications, devices, or networks.

In technology, information-centric design and information-centric networking shift emphasis from host-centric models to data-centric models. The goal is to decouple data from its location, enabling secure, scalable access, reuse, and integration across applications and organizational boundaries through standardized metadata and interfaces.

Core practices include robust metadata, data lineage and provenance, data quality management, and formal data models or ontologies. Information-centric approaches support enterprise data governance, data catalogs, and interoperability across cloud services, analytics platforms, and content systems.

Security and privacy are often addressed via information-centric security, which protects information itself through encryption, rights management, policy enforcement, and access controls, regardless of where the data resides. This complements privacy-by-design and data minimization principles.

Challenges include governance fragmentation, data silos, scale, and the complexity of maintaining consistent metadata. Successful adoption requires clear ownership, investment in data stewardship, and alignment of technical architectures with business goals.