[SIGCIS-Members] Origin of term "information silo"?

[James Cortada]

I have encountered the term overwhelmingly in American businesses, but now
it is a slang term used in English in other countries too.  I began to hear
the term in the mid-1980s both inside of IBM and elsewhere (conferences and
by customers of mine) in various business functions; so it is not an
IT-specific term.  I remember it as a 1980s term because I have long paid
attention to arcane uses of vocabulary in business, e.g., "we will solution
the problem," as my favorite horrible use of English, "face time," etc.

I can assure you that the vast majority of people using the term never
thought about farming processes or ICBMs.  What they did grasp very quickly
was the long tube-like structure which were on farms, even though they did
not know how and why those tubes were used.  What they did understand was
that whatever was in there was separated from the rest of the environment
around it.  From the beginning, they accepted the concept that silos
represented organizations that were inward focused, paid attention to their
individual needs, wants, and political behavior with less or no regard for
the needs and interests of the rest of a corporation, unless such
activities affected their own team, department or division.  Being
"silo-centrict"  (I told you I collected such horrible uses of English) is
considered inappropriate behavior but is (a) practiced by everyone in
business to some extent or another and (b) is assumed to govern the
behavior of everyone around out.  Consultants and business school professor
complain about how terrible this behavior is, but they are ignored because
everyone's performance appraisals are designed to optimize the performance
of the individual, not of the organization as a whole.  BTW--I continue
also to hear this term used in government as well.  However, in both the
private and public sectors it is a term used by large organizations, not
your neighborhood bar, dry cleaning establishment, or Apple store.

I hope this is of help, and that you have learned more than you wanted to
hear.  Cheers!!


On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 3:21 PM, Martin Campbell-Kelly <
m.campbell-kelly at warwick.ac.uk> wrote:

> Janet,
>
> The first time I encountered this term was in the article in Scientific
> American by Al Gore "Infrastructure for the Global Village", Sept 1991.
>
> Martin
>
> -
> Martin Campbell-Kelly, Dept of Computer Science
> University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, U.K.
> voice: +44 24 7652 3193 fax: +44 24 7657 3024
> email: M.Campbell-Kelly at warwick.ac.uk
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
> Behalf Of Janet Abbate
> Sent: 02 August 2013 20:11
> To: sigcis
> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of term "information silo"?
>
> Does anyone know the origin of the term "information silos"? It's commonly
> used as a criticism of groups that don't share information for either
> organizational or technical reasons.
>
> This has always struck me as an odd metaphor. After all, in real life it's
> a
> good thing that grain is isolated in a silo; there is no physical-world
> benefit to connecting or "busting" silos, so how did this become a metaphor
> for good information management? And why would slowly fermenting fodder be
> a
> good metaphor for information?
>
> I'm assuming here that the term refers to farming and not to missile
> silos... which would be equally odd.
>
> Janet
>
> Dr. Janet Abbate
> Associate Professor
> Science & Technology in Society
> Virginia Tech
> www.sts.vt.edu/ncr
> www.linkedin.com/groups/STS-Virginia-Tech-4565055
> www.facebook.com/VirginiaTechSTS
>
>
>
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-- 
James W. Cortada
Senior Research Fellow
Charles Babbage Institute
University of Minnesota
jcortada at umn.edu
608-274-6382
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