Information sharing is a vital method for increasing efficiency and improves performance in an organization. Information sharing has become more realistic across organizations with the development of information & communication technology. Sharing information is a complex task. Public, private, and government sectors are aware of the critical factors of information sharing. A systematic way can influence factors involved in sharing information in an organization (Andrejs 2016).
Appropriate use of information sharing will effect in managing an organization. It helps to promptly meet customers and user requirements. A customer relationship system plays an important part in sharing product & service information. Through this system, access to clients and employees will improve as well. If used smartly, it is an efficient way to lower organizational costs, improve the overall accuracy, and allow its employees to use the information they might need for the smooth operation of the organization (Charles 2019).
Information sharing strategy in OHA includes face to face meetings, E-mails, Forums, Phone calls. Face to face meeting is the safest and efficient way of sharing information. Everyone can share their problems and concerns. Information is sent to multiple people through email. There are some limitations of strategies in sharing information as face to face meeting is not possible for the remote meeting. There are security problems with emails also. It is very easy to share important information with the wrong person. Email communication also increases the response time because the sender has to wait until the receiver sends any confirmation of receiving email.
At present, OHA does not have any central data storage system to store data. They have some credentials on Zero related to the invoices or statements. Usually they store data on personal computers. Volunteers collect information about current players, former players, or parents of interested players and store them in spreadsheets. OHA needs to improve its knowledge and information capturing strategy. If any uncertainty happens or loses any members, they will lose important information about current & previous committee members. Even if their computer got any hardware issue, they will have to re-enter all gathered information from spreadsheets. Sometimes they might not have any hard copy of the information; they will lose information for good. They can have shared hardware to store information but it has to set up at committee member’s house which is technically impossible (Andrejs 2016).
Information and data stored on personal computers of members rely heavily on their ethics to keep information secured. Moreover, personal computers may have security issues. Therefore cloud service can be an option to operate easily & cheap to maintain.
OHA now have one drive as their cloud service. Most of their information is in one-drive. There are some limitations and security issues with one drive also.
The information security issue of local storage includes:
- Computer Virus: Computer viruses can spread from one to another. It is often sent as an email. It is well-known for sending spam to disable computer security and steal personal information such as; passwords, sensitive information. It sometimes deletes the file from the hard drive.
- Sabotage: Sabotage can happen in organizations. It refers to the destruction of the company's very sensitive information. This may result in a loss of confidence in clients.
- Theft: Device theft is increasing day by day. Due to the increasing number of portable devices, it is very easy to steal information from other devices.
- Identity hack: When someone gets access to other user credentials, they may steal the social and personal details of its customers and employees.
There are some cons of using One-Drive:
- Security: Sookasa is One Drive’s all in one security tool but it does not always work effectively to keep data secure within the cloud storage.
- Service: One Drive is not a good option for an organization. Most cloud services offer various features for business purposes while One drive is a better option for personal use only.
- Data Alteration: Some files or data get altered while uploading or syncing to the One-Drive server
- Privacy Concern: There are some privacy issues with one drive. Microsoft has reserved the right to scan uploaded files as a policy.
Solution:
With the development of information technology, increasing access to the information & need for more storage led us to an online cloud storage era. Cloud storage is accessible from anywhere and users do not need to carry data servers. Numerous types of cloud storage are available. Online cloud services offer Data backup as a faster solution to data breaching and also keep another off-site data backup (Gupta, Priya 2020).
- Cost Saving: Easy access to the cloud saves money and time along with the company’s data. The best feature of cloud storage is the user can enable or disable functions and can enjoy cloud service as pay as you go.
- Security: Cloud is more secure than local storage as a cloud host work efficiently to monitor security. Most of the data theft is occurring due to internal theft. Cloud storage offers security encryptions for data transmission. Thus it is less accessible by intruders or unauthorized persons. Most importantly, users can set their security-based on their requirements (Anjani, Daver 2020).
- Mobility: A cloud service I accessible from anywhere in the world regardless of the device users using. Staff can use organizational data and work so from the remote place through cloud service (Daver, Lakshya 2020).
- Collaboration: Cloud storage offers collaboration between employees to work as a team. Collaborated members can view and share data securely via a cloud platform. Collaboration is possible without cloud storage but it will never be as easy & effective as a cloud.
- Data Recovery: Cloud service offers a quick data recovery service to its client as it always has an offsite backup. In most cases, recovery takes an hour or less.
- Loss Prevention: Cloud provides loss prevention by providing secured and reliable backups of data. With a cloud-based server, all uploaded data remains safe and easily accessible from any place, any device.
- Sustainability: Infrastructure of cloud storage is environmentally proactive. It focuses more on virtual services than hardware. It improves energy efficiency and reduces commuter related emissions (Ambika 2020).
I would like recommending OHA to adapt Dropbox over One-Drive. Dropbox is the best solution to the current problem and it is financially feasible. It provides 5 TB of initial secured storage. The basic business plan starts from AUD 99 which provides office 365 integration with 180 days of data recovery.
-Dropbox is the ultimate destination for all files. Categorized folders allow admin to control access to the content based on user structure. One drive provides different sharing controls for admin and also One-drive needs SharePoint integration.
-Dropbox allows us to sync & upload files to the cloud server without using local storage space. It means OHA volunteers can upload files from different platforms to the cloud with the right permissions.
- Dropbox is compatible with the best collaboration techniques. OHA team members can work together on the same file regardless of the devices they are using. It allows us to view documents without download. Similarly, one drive has limited previewing access and if unavailable it just downloads the file and breaks collaboration.
- Higher adoption makes security stronger. Dropbox business plan includes Office 365 online editing and native preview from Microsoft. OHA’s authorized person can centralize their collected data without changing their existing workflows.
References:
Andrejs, Cekuls 2016,’The Concept of Information Sharing Behaviors in Complex Organizations: Research in Latvian Enterprises’, Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, Vol.14, PP. 78-82
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