Content Lifecycle Management

Controlling content lifecycle with content management software

What is content management?

Content management is a term that can mean quite different things to different people.

To the database administrator, content management is all about looking after the consistency and correctness of information stored in the database.  To the web site manager, content management is all about ensuring that the web site information is correct and that what is made available to the web site users has not been altered.  To the business manager it is about making sure that information that is supposed to be kept confidential by the business does remain confidential and that content is appropriate, timely and fit for purpose.

Here we are concentrating on content lifecycle management which combines the requirements of the web site manager and the business manager – to make sure that web information is correct and that only those authorized are able to use it.

This kind of content management may be applied to documents, or to web pages, or individual items within web pages. Content management can also be the administrative processes that go around the lifecycle because they are fundamental to creating trust and confidence in the content.

Traditionally, content management did not extend to including controls such as digital rights management (DRM) because no such controls existed.  In the world of the printed page the person holding the page could make whatever use of it was available to them.  But that was before the information age, where the saying, “A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on (Charles Haddon Spurgeon)” is never more true.

So content management is part of the lifecycle management of content now extended by the definition of the recipient and possible limitations of the recipient to use the content.

So content management requires new, and more complex functions if content management is to be successful.  Perhaps among the most complex are the functions for managing recipients.  Some of the problems that have to be solved were discussed under internal document control  and external document control.

Content management methods must have a function for determining who is the recipient, and for enforcing the controls appropriate to the recipient, if it is going to serve a useful purpose with digital information.