I recently spent time in Greenwich, London—the home of the Prime Meridian.
In the 18th century, the time ball at the observatory dropped at 1:00 PM every day so ships in the harbor could set their timepieces. Without that shared reference point, navigation was guesswork.
In the modern enterprise, we are still trying to set our clocks.
When different departments use different vocabularies for the same concepts, your information ships are sailing in different directions. You don’t need more satellites (tech); you need a validated, agreed-upon fact base (the meridian).
A taxonomy isn’t just a list; it’s the zero meridian that makes interoperability possible.
– Joseph Busch
#DataStandards #Interoperability #InformationArchitecture #TaxonomyStrategies