DATA MANAGEMENT

The act, process, or means by which data is managed. This may include the compilation, storage, safe-guarding, listing, organization, extraction, retrieval, manipulation, and dissemination of data. In its strictest sense, data may be defined only as the raw numbers for numeric or quantitative data (or descriptions, in the case of qualitative data), either in time-series format (data covering observations over specific periods of time), cross-sectional format (data consisting of a number of observations taken at a specific point in time or about a specific event or phenomenon without regard to its behavior over time), or a combination of these two. Information, on the other hand, deals more specifically with the manipulation, re-organization, analysis, graphing, charting, and presentation of data for specific management and decision-making purposes. Also see Information Management.