A look at characterizing the design of information systems

Mr. C. T. Schlegel, Chairman of the ACM74 session for which this paper was prepared, described his session as one which will try to distinguish those intrinsic features of information systems which separate them from data management systems. He further states that.." there exist many programming packages which efficiently and rapidly handle large amounts of data stored on computers. However, to call them information systems is a little too inaccurate for our tastes"...Mr. Schlegel makes the further observation that.." data becomes information only when interpreted in some context, and the context and the interpretation are usually provided by people who use the data, not the software".