Information infrastructure has an increasing impact on the lives of both people and companies of all sizes. This is a set of equipment, communication lines, systems and subsystems of different levels that provide fast and continuous transmission of information from one subscriber to another. Nowadays, almost everything depends on information: financial transactions and financial management, performance of work duties, education, functioning of entire government institutions and various organizations.
There is a lot of examples of information infrastructures. To better understand this phenomenon and its role in the life of each person and society as a whole, it is enough to consider the largest and most famous of them.
Financial Market Infrastructures
Financial Market Infrastructure is a system for collecting, analyzing, transmitting and providing information about various financial markets and their processes. Today, it is the financial markets that have a great influence on the entire financial sector. If some index on the stock exchange falls due to the political situation, economic problems or a pandemic, it can affect the whole world. It is not surprising that the state of this infrastructure is as important as the banking infrastructure.
The financial market infrastructure consists of the following elements:
- The Internet that allows people to find out everything about the processes in the market;
- Various publishing houses, mass media, and the press that write about the state of affairs on the stock exchanges and may even influence them;
- Rating agencies, information departments of stock exchanges, and analytical publications;
- Various sources of information from the state, the banking sector, market regulators, and many others.
Basically, the financial market infrastructure is a set of data sources and the mechanisms by which they influence the processes taking place on the exchanges. For example, in the US, an important role in the regulation of markets belongs to EDGAR: a system for automatically collecting financial and analytical information.
Information infrastructure of the tourism industry
The more information the objects of the tourism industry receive, the better offers, prices, discounts and promotions they can offer to customers. This area of business is growing rapidly in developed countries, so it already has its own information infrastructure. It includes a whole set of information and analytics tools, as well as technologies that allow people to receive information that can influence the tourism business.
Tourism business depends on the development of the information environment. The following elements are important here:
- Availability of recreational areas in certain countries or regions;
- Political, economic, and military situation in tourist areas;
- Prices and pricing process for tourism services from market leaders;
- Popular services related to the tourism business.
The more information a tourism business receives, the better offers it can have for consumers and the more efficiently it can work.
Here are some other examples of information infrastructure applications:
- Information infrastructure for innovation activities;
- The information infrastructure for distance education, which has become especially relevant in 2020 and the following years;
- Information infrastructure for the marketing business;
- Science Citation Index, Scopus: local information infrastructures for the scientific field that allow you to evaluate the importance and value of various scientific publications and authors.
There are many examples of information infrastructures. And the main thing is that all important areas of activity are beginning to acquire their own information infrastructures, since this is an indispensable element these days.
