An information system whose prime purpose is to supply information to management. The early concept of an MIS, commonplace in the 1960s and early 1970s, was that systems analysts would determine the information requirements of individual managers in an organization, and would design systems to supply that information routinely and/or on demand.

Decision support systems (DSS) form a class of MIS, giving managers much greater independence in their use of computer-based information. They depend on the union of office information systems (including personal computing facilities for managers, operated by themselves) with more conventional database and data-processing systems. They assume that managers will be able to build and access their own personal databases, as well as accessing the corporate databases, and that they will be able to formulate their own access enquiries without depending on specialist intermediaries.