Information Governance Still An Immature Market

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Barry Murphy. Published: 2011-08-18 09:43:28  My last two posts about our information governance survey results hit on some positive trends – information governance is a defined model for managing information that many organizations are executing on and it encompasses the management of both structured and unstructured data.  I’ve also argued that we are in the early days of information governance because in actual practice, information governance initiatives are immature.  This is not necessarily bad news; every practice area has a learning curve and we have to start somewhere.  But, it is a call to action to all organizations that want to reduce risks, avoid huge costs, and better leverage that knowledge asset we call information.You may ask, “Why argue that information governance is immature when the practice of records management has been around for so long?”  It’s a great question.  Records management has been around for a long time, but traditionally was focused in the paper world.  The digital world is much more complex than the paper world and it has taken some time for records managers to get the recognition they deserve for what they can do in the digital age.  That is changing, but our data shows that change is slow.  Though our respondents recognize what information governance is and how broadly the net is cast, less than 40% have centralized records and information management groups.For small organizations, I can understand not having a centralized RIM group, but for large organizations, it feels almost criminal to me.  Almost half of our respondents are from companies with more than 500 employees.  I believe that part of the problem is that people still don’t take records management seriously; they are stuck to that paper paradigm and see records management as a non-important, back-office function.  The other part of the problem is that many organizations aren’t sure where to slot information governance (more on this in our upcoming report and webinar).  Should it be part of legal?  Report in to the CIO?  Be its own organization reporting the CEO?  Success can be attained in a variety of ways, but what’s important is to have the centralized group.  And with less than 40% having a centralized group, it’s still early days.  I’ll feel better about the state of maturity when that number is closer to 60%.  Let me know what you think by shooting me an email.