Is Information Governance on Your Radar?

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Barry Murphy. Published: 2011-08-03 11:01:38Format, images and links may no longer function correctly. Is information governance on your radar screen?  It’s certainly on ours.  For the past several months, eDJ has been conducting an information governance survey with Barclay Blair of ViaLumina, Ltd.  Analysis of the results is ongoing – the first report will be out in September and we’ll have a webinar on the topic September 15, 2011 at 1pm ET / 10am PT.  The data is teaching us a lot about the topic; we’ll use the data to put some definition around the term and provide some recommendations on how to gain real value through information governance.

I want to start sharing some of what the data reveals through a series of post throughout August.  The good news, from my perspective, is that information governance – as a concept – is gaining traction.  While information governance still confuses almost 14% of respondents, almost a full third say that information governance is a defined model for managing information that they are executing on.

Even as information governance gains attention, though, there are many – over 25% – that believe this is just a new name for records management or master data management and that it’s not new.   That’s not necessarily bad news.  If the worst thing someone can say about information governance is that it’s just a new name for records management, then there isn’t much to worry about.  One could argue that records management is also a defined model for managing information that companies are executing on.  My hope is that the respondents viewing information governance as just a new name for old terms aren’t doing so cynically.  The policies and procedures that records managers establish can provide immense value to organizations and in many ways: eDiscovery cost avoidance; risk mitigation; and knowledge management (dare I say that has real value?).

What is interesting in the data is that some patterns emerge.  For example, we can start to see the importance of a centralized, dedicated group for managing information governance initiatives (more on that in a future post).  But, for all the traction information governance is gaining, there is still a long way to go on the maturity curve for most organizations.  The research shows most are in the early days of putting information governance initiatives into action.  Our report will focus on ways to do that while getting both short-term and long-term wins.  Stay tuned for further posts.

We’d love for your voice to be heard in the research.  Have an opinion on information governance, or an anecdote you’d like to share?  Send me an email and we can talk further.  Thanks!