The Interface Paradigm

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Barry Murphy. Published: 2010-11-30 11:39:46  Centralized control of information is at the heart of information governance.  In many ways, though, centralization runs counter to the realities of the working world where information must be distributed globally across a variety of devices and applications.  The amount of information we create is overwhelming and the velocity with which that information moves increases daily.  To think that an organization can find one system in which to manage all its information is preposterous.At the same time, the FRCPs essentially put the burden on organizations to be accountable for all information, able to conduct eDiscovery on a moment’s notice.  As we’ve seen, the challenge is daunting.  Highly regulated organizations take a lock-down approach, granularly dictating how and where users create, access, and store information.  For the vast majority of organizations, such an approach won’t work today.  Employees, especially knowledge workers, demand easy access to information; and they know how to get around most systems that get in the way of that easy access.  Such behavior only complicates eDiscovery and is a big reason that any information management or governance initiative needs to focus on how employees use information and work from there.Given the realities, how can organizations achieve centralized management of information?  One key is to change from thinking of information management from a repository perspective to an interface perspective…the interface paradigm.  While an uber-repository is not possible, a centralized interface to all information sources is.  And, that central interface is just what eDiscovery demands (and falls in line with what compliance officers need, too).  From such an interface, legal and IT teams can identify, collect, preserve, analyze, and review information.  Yes, this is an over-simplification – there is the complexity of building connectors to data sources and conducting a data mapping exercise.  But, there are organizations that are starting to be successful with this approach (taking it one data source at a time).It’s important to note that a central interface only provides elements of control or governance over information.  In our previous post on in-place preservation, we looked at some of the issues around leaving information where it lives, but still having it on legal hold.  As the figure here shows, in-place preservation is not perceived as a workable solution by eDJ readers.  Granted, not a statistically significant sample size, but an overwhelming vote of no-confidence of in-place preservation for now.  But, moving to a central interface paradigm at least allows an organization to know what information is out there, be able to search it and analyze it, and then copy only the potentially responsive information over to a preservation repository.  More on this topic to come…if you are currently engaged in such a project, we want to talk to you.  Feel free to comment here or send me an email privately.