Information Governance has historically been a challenge to implement, often viewed as a cost with minimal return. Organizations tend to only invest in information governance after they’ve had a crisis that good governance would have prevented or mitigated. However, Digital Transformation does get funding and tackles the same challenges that every good information governance does when they begin. How can information professionals take advantage of transformation efforts so information governance is seen as an asset and not a cost? What value can you immediately bring to the table that makes a difference? It is time to transform the perception of information governance from a project hindrance to an enabler.
2. 2 Dominion Consulting / Proprietary and Confidential
Laurence Hart
Director,
Information Management,
Dominion Consulting
Author, Word of Pie
http://wordofpie.com
@piewords
5. 5 Dominion Consulting / Proprietary and Confidential
http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire-new-13+story-building-tips-over-in-shanghai
Less than half of Records Managers expect
the volume of onsite physical records to
decrease this year.
- ARMA & Forrester Research
2017 International Records Management Survey
#ARMABos, 20 April 2017
6. 6 Dominion Consulting / Proprietary and Confidential
Most organizations report that the amount of
paper is still not decreasing. A majority are not
using any workflow.
- AIIM
2016 Paper-Free Industry Watch
#ARMABos, 20 April 2017
http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire-new-13+story-building-tips-over-in-shanghai
7. 7 Dominion Consulting / Proprietary and Confidential
Less than 50% of organizations have effective
Information Governance rules, roles, metrics,
or policies.
- Information Coalition
2016 State of Enterprise Information
http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire-new-13+story-building-tips-over-in-shanghai
#ARMABos, 20 April 2017
32. 32 Dominion Consulting / Proprietary and Confidential
Find new efforts and lead with
value, not extra requirements
Earn trust
If you aren’t involved in the
capture of information, you can
never govern it
#ARMABos, 20 April 2017
This is an old mantra. We have been on a journey for years. Compliance is a journey. ECM is a journey. This is not a new concept.
For the journey, we have a lot of familiar roles.
The fearless leader. They’ve read or heard something that makes it all see like a good idea. They want things to just happen and improve.
IT hears the leader and says that they have the perfect platform and technology to make it happen.
Then there is the InfoGov resource. We know things center around People and Process, not the tech. We are the voice of reason. We are the experts trying to chart the course.
After being on this journey for two decades, success is not where we would like it to be. The persistence of paper records applies to both onsite and 3rd party storage
The AIIM study from the fall of 2016, talking to different people, came up with the same problem. We are not successfully digitizing new records, much less taking advantage of the technology to take advantage of the digital tech.
While InfoGov awareness is increasing. The rules, roles, policies, or metrics for measuring success are still not in place. This is likely contributing to the lack of progress.
Cloud is a new wrinkle
Response to not having the solutions in place. People are going online to find the tools needed to solve the problem
Can no longer say the records are at least physically onsite
Cloud is not all bad because they offer better security, usability, and evolving which is more than most have onsite. Many organizations either don’t have a plan or they have different rules for cloud content
How have we been successful? It has been through personal effort and sacrifice. Many efforts are only successful while the people driving them stay around. When they leave, things stagnate. I’ve personally replaced systems that I put in place a decade or more previously that died of neglect.
Individuals do not scale and our efforts to create enough champions in every organization have failed.
What we have been doing hasn’t been making change fast enough. It doesn’t work and repeating the same processes and expecting repeatable results is nothing short of folly at this point. We need to think of new approaches that can be replicated and are not dependent on everything going right and being shepherded by a forceful personality.
So now what? It is easy to say what to not do but there has to be a new direction. Simply not doing what hasn’t worked doesn’t accomplish anything if there isn’t a something to be done
One of the big problems that we kept overlooking is that people want to do their jobs. They don’t want to be worried about classification, security, or any advance InfoGov principles. They will do enough to make sure that it can be found by them later (put it into a “safe” place) and move on.
Define digital transformation and its purpose. The definition is really an extension of what we did two decades ago when we started automating invoice processing.
Humans and the User Experience are part of what we haven’t been doing.
The key is we need to look across all systems and not simply a single, manual process.
We want to spend more time interacting with people in ways that impact the business, not doing routine things
This is what we been trying to do. Going digital. We call it getting rid of paper or becoming electronic, but that is what going digital is
Talk about how the skills we use as information practitioners nicely align with what happened during digital transformation efforts
Map the process. Find steps for automating any process. Document where the exceptions happen and how they will be handled.
We’ve been doing this for decades
Steps to Information Governance
The first two are core to what digital transformation does. They may not think of those terms, but they do it
Protection is critical but if you don’t capture it and know where it is, you can’t begin to protect it
Capture information
Classify and categorize information
Protect the information
Control it
Dispose of it (maybe)
Why can’t we leverage these efforts? Digital Transformation efforts are trying to accomplish the first steps of every information governance journey.
When InfoGov pros walk into the room, people see cost. They see longer timeframes. They see complexity that has historically made initiative fail.
Big, scary, high cost, high risk, extra work, recipe for failure
Information that is not Captured cannot be Managed. If nothing else is taken away from this presentation, take this thought with you.
Need to lead with value. How can we help improve processes that help the business. How do we drive the organization’s MISSION forward?
Capture, Classify…
This is a hard task that they will buy into
Map the flow of information. See where it is. See where it is replicated. See where it is needed.
Build awareness of the risks. (PII= Personally Identifiable Information)
Often there is too much of a focus on getting it done and security is put off. Spend a month building in the right security in now or risk seeing your organization’s name in the paper in a year.
Educate, don’t dictate, so that risks can be wisely taken. It is a balance. Sometimes the easy way to reduce risk is to not collect information that isn’t needed. Do you need their full address or does their State or Zip Code give you enough information for your metrics.
Make a point here that cloud is often more secure than your own datacenters
When I say scary, I mean Compliance and Disposition, i.e. the heart of Records Management. In agile, you are constantly incrementing and delivering improvements. Every single one should benefit the business. Some add value. Some reduce cost. Some improve risk. The value delivered and cost saved can be used to pay to reduce risk and kick start the next project.
Key point here is that we aren’t ignoring it. We are adding it to the list early, just down the list. Typically you start with new, fresh, data in these efforts. Later you migrate legacy data. (stop creating old data before bringing it in). In an ideal world:
Go live with active data
Implement RM
Import older data that is not more cheaply archived externally. (Cost of migration vs cost of storage for remaining useful life)
Once again, you cannot manage what you do not capture. Don’t scuttle the project by insisting this has to be day 1 functionality.
Not just cloud or content analytics. Blockchain has value. Bitcoin is a verifiable, trackable, secure method for conducting financial transactions. The non-centralized nature prevents adverse systems from corrupting the information. Imagine that for audit records or chain of custody. While not there yet, it is a technology that could help make things easier in the future.
When a new tech comes forward, make the techie explain what it could do in the context of the business. Give an example of how it might work. It doesn’t have to be realistic yet but it can help drive understanding of the technology.
As for cloud, one thing that many people overlook is the constantly evolving nature of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. Instead of the business finally getting the solution of their dreams and having IT neglect it for 5-8 years until it has to be replaced, SaaS solutions stay current, extending the long-term usefulness of the solution.
One process at a time. Link together. Don’t go Big Bang. Expand. Increment. Don’t build a huge platform on day one. Find a system that can grow and can start out at the right size. (another cloud advantage)
Now an expert that brings value, not cost. No longer feared. A wanted member of the process
Maybe nothing is happening. Not every organization is doing this yet. That’s where you have to start your own
Get started: Assess where you are. Map things out. Find the pain points. The tech doesn’t determine what is good and what isn’t. Do people know where things are? Is it protected? Are their guidelines, however informal, that are consistently followed?
Focus on the Business. When all else fails, ask yourself when making a decision which option will help the business? Unless they are an InfoGov software or consulting firm, the mission of any organization is not Information Governance. InfoGov shou.d support the mission and the people conducting it.
We need a new approach
Find new efforts and lead with value, not extra requirements
Earn trust, evolve into a source of value
If we aren’t involved in the capture of information, we can never govern it