The Once and Future Information Governance: A candid discuion by Sue Trombley

We were so excited about the content of our AIIM webinar on March 19th, that if you weren't one of the 273 people who joined us, we want to make sure you have access to it. We invite you to download the webinar recording today at http://www.ironmountain.com/Company/Events/2014/March/19.aspx During the presentation, John Mancini, the President of AIIM, and I chatted about the key takeaways from the 8th biennial 2013|2014 Information Governance Benchmarking Survey report. This year it was underwritten by Iron Mountain and expanded to include our customers and AIIM members, in addition to the traditional Cohasset Associate customer base and ARMA members. Here is an example of one of our exchanges: Sue: Why is information governance suddenly so pervasive? It is not a new concept or term, yet everyday now there are blogs, webinars (like this one), and conferences being offered about it. John: The volume, velocity, and variety of information being created today has reached a critical point that is, by necessity, raising the level of conversation about an organization's information beyond traditional records and information management. We then stopped to reflect on the differences between Information Governance (IG) and Records and Information Management (RIM). At its heart, IG is an accountability framework that is dependent on the collaboration and interdependence of key functional areas, including RIM, as depicted so well by the Information Governance reference model (www.edrm.net). RIM is a tactical component of the IG strategy. Commitment versus Practice Gap Prevails We continued on to discuss other significant findings of the Survey Benchmarking report, such as the disturbing fact that while 87% of organizations claim to have a mature RIM program (this number reaches 95% for larger organizations), only 8% use metrics to inspect what they expect and a mere 17% conduct compliance audits. We chatted about the reasons why there is such a gap between our evident commitment to RIM programs and our hesitation to measure compliance and results. One thought is if non-compliance is identified, there is a significant challenge in getting support from senior leadership to remediate the problem. This is substantiated by responses such as:

76% of organizations say they lack resources (people and dollars) to take their programs to the next level

66% lack on-going support or commitment by the organization, and

56% lack management buy-in

Another thought is that we are not doing enough to reach into the business units or functional areas where the information is being created, received, and in many instances, maintained. Some leading-edge organizations have begun to shift the responsibility of monitoring compliance through self-assessments from the RIM department to the business units. We concluded, as did the audience who were chatting with us, that the industry, along with associations like AIIM and vendors such as Iron Mountain, need to do a better job of providing essential key risk and performance indicators for Information Governance for use by all organizations. Most of us are pilers, not filers! Another topic of discussion was related to the low engagement (7%) of employees in RIM programs. We noted that this is no surprise as 26% of employees never receive training and 39% perhaps only when they join the organization or by word of mouth. We then talked about the tools by which more employees can be made aware of RIM, but we also speculated on whether we can ever really engage employees to the extent that we as records and information practitioners would want them to be. Because of the volume, velocity, and variety of information, it is inconceivable that an employee will be able to determine what's a record and what's not, classify it according to a retention schedule, and then put it in a designated repository. As such, we talked about the need build more records management into work flows and other options to remove the human decision-making element. Please download the webinar and join in the conversation!

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2014/uncategorized/the-once-and-future-i...
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