(Translation made with Google)

We worry and we are mobilizing against the pollution that we generate in our everyday life, and it’s called sustainable development . We are just beginning to worry about pollution of information generated daily, our response is called the Information Governance .

A study IDC / EMC evaluated the evolution of information in the world for 2020-35 Zettabyte (1 + 21 zeroes) or more than 43 times the volume of 2009. Suffice to say that we become very consumer information. To give you an idea that correspond to use per second of digital information 150 000 per capita in 2020, babies included! (Base 7.5 bn). In 2009 each inhabitant treated 40,000 digital information.

The digital Universe 2010-IDC(a)

The digital Universe 2010-IDC(b)

Of this volume, this study evaluates, among other things, that businesses and generate 20% of this information. All this mass of information and its exponential growth, provides a number of side effects, should be taken into account very seriously:

  • A complex management information for each employee (and computer tools)
  • Increased risks and management costs,
  • Territory « company information » increasingly blurred (50% of the information is mixed-use professional and private),
  • A regulation of increasingly restrictive to limit the drift, and channel that critical mass,
  • More art projects (focus on the use of information rather than on technique), to reduce lost time and productivity,

Why Information Governance

GouvInfo - processus de baseThe information governance, is defined

through all processing stages to ensure better control of information assets. This is done, first by identification and generation of repositories of information and management through policies and an organization around information.

But to answer the why, what about taking a process view, and we ask the question whether it is important for a company to master business processes? :

The answer is clear: yes! Fortunately, the opposite is becoming increasingly rare, ISO 9000, among other things, helped a lot in this direction to give a frame to follow. Now consider what fuels this process is information, the question arises: how can we control our processes if we do not control their information? With analogy, you can embark on the performance and reliability of the engine if you do not know what fuel you are currently using? I think our organizations are strongly improved upon this aspect.

With this view, the information literacy is more important than mastery of the process, so yes, it is important and this becomes vital even today. Specifically, imagine that an organization is now capable of managing the entire lifecycle of their information assets, that is to say, she knows when and by whom information is created, when it is destroyed, what processes it feeds, who (or what) transforms when it is critical when it needs to increase its availability, tracing, see the archive. She also knows its associated metadata and repositories, finally she is able to evaluate its cost and value. It is now possible, and at lower cost in the early stages of development (most important). If you do not believe in credit reviews the brakes that prevent such mastery, and exchange it.

One thing is sure, the organizations that have this mastery will increase tenfold their ability to adapt to the mobilities of the market.

How to approach?

GouvInfo - Orga Functions

The Information Governance is complex but not complicated . It is mostly 80% human. The real difficulty for its implementation is to convince of the merits of the project, especially to convince many very different populations (lawyers, business, computer scientists, security officials, ..). Apart from this change will be to manage throughout the project, the first steps would be: 

  • Identify, appoint and support an internal team to become the guardian of the temple. This may be, as new roles or new organization. Or simply as part of implementing a project management information (Record Management, Social Networking, Electronic Document Management, Master Data Management, ..). The team carries this project will become a natural center of competence around the Information Governance at the outcome of the project.
  • Create a central repository of information. A simple and pragmatic, a list of information (eg invoice, purchase order, special repositories, RIB, contract, VC meeting specific transaction receipt specific taxonomy specific endorsements, Kbis, certificate, .. ) by not exceeding 100 lines. The hardest part is not the book, but the grain of detail that should be the same. This list will then give other references (including « Master data » for projects such as MDM)
  • Create a management policy of high-level information, with the objective of being frozen for some years. This policy will be declined thereafter to specific areas (physical archiving, level of regulatory requirement, Email, critical business information X, collaborative space, dematerialization, …)
  • GouvInfo - Orga GateKeeper

    Connect seamlessly with all stakeholders and as much as possible. Getting to tackle a project of this type requires at least 6 months for the players begin to be in phase and with good sensitivity. Actors, originally very remote, see brake mode, can quickly become active supporters, subject to spend time explaining their contributions to this governance. Similarly a population of lawyer can be very picky on aspects with a view of risk, does not require it, everyone needs to understand and thus take a step back.

     

     

All these actions will build the information governance, which will provide recurring operating support and commitment to user information. System-level information, projects and applications

can then unfold naturally, based on benchmarks to date, and presence of insiders receptive and responsive, for example:

  • , Whose first steps are precisely defined benchmarks, and rules related to a population … of business information, will be based on an existing reliable
  • Archiving a project compelling and long-term (or a Record Management System) requires knowing the shelf life of the captured information will be fed over the water by the regulatory and business requirements to ensure management cycle life information
  • the establishment of collaborative tools with short life cycles can dump the right information in the right tools, and not become silos dark, heavy and uncontrollable.

For indeed, in all these projects, the organization must master its repositories, mapping of its business information, regulatory constraints and life cycles associated with each family of existing information. She must also know its taxonomy, its filing plans (Archiving, DMS, collaboration, …) …. And all this is more or less reliable, and probably widely scattered.

GouvInfo - Fundamentals

Why not consolidate these rights , they thrive and make them available uniformly throughout the organization? With a risk point of view, why not rely on processes of crisis management, centralized in a single instance that includes, knows and has the legitimacy of action towards repositories of sensitive information.

Technology today allows better government information. The risk information is becoming clear to our organizations. Our sensitivity when the power of information to improve our ability to innovation and productivity is highest. So: what can be obstacles to the establishment of an information governance today?

NOTE: I invite you to respond to polls: Where is connected the information governance? and Who leads the Information Governance?