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Dr. Louise Spiteri: Information Governance Models

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In my last post, I talked about underlying principles of Information Governance. In this post, I will present two popular Information Governance models.

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The Information Governance Reference Model (IGRM) The IGRM was developed by EDRM, now a part of the Duke Law Center for Judicial Studies, which creates practical resources to improve e-discovery and information governance. EDRM developed this model to create a framework by which to bring together the key players in information governance:

  • Business users who need information to operate the organization,
  • IT departments who must implement the mechanics of information management, and
  • Legal, risk, and regulatory departments who understand the organization’s duty to preserve information beyond its immediate business value.

IGRM represents the functional areas that are directly responsible for the governance of information across an enterprise:

  • Legal: Responsible for determining the risk profile of an organization based on litigation exposures, international privacy requirements, intellectual property protection, working environment, and more.
  • Discovery: Responsible for the communication, instruction, and coordination with business units or individuals related to information that must be located, preserved, and produced to satisfy litigation requirements.
  • Risk: Responsible for the protection of the organization’s brand, finances, and operations by managing and mitigating risk exposures. This requires a full understanding of the organization’s risk profile (litigation, investigations, regulatory requirements, protection of private information, and protection of intellectual property).
  • Compliance: Responsible for ensuring that the organization is aware of, and meets the requirements of rules and regulations imposed by a variety of authorities (federal, state/provincial, and local governments; regulatory agencies; data privacy authorities, and industry groups).
  • RIM: Responsible for the development and publication of the RIM Program policy for paper and electronic records.
  • IT: Responsible for the management of the high volume of data being created and received, and the reduction of costs, particularly around redundant technologies and storage.
  • Privacy: Responsible for managing the risks and business impacts of privacy laws and policies, and the use of personally identifiable information.
  • Security: Responsible for the development, implementation, and management of the organization’s security vision, strategy, policy, and programs.
  • Information Architecture: Responsible for the organization of information and database development to support the business needs.
  • Business: Responsible for compliance with the Information Governance policies.

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The Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles (The Principles), were created by ARMA International as a common set of principles that describe the conditions under which business records and related information should be maintained. The Principles were designed to guide:

  • CEOs in determining how to protect their organizations in the use of information assets;
  • Legislators in crafting legislation meant to hold organizations accountable; and
  • Records management professionals in designing comprehensive and effective records management programs.

The principles:

  • Accountability: A senior executive oversees the information governance program. The organization adopts policies and procedures to guide personnel and ensure that the program can be audited.
  • Transparency: An organization’s business processes and activities are documented in an open and verifiable manner, and available to all personnel and appropriate interested parties.
  • Integrity: Information generated by, or managed for, the organization has a reasonable and suitable guarantee of authenticity and reliability.
  • Protection:  Protection of records and information that are private, confidential, privileged, secret, classified, essential to business continuity, or that otherwise require protection.
  • Compliance: Compliance with applicable laws and other binding authorities, as well as with the organization’s policies.
  • Availability: Maintenance of records and information in a manner that ensures timely, efficient, and accurate retrieval of needed information.
  • Retention:  Records and information are kept for an appropriate time, taking into account legal, regulatory, fiscal, operational, and historical requirements.
  • Disposition: Appropriate disposition for records and information that are no longer required to be maintained by applicable laws and the organization’s policies.

Dr. Louise Spiteri
Academic Director
Master of Information Management at Dalhousie University

Dr. Louise Spiteri: Information governance – A core principle of Information Management

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An area of growing importance in information management (IM) is the concept of information governance. The term data governance is sometimes used as well, but I find this term to be rather narrow in scope, as it is often used to refer to data resources, rather than the broader concept of information. Information governance is defined by Gartner as:

The specification of decision rights and an accountability framework to ensure appropriate behavior in the valuation, creation, storage, use, archiving and deletion of information. It includes the processes, roles and policies, standards and metrics that ensure the effective and efficient use of information in enabling an organization to achieve its goals.

Some information management activities that fall under information governance include:

  • Records management
  • Regulatory compliance
  • Storage and archiving
  • Information security
  • Risk management
  • eDiscovery

The need for information governance is driven by a number of factors, including:

  • Exponential growth of digital data
  • Increased complexity of regulatory environment
  • Business value and risks are often unknown and unmanaged
  • Increased sharing of information outside the organization
  • Prevalence of social networking and mobile applications
  • Increased risk of security breaches or data loss

In most organizations, the volume of information continues to grow exponentially and has become more mobile, making the job of protecting it even more difficult as requirements to do so increase. Information managers must deal with ever-increasing and more complex legal and regulatory requirements. Legal discovery requirements continue to become more standardized, with courts having less tolerance for noncompliance with established standards.

Good information governance makes good business sense. Most organizations are quickly realizing the need to manage information more effectively on an enterprise basis. The evolution of information governance is an essential business requirement to mitigate risk, reduce cost, and increase revenue. Market pressure for increased revenue is driving efforts to find creative ways for organizations to leverage the large volumes of information they retain to increase market share, drive revenue, and maintain a competitive advantage. Organizations often become aware of the importance of information governance when they face a data breach. Organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the financial implications of data breaches, both in terms of costs incurred in dealing with these breaches, as well as those associated with the damage to an organization’s reputation. The figures below show some of the costs involved in Canadian data breaches in 2016, based on a study conducted by the Ponemon Institute:

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Information governance is a key component of the Records Management course I teach in the Master of Information Management program.  In my next post, we will look more closely at information governance principles. 

 

 

 

 

So, what is it that information managers do?

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An interesting aspect of working in the information management field is the difficulty in explaining clearly and concisely the nature of the field. Many professions have a reasonably clear public profile, such as medical doctors, nurses, accountants, lawyers, and so forth. Information managers, on the other hand, often find themselves in the position of having to explain what they do. The same is true also for those of us who teach and conduct research in this area.

There is no standard definition of what constitutes information management (IM). The Government of Canada defines it as a discipline that directs and supports effective and efficient management of information in an organization, from planning and systems development to disposal and/or long-term preservation.

Wikipedia defines IM as [the] cycle of organizational activity: the acquisition of information from one or more sources, the custodianship and the distribution of that information to those who need it, and its ultimate disposition through archiving or deletion.

At the School of Information (SIM), we define information management as a people-centred approach to discovering, organizing, analyzing, representing, and accessing data, information, and knowledge. Effective IM gets the right information to the right people at the right time. I am undoubtedly biased, of course, but I think SIM’s definition captures the main functional areas of IM very well. We propose also the following areas of competencies for IM professionals:

  1. Information management leadership
  2. Enterprise architecture
  3. Risk management
  4. Information security

The Government of Australia has a very well-crafted information management standard that could be applied to any organization, either public or private. The standard outlines eight principles for the management of business information:

  1. Business information is systematically governed
  2. Necessary business information is created
  3. Business information is adequately described
  4. Business information is suitably stored and preserved
  5. How long business information should be kept is known
  6. Business information is accountably destroyed or transferred
  7. Business information is saved in systems where it can be appropriately managed
  8. Business information is available for use and reuse

The graphic below, from K.L. Scott & Associates, provides a good summary of IM processes:

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This graphic shows the business value of IM to an organization:

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In this column, we will explore a number of IM areas, particularly in relation to events in the news, as well as relevant research. IM is a truly exciting field, as I hope we will discover together.

Liseanne Cadieux: Social Media and Information Management

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Liseanne Cadieux (MIM 2017)

Liseanne Cadieux (MIM 2017)

Social Media connects our global community and allows information, ideas and messages to be shared in real-time from any location that has access to WIFI technology.

In recent posts, Binod Sundararajan suggested that social media allows us to share critical data that serves the greater good, bringing together interdisciplinary teams to work towards solutions that will benefit society. Tanya Chedrawy, a recent MPA(M) graduate, discussed how she uses social media to highlight stories of individuals who are making a difference in their local communities.

Liseanne Cadieux (MIM 2017), a recent graduate of CFAME’s Master of Information Management program, continues the CFAME Connection dialogue on social media from the perspective of a professional in the field of information management

“There is no doubt that social media will continue to evolve and transform the way in which we participate within a wider audience,” Liseanne noted in a recent WebEx conference call with CFAME Connection.

“We have the ability to store vast amounts of data. Our challenge is to manage the flow of information.  We need to be strategic in our custodianship of knowledge.  How do we pull value from an overwhelming amount of information spread across the internet?”

Management of information is embedded in our lives and influence community volunteer programs, educational facilities, business entities and governments worldwide.  Whether we organize family vacation photos or structure sophisticated business reports – everyone is engaged in a plan, formal or informal, to safeguard valuable knowledge.

Management Information Systems (MIS) are increasingly becoming more adept at collecting, storing, and organizing data. The result is that relevant information is retrievable and available.  It is about getting the right information to the right person, at the right time.

I chose the CFAME’s program, Master of Information Management, because of its blended learning opportunity. I found the weekly discussions promoted an accelerated method of learning because of the knowledge sharing from such a diverse range of student backgrounds. We also had the opportunity to meet in person and collaborate on issues that are currently coming up in the management of information space. For me, this form of learning was extremely compelling.

Currently, I am involved in piloting a semantic technology program that facilitates categorization and retrieval.  The approach and overall objective is to teach the tool to find certain information we know to be of value and find it across terabytes of unstructured repositories. The information then gets classified according to a taxonomy and migrated to an official system of record/EDRMS for long term preservation and sharing.

While the project has not matured to the social media stage, in theory this tool could be as effective in social media spaces (they are all unstructured environments). I look forward to sharing more on this topic in future CFAME Connection posts.