“Gar
bage in, garbage out” – we know that already, right? Well … what we know about information quality and what we do are not always in sync. Just for kicks, consider information quality through the lens of the industrial quality movement.
Looking down from 30,000 feet, the history of industrial quality goes something like this – Medieval Guild craftsmanship, then Industrial Revolution product inspection, and then the post-World War II focus on quality process management. It sounds arcane, until one remembers the 1980’s visceral fear that Japanese manufacturers were beating the pants off of U.S. manufacturing in terms of quality and value. Enter W. Edward Deming, who had been deeply influential in Japan’s post-war industrial recovery, and who became the evangelist for quality management practices in U.S. industry. Deming exhorted American management to adopt product and service quality as the driving force in all business practices.
What’s that got to do with Information Governance? It’s this – regardless of industry, in today’s world you’re actually in the information business. So, business quality increasingly means information quality.
Key attributes of data for business are sometimes referred to as the four Vs: volume, variety, velocity, and veracity. Most folks focus on the first three, but the veracity of data – its integrity, its reliability, its quality – is crucial for business decision-making. In a 2016 survey of executives by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, 80% of respondents admitted that their organization used flawed information to make a strategic decision at least once in the last three years. And IBM estimates that poor data quality costs the U.S. economy $3.1 trillion each year.
Continue Reading Why govern our information? Reason #5: Bad information results in bad decisions.
As the information tide relentlessly rises, many organizations simply see an IT problem, to be fixed with a purely IT solution – more storage capacity, more tools, or both. But merely adding more storage is a reaction, not a strategy. And adding technology tools without the right governance rules invariably makes things worse, not better.
The “business case” for information governance often focuses solely on quantifying specific costs for data management and exposures for 
Dr. Stephen Covey reminded us that “important” is not the same thing as “urgent.” Records retention reminds us that important is not the same thing as exciting. I get it – records retention schedules are boring. But the fact remains that literally thousands of records retention requirements apply to your organization’s information. I know, because my firm finds and tracks these laws as part of our decades of retention schedule work for clients across industries. And your regulators expect you to know them too.
“If your clients don’t have a records management system, they may as well take their money out into the parking lot and set it on fire.”
How time flies. Seventeen years ago, I went to work for a small, visionary company based in Seattle—Computer Forensics, Inc. Indeed, the founder was so early in the e-discovery and forensics industry that our URL was forensics.com. Laptop drives typically had 8 GB of storage, and servers were more often than not simply a bigger box that sat in a closet.
Our firm’s elephant icon is a nod to 
It’s a common nightmare. As you toss and turn in bed, you picture yourself on a strange playing field with other athletes swirling around you. You have absolutely no idea what sport you are playing, nor a clue what the rules are. it’s not only embarrassing – it’s downright dangerous.
Facebook this week announced its new social media application targeted at children,