OK, IT mavens, listen up…how much better would your life be if you only had to manage and protect 20% of your company’s data? By eliminating 80% of your data you could free up oodles of storage, reduce licensing costs, shorten backup cycles, and drastically cut e-discovery preservation costs, not to mention go home on time for a change. For most this is an unrealistic pipe dream, but it doesn’t need to be. The trick is knowing which 20% to manage.
Continue Reading The 20% solution for information management and security
Why govern your information? Reason #6: It’s OK to destroy your data.
It lingers on – that vaguely guilty feeling that there’s something sanctionable, even illegal, about routinely destroying business data. That’s nonsense. It is well-settled United States law that a company may indeed dispose of business data, if done in good faith, pursuant to a properly established, legally valid data retention schedule, and in the absence of an applicable litigation preservation duty.
Even the courts themselves dispose of their data. Federal courts are required by U.S. law to follow a retention schedule approved by NARA, and to ultimately destroy records or transfer them to the Federal Records Center, as directed by that retention schedule.
Here are but a few of the many case decisions on this point:
Continue Reading Why govern your information? Reason #6: It’s OK to destroy your data.
Ants, Dinosaurs, and Information Governance
“What if ants were as big as dinosaurs?” I remember asking my kids that question, forever ago when they were young. Maybe the thought came from reruns of old monster movies, like the 1954 classic Them! (pictured here). Anyway, it was a cool game, for as the ant’s size multiplies, the laws of math, physics, and biology play their part:
- The ant’s exoskeleton wouldn’t be strong enough to support the increased weight, so an internal skeleton is needed.
- Gravity would play havoc with the ant’s open circulatory system, so a closed system is crucial.
- The ant’s energy needs would soar, and so a different diet and digestive system are required.
- The ant’s newfound size would totally alter its place in the food chain (The Lion King, “Circle of Life,” right?), driving fundamental changes in behaviors and capabilities.
- And on, and on.
Until, we finally end up with an ant the size of a dinosaur … that looks a lot like a dinosaur.
But what’s this have to do with Information Governance?Continue Reading Ants, Dinosaurs, and Information Governance
We’re still babes in the wood when it comes to electronic messaging
There’s been a lot of news lately about “secret” messaging in government, including inside the White House and the EPA, and last week’s revelation that Vice President Pence conducted state business with a private email account while Governor of Indiana. So there’s lots of angst right now about under-the-radar communications. When you think about it, though, it’s really old news tied to new technology. The only difference is the growing sophistication of the tools in the last few decades. Old School: clandestine meetings in parking garages. New School: disappearing messages.
What is really at issue here is not the technology, but rather the implied intent of circumventing rules (if they exist), and whether or not the communications are records. By any measure, if the communication is a record as defined by public or private rules, it must be retained. Herein lies the problem.Continue Reading We’re still babes in the wood when it comes to electronic messaging
X Percent for Information Governance
It happens every day. A company spends a huge amount of money on a new technology system, without fully addressing the information implications. Maybe the decision (to move on-premise operations to a cloud SaaS or PaaS, or to retire and replace an enterprise database, or buy a comprehensive new tool suite) was reactive, driven by an impending crisis. Maybe the decision-making was siloed, with IT not clearly hearing what the rest of the business truly needs (or more likely, the rest of the business not speaking up). Or maybe IT just responded literally to a business directive of the moment (let’s get into IoT, or Big Data, or Blockchain!). Regardless, the green light is lit, the dollars are spent … and problems ensue, painfully multiplying the procurement’s all-in cost.
What was missing? Strategic consideration of repercussions for information compliance, risk, and value for the organization as a whole, including privacy, data security, retention/destruction, litigation discovery, intellectual property, and so forth. In other words, Information Governance. And when was it missing? Before the decision was made and the dollars were spent.
So, what if something could be hard-wired into the procurement process, a trigger that timely prompted decision-makers to call time-out; get focused input from all stakeholders; assess the repercussions for information compliance, risk, and value; and align the procurement requirements and purchase decisions with organizational strategy for governing information?Continue Reading X Percent for Information Governance
Why govern your information? Reason #7: Merely adding more storage and more tools won’t solve your data problems
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.
This is not a criticism of your IT team. Instead, the problem lies in a misunderstanding of the fundamental challenge. Just as you shouldn’t bring a knife to a gun fight, you shouldn’t merely bring more storage capacity and IT tools-without-rules to your fight to regain control over your organization’s information. What’s needed is governance.
Continue Reading Why govern your information? Reason #7: Merely adding more storage and more tools won’t solve your data problems
Blockchain – “Shiny Object Syndrome”?
I had been thinking about writing a post on Blockchain when I happened across the Washington Post’s In/Out List for 2017, and that sealed the deal:
Out: Not being able to explain Bitcoin.
In: Not being able to explain Blockchain.
So, feeling up to the challenge, here goes.
Blockchain is really just a distributed, shared database technology. Its use demands that multiple, untrusted entities (such as different companies in a supply chain) write transactions to multiple, duplicate copies of the database that propagate through peer-to-peer protocols. Each node (or copy) of the database verifies the transaction independently by requiring the transaction to be confirmed in a blockchain. The blockchain is chronological, and the database can only be changed when there is consensus among the participants. Most important for the discussion here, however, is that the transactions and the distributed database are claimed to be immutable and permanent. And that’s a real problem for information governance.Continue Reading Blockchain – “Shiny Object Syndrome”?
Roundups and records—it’s still the Wild West in 2016
As a horsewoman, I have followed the plight of the American Mustang in recent years, and I am once again struck by parallels with the management—or lack thereof—of information. Good intentions, poor execution. Hopes that the problem would disappear. Management by crisis. Inattention leading to untenable yet continuing costs. Fighting factions with competing agendas and differing views of the facts, with no resolution.
A little background:Continue Reading Roundups and records—it’s still the Wild West in 2016
Why govern your information? Reason #8: It can build – or bust – your brand
The “business case” for information governance often focuses solely on quantifying specific costs for data management and exposures for data security and ediscovery. Number crunching is of course important, but it misses something bigger, more strategic, and ultimately more crucial to the organization – its brand. Companies, regardless of industry, are fundamentally in the information business. It follows that how an organization manages its information assets reveals how the organization manages itself. And that matters, a lot, because companies that align themselves with their brand, achieving brand discipline, are more successful.
Continue Reading Why govern your information? Reason #8: It can build – or bust – your brand
Keeping data in context
Retention schedules are essential in bringing order to a company’s complicated, chaotic information environment. Whether they succeed in doing so depends largely on whether they are structured properly. So, the age-old question is, what’s the best way to go – organizing the schedule by department/group, or by information content types?
The answer is both, plus an absolutely crucial element that’s missing from the question – the information’s context.Continue Reading Keeping data in context