The amount of information generated, stored, accessed, and used by organizations is increasing tremendously, increasing the importance of information governance programs within the organization to handle sensitive information effectively and reduce threats to the data.
Information governance is a framework that helps organizations manage business information effectively by dividing the roles and responsibilities and implementing policies and procedures to protect the business information from internal and external threats.
Table of Contents
1. What Is Business Information
Information is an important asset in business organizations, and it is created and protected with the help of technologies and security applications. Business information defines details about business products, services, employees, other stakeholder information, and intellectual property information.
With technological development, information is managed effectively by organizations. There are technologies like automation and digitization that help organizations store, process, and manage different structured data and information from different resources effectively. Today, organizations use the latest technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining, and text mining to understand and process unstructured data to explore more hidden opportunities.
To use information carefully and protect it from cyber criminals, organizations are implementing information governance frameworks that help them to store, secure, process, and create business strategies and policies effectively. Information governance will help organizations impose rules and regulations on employees to use the business information properly.
2. What Is Information Governance?
Information governance is the most important program that must be adopted by organizations to ensure the security of confidential information. Information governance will help organizations control all the information generated by the IT sector and systems in the workplace. Information governance mainly focuses on managing all the assets of the organizations to reduce the risks to the firm.
An information governance program creates a set of procedures, policies, and standards to be used by the employees to handle confidential information effectively. The information governance program will help organizations to use the information properly and to dispose of the unnecessary data of the government effectively so that no other person can get information from those disposed of data.
It will improve the quality of the information and ensure that organizations are meeting all the regulations and compliances. It uses strong security measures to protect the data and enhance the business reputation in the market. In information governance, there are other subcategories, such as data governance and information technology governance, which also do the same work as information governance.
However, the difference is that information governance will create comprehensive policies and ensure that information is secured. It also ensures that the business organization meets all the legal and privacy compliances. On the other hand, data governance will ensure that data in databases are of high quality, and IT governance will ensure that the firm will get more benefits from IT investments.
3. History And Evolution Of Information Governance
Record Management was the traditional method used to create, retain, manage, and dispose of business documents. The records could be any form, either physical or database records. Organizations are used to protect the data and access to information under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act.
However, the government introduced a new law to protect data and privacy of personal information under the Data Protection Act(DPA), which record management could not comply with. Organizations require new data management software that complies with new laws and regulations.
Data governance came into existence in the early Twentieth century to manage business information by focusing on data accuracy, consistency, and accessibility. Later, data governance evolved to focus on data quality and security risks with the increase in digital data leading to the foundation of information governance.
In 2002, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act(SOX) was introduced to address issues related to financial reporting and auditing. This law imposed strict guidelines for organizations to maintain financial records and conduct quarterly or yearly audit trails to ensure the integrity and transparency of financial reports.
These compliances and regulations forced organizations to develop an information governance framework that complies with all the security and legal laws to protect company data from cyber-attacks and maintain business interests.
In 2003, the NHS IG toolkit was developed and published by the Department of Health in England, aiming to bring all the partners and organizations to manage information effectively. It is also widely used by e-learning platforms.
Later on, many information governance models were introduced to address a variety of issues in business organizations, such as legal, IT, Information management, Data security, compliance, Risk management, and e-discovery.
Today, the emergence of new technologies like artificial intelligence, big data analytics, machine learning, and the Internet of Things has evolved IG to use real-time monitoring and analytics to protect from cyber threats.
In future, the IG framework is expected to be more responsive and responsible for addressing issues like ethics related to data and AI. It is expected to address technological challenges and continue to ensure data security and privacy.
4. Principles Of Information Governance
- Accountability: The chief information governance officer is responsible for ensuring that every employee and other staff in the workplace are following the policies and procedures to ensure accountability by auditing and monitoring the information governance program.
- Transparency: To ensure transparency, organizations need to document every important data, policy, procedure, and detail about the information governance program so that it is available to important persons at the time of need.
- Integrity: The integrity of data means to ensure data originality and that no changes are made. Using the information governance program, organizations can ensure the integrity of data by controlling access and by using security mechanisms.
- Protection: the information governance program must be created and implemented such that it maintains the confidentiality of private and public information to reduce attacks and vulnerabilities.
- Compliance: The information governance program must ensure that the organization is meeting all the government compliances and regulations that will reduce legal and financial issues for the firm.
- Availability: the organization and the employees need information to do business operations, and the information governance program needs to ensure that the information is available to them at the time of need.
- Retention: The information governance program requires retaining all the important past data, both online and physical documents, in a secure place that will be useful in future to make business decisions.
- Disposition: The information governance program needs to separate important and unnecessary data of the organizations, and it needs to create a procedure to dispose of the unnecessary data so that outsiders cannot use it again.
5. Importance Of Information Governance
With information governance policies and procedures, organizations can ensure the security of their confidential data by controlling the access of employees. The access to data is controlled by granting permissions to employees according to their roles and then monitoring their access to data and usage using auditing policies.
The productivity of the organization is increased as employees can share information between them using intelligent and more secure paths. The lifecycle of information becomes efficient with the use of an information governance program because there will be no duplicate data, which reduces the repetition of work.
Using information governance programs, organizations can reduce the cost of maintenance of data and also reduce storage space. It allows organizations to manage every risk to the firm effectively. Customer services are improved as the customer representative can get the required information to handle the customer issues.
Using information governance programs, organizations can ensure that they are meeting all compliances and regulations. Organizations can be prepared for any disaster, like natural or manmade disasters. It also allows firms to make effective decisions by using past data of the firm and present trends to protect the future of the organization.
6. Benefits Of Information Governance
- The quality and integrity of the information will be enhanced,
- It will improve the availability and confidentiality of the business information,
- It will help to reduce the risks and vulnerabilities in the business information,
- It helps the chief information officer to control the access to information by the employees and other stakeholders,
- It helps to ensure that the company is meeting all the government compliances and regulations effectively.
- It enables the chief information officer to use appropriate technologies in the organization in order to improve business operations and protect the business data from inside and outside intruders.
7. Information Governance Team
Information governance programs must be implemented by every organization to achieve success, and it is the responsibility of the chief information governance officer (CIGO) or chief information officer to understand the importance of the information governance program and implement it by communicating with employees and other stakeholders.
The information governance leaders must collaborate with all the other managers of other departments to create policies and procedures that can increase the value of information and reduce the risks or vulnerabilities in business data.
An information governance program includes the protection of business data, managing the risks, handling cyberattacks, recording and managing the business data, ensuring data integrity, and developing policies and procedures to reduce the risks and vulnerabilities. All these cannot be done by a single person, so organizations create a team, which is headed by a chief information governance officer (CIGO).
The information governance team includes heads of IT officers, financial officers, Human resources, public relations officers, legal Advisors, and C-suite. The chief information governance officer involves shareholders and stakeholders in the IG framework. He communicates the policies and procedures to employees and ensures the meeting of compliance. However, the involvement of employees in the IG framework creation and implementation increases the effectiveness.
8. Success Tips for Implementing IG
Executive Sponsorship
The CIO is an executive sponsor who creates an information governance program, communicates the objectives and goals to the employees, and makes them follow. The CIO is responsible for updating all the information about the IG program to higher management to support them at every level.
Stakeholder Consultation
A company’s stakeholders are its employees, staff of different departments, suppliers, dealers, consumers, and others. They need to be involved in creating and executing information governance policies and procedures. They are the persons who use, manipulate, and modify business information. Their involvement will make the information governance program more effective and strong. Organizations can make effective decisions with the help of stakeholders and concentrate on every big and small risk.
Information Policy Development And Communication
The chief information governance officer needs to create different policies and procedures like email policy, internet policy, technology usage policy, and other policies. They need to ensure that employees are using the technology and infrastructure of the organizations effectively. These policies need to be communicated by the CIGO to all employees clearly so that they can follow them effectively. The CIGO needs to monitor the activities of employees over the Internet and through email to secure the data.
Information Organization And Classification
The principle of information governance helps to organize data in a standard format. All the data is linked with their metadata and related data to remove the data duplication and free storage space. This will allow the firm to store unique and important data in the database, which makes it easy to access and improves the decision-making process of the firm.
Information Integrity, Accessibility, And Control
An information governance program aims to secure data and maintain integrity. Integrity means maintaining accurate data in the database. This program helps management achieve integrity, confidentiality, and availability of the data. This program allows organizations to use effective technologies to store, process, and reduce the cost of maintaining the data.
Accessibility of information is essential for the smooth running of business. Long-term digital preservation techniques are used to store and access data. The organization has to store and locate data easily. So that stakeholders can access the right data at the right time. Effective accessibility depends on a simple and user-friendly interface, tools, and technologies used by the firm. The accessibility to data is controlled by password management, identity, and access management with access control mechanisms to secure data.
Information flow among users is controlled using data, document, and report management tools to store and control access. The organization has to schedule data retention and disposition to comply with retention and disposition regulations.
Information Security And Privacy
Security is a constant issue concerning organizations in every field. Employees require training to use the technology properly and handle the security issues in the system by themselves to improve the security of the data. With the help of an information governance program, management will implement different security mechanisms and create security policies to ensure data security. With this program, they will control the access to data by the employees and other stakeholders, reducing internal threats to the information.
Monitor And Audit the Information Governance Program
The success of the implementation of an information governance program is measured by monitoring and auditing the policies and procedures, business health, threats, and opportunities. All the policies, procedures, email usage, data access, data usage, reports, documents, and cloud access need to be logged in real-time to use in auditing.
Make Improvements In the IG Program
Information Governance program requires continuous monitoring and improvement to protect company information from attacks and threats. The information governance officer team must continuously review and update the program policies and procedures whenever there is a change in business processes, technologies, and government regulations.
9. Information Governance Models And Frameworks
Information governance models are used to manage and protect business data through the information management life cycle. Many information governance models and frameworks were introduced with the evolution of new legal laws, regulatory compliance, and digital transformation to process data.
- Generally Accepted Record-keeping Principles(GARP): It was introduced by ARMA International and lists the core principle for record-keeping and management to ensure accuracy, transparency, accountability, and accessibility of information within the departments. It is suitable for any size organization, from small to large.
- Information Governance Maturity Model(IGMM): It is the extension of the GARP to address legal, operational, and technological issues within the organization. It lists the responsibilities of the Chief Information Officer to protect the data and communicate the information governance program with stakeholders to ensure meeting compliance.
- Information Governance Reference Model(IGRM): It was developed by the Electronic Discovery Reference Model(EDRM) to address issues related to electronic discovery and data security. This model encourages organizations to collaborate with stakeholders to create effective IG strategies to address every departmental issue within one framework. The framework focuses on five elements: information valuation, discovery, retention, risk assessment, and disposition.
10. Common Challenges in Implementing Information Governance
Organizations face many challenges in creating and implementing an information governance framework at the workplace due to the following factors.
- Data Complexity: Organizations produce and collect large volumes of data from different resources like social media, surveys, business data, competitors’ data, and others. The data could be in the form of texts, documents, images, or videos. It becomes difficult for organizations to categorize and manage these data sets.
- Regulatory Compliances: Enforcement of new laws and regulations to address new security issues and updates in the existing laws like GDPR, SOX, and HIPAA makes it difficult for organizations to make changes in their frameworks. Organizations in the international market need to ensure compliance with both local and international laws.
- Data Security: An increase in cyber threats using the latest technologies creates challenges for organizations to maintain the privacy and security of large data sets.
- Data Accuracy: Data collected from multiple resources can have duplicate data, missing data, and irrelevant data. Ensuring accuracy in data is challenging and impacts the decision-making process.
- Lack of awareness: Lack of awareness of information governance to employees makes it challenging for organizations to implement the IG framework successfully.
- Emerging Technologies: Organizations fear adopting new technologies due to resistance from employees and disruption in workflows. Hence, integrating emerging technologies with the existing frameworks without disrupting the workflow is challenging for organizations.
- Cost Constraints: Creating and implementing the IG framework is costly as it requires investment in new technologies, training of employees, and maintenance, which is difficult for small organizations. It is also challenging to retain data for a longer time as it costs more, leading to potential threats and compliance risks to businesses.
- Continuous Monitoring: It is essential for auditing and monitoring the information governance framework continuously to ensure the meeting of compliances. Auditing requires resources, an expert team, time, and investment, which is challenging.