FCSIG

The Economist Intelligence Unit, in a recent study on information governance, found that the single biggest worldwide challenge to successful adoption of information governance is the difficulty of identifying its benefits and costs. In other words, the difficulty of making the case for IG.

This eBook, in a small way, is designed to help readers with this big problem. There is no magic formula, no perfect argument for information governance. But, there are many reasons why IG made sense today, and will make sense well into the future.

This piece doesn’t try to advance an airtight argument, nor does it propose a detailed financial model. The former doesn’t exist, and the latter is beyond the scope of this work. Most financial models require assumptions and limiters that prevent them from translating well from one organization to another. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t develop and use such models at your organization, as they can be very helpful.

This eBook is based on a series of observations that I have made as a consultant, advisor, and author in this space over the course of the last decade. I, like other information governance professionals, can suffer from the “curse of knowledge” that makes it difficult to explain to those outside the information governance bubble why information governance makes sense. I hope to undo that curse here and point out some simple reasons we need information governance. I hope it helps you on your journey to manage information better.

Download: Making the Case for Information Governance

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Managing email is one of the biggest challenges for most organizations. In this presentation, Barclay T. Blair, head of FCS IG, discusses the challenges of email archiving and suggest strategies for storage mangers faced with this challenge.

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Last year, records containing personal information were exposed and compromised at a rate of 6 million per month.  In fact, over the past 25 years or so, there have been almost 2 billion personal records exposed by organizations in the U.S.  And, although it isn’t surprising, given the requirements of new data breach notification laws and the ubiquity of digital information, the number of reported incidents in 2005 and 2006 was greater than the previous 25 years combined.

This is an interesting statistic, but what does it mean?

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Does this sound familiar to you?

Someone decides that your company needs a “policy on email,” a “security policy,” or a “data management policy.” Then, someone (maybe in compliance, legal, or IT) is told to find a template, swap in the company’s name, make a few tweaks to “reflect the way we do things around here,” then publish it on the intranet. Done, now we have a New Policy.  Read the rest of this entry »

Many organizations facing the challenges of information management and e-discovery struggle with the right way to get started. There is no shortage of books and articles that clearly identify the issues and challenges, but few that provide practical guidance as to how to address those challenges. This is where a gap analysis comes in. This article provides a simple ten step methodology that organizations can start using today. Read the rest of this entry »

The retention and management of voicemail takes on a new dimension with the introduction of “integrated messaging,” or “unified communications.” Such technologies enable the use and management of multiple types of communication in a single interface. So, instead of accessing voicemail through a telephone, email through an email client, faxes through a fax machine, and instant messaging through an IM client, all would be available (or manageable) through a single interface, such as Microsoft Office Outlook. Read the rest of this entry »