Welcome to the Digital Landfill

I recently sat down with Mark Diamond, CEO of Contoural, to talk about the current state of Information Governance.  

JM: What is the biggest challenge organizations face in getting rid of electronic information before it buries them?

MD:  While there are a number of challenges including compliance, classification, defensibility I think the biggest challenge most organizations face is finding an owner for the problem. Everyone including legal, RIM, IT, privacy wants to see this problem addressed, but no one really wants to own it. Getting rid of unneeded electronic information requires agreement and joint ownership among multiple stakeholders.  Without it your initiative is likely to go nowhere.

JM: Why is it so difficult to stop organizations from being “hoarders” when it comes to electronic information?

MD:  Too often the focus of defensible disposition to combat hoarders promotes the benefits of compliance, lower eDiscovery costs and other issues most employees don’t really care about.  These programs don’t sell a win for employees, namely that if employees clean up what you don’t need or care about it will be much easier for them to find the higher value information they do.  These programs attempt to succeed by high-level mandates, which are often ignored.  They require a smarter approach.

JM: Where do you think the Information Governance function should report in an organization?

MD:  Working with hundreds of organizations we have found that the most successful programs have a steering committee composed of legal, records, IT and other stakeholders, dividing responsibilities through a matrix approach, and often having the steering committee report up to an executive committee.

Most of the press stories I’ve seen while on a belated 30^th anniversary trip to Sorrento (we’re on the verge of our 34^th anniversary, so I guess it’s about time) have centered around the poor performance of the British and the Italians and the Portuguese in the World Cup.  At the end of the personal trip, I attended an AIIM Executive Leadership Council meeting, but more on that in a minute.

[Note:  I do not intend this post as some sort of political statement. Really. There are lots of other folks out there who seem to love to tee up just about any story as an “Us vs. Them” story, regardless of the merits of the issue. I even saw one lunatic story during a brief foray into Facebook while on our trip equating the rise of soccer in the US with the decline of America. Sigh. I intend this as a post on information competency.]

So let me get this straight. 

Some excerpts from a June 23 New York Times article I am reading on-line “whilst” sitting in Heathrow (I thought I would use the British since I’m still here):

I put together a short video describing Information Opportunity v. Infomation Chaos.  For those who can't get embedded videos, you can get it directly HERE.

I recently spent a few minutes with Martin White fron Intranet Focus to talk about the current state of Search technology.

I mention this Conference because our own Bob Larrivee (resident AIIM content guru and a world class flyer) is among a great group of speakers -- for those in or close to this market, the lineup is quite good. 

What do you think?

Last week, Box and 6 other software companies (GoodData, Jive, Marketo, Okta, Skyhigh Networks, and Zendesk), together Geoffrey Moore (remember AIIM's System of Record and System of Engagement?) launched a PR campaign centered around "User-Centric IT."

Core principles are:

1. User-Centric IT serves the business by empowering people. IT’s evolving role is to empower people to work better and smarter. Getting people to engage, connect and act in real-time adds incredible velocity to a business.

2. User-Centric IT adapts to the way people work, not the other way around. Business technology should fit seamlessly into people’s workflows. It should be easy to use, flexible, and customizable to fit the style of each individual and department.

3. People, information and knowledge must connect in real time. Collaboration is a growing imperative for today’s knowledge-based workers. Hoarding knowledge is out, sharing and collaborating are in. In the user-centric IT environment, people have intuitive and natural ways to share and collaborate with colleagues, partners and even customers.

I was a guest on the Kevin Craine podcast series last week.  Here are the connection details, along with a direct link to download a copy of the InfoChaos white paper.  White paper is free, and re-distribution is encouraged.

For years we have worked on content management projects, aiming to increase the efficiency and automation of content intensive processes. As the need for automation continues to grow, the pressure from your competitors and the expectations of your customers increase along with it. The survival from this information surge will greatly depend whether your business has the knowledge and tools to enhance customer satisfaction and focus on business growth opportunities.

One of the things I've been working on with our PR people is greater visibility for content and records management concerns in the business press.  I thought readers might be interested in some of the articles we've written in the past few months about ECM and Infochaos.  As you can see, our industry analyst Doug Miles is increasingly becoming a rock star in the press.