Concept Searching Metadata Survey Results Indicate Search is Not an Information Governance Consideration

Concept Searching has completed its annual SharePoint Metadata Survey and based on responses although search is important, it is not viewed as a key component in Information Governance.

The Concept Searching second annual survey was completed by close to 400 organizations using SharePoint and the objective was to determine how organizations are using metadata and/or the SharePoint Term Store to manage unstructured content. The survey questions sought to solicit feedback on how, or if, organizations were using metadata to drive applications such as search, records management, protection of privacy and confidential information, migration, and to a lesser extent applications such as text analytics, collaboration, and social content. The white paper containing the detailed results will be published in late March.

In response to the survey search questions, applications such as records management, and even collaboration and text analytics ranked slightly ahead of enterprise search. Yet, applications that rely heavily on search such as eDiscovery and litigation support were priority challenges faced by the respondents but were viewed as separate applications even though search forms the backbone of each application. In regards to the role of search as it applies to information governance, surprisingly there seemed to be a lack of understanding on what exactly information governance is, let alone a view that search was critical to an information governance plan.