Content Management or Information Governance – Just Another Misnomer

Information Governance is great – but you just don’t ‘do it’. I have read and continue to read articles discussing Information Governance, specifically in the legal field, but applicable to all industries. Obviously legal entities have much to gain with a proactive approach to managing content. But is that Information Governance, or Content Management? I vote for content management. In a recent article, What Law Firms Must Know about Information Governance, published in the Law Firm Newswire, the jist of the article is information governance.

According to the article, the production of data is doubling every two years, and it has been predicted that the amount of data in the digital world will increase 10 times from 2013 to 2020. Litigation and its attendant process of discovery are primary reasons for law firms to use information governance to manage their voluminous data. Data is growing exponentially, not just in the legal profession. But managing it, is not necessarily information governance.

“In 2014, a survey was conducted concerning different kinds of businesses. The survey showed that half of all businesses were compelled to reproduce information because they were unable to find the original.” Ambroff-Tahan, I assume the author of the survey, also notes that “90 percent of the businesses lacked any knowledge of what their data contained.” Now, that is the crux of the problem. Most organizations don’t know what data they have because they can’t find it, and they can’t find it because they have inferior search mechanisms that don’t understand the query and are unable to retrieve intelligent responses, or identify ROT, redundant documents, and just plain garbage.

Information Governance is a lofty objective. But could we get back to the basics? Like fixing everyday activities, processes, improving software that just doesn’t work anymore? Get rid of the ROT, duplicates, security and risk exposures still lurking in a document on a server that isn’t even used anymore? If 90% of businesses lacked any knowledge of what their data contained – exactly where does information governance fit in the picture? Content management is an appropriate start and addresses one of the challenges under the information governance umbrella.

And get to the basics, fix your metadata.