Originally Published 11/5/19
For over a decade, information governance professionals have wrestled with how to adapt, prioritize and coordinate their activities in the face of a constant deluge of data, the introduction of new technologies, and rapidly evolving regulatory obligations—all while under pressure to support the corporate goal of increasing profits at lower operating costs. Even the ongoing investment in a glut of emerging enterprise solutions to “manage” all this adds to the complexity!
Forward-thinking organizations have responded by creating a C-Level executive position—the Chief Data Officer (CDO)—to build out the competency and processes for aggregating information and using it to make better decisions. Yet Gartner predicts only half of these newly minted executives will be successful, in large part due to formidable roadblocks that include resistance to change, a lack of stakeholder involvement and support, and confusion over information governance.
Business Value Challenges
Often these challenges arise from a perceived conflict between deriving business value from data quickly and prioritizing governance for risk and compliance. However, based on the contributions of many members of the CGOC community, we head into 2020 with the clear understanding that these are two sides of the same coin.
We can’t prioritize one over the other. There is no sustained business value from a new data source if in doing so, privacy is compromised. And it does little good for a business to be compliant if it can’t compete. Further, even if an activity delivers value and is compliant, we still need to ensure it is ethical—if not, we may expose our company to consumer or shareholder activists and the potential for significant brand damage.
- Foundational Information Governance Concepts
- How business are creating business value with governance
- Key strategies for using governance as an enabler for risk and compliance
The included set of exceptional articles, webinars and blogs—developed in collaboration with our faculty —dive into these challenges, offering recommendations and strategies that can help you understand what is the importance of information governance. We hope you will use them in conjunction with our other CGOC resources and tools, such as governance models and worksheets, to help ensure your information governance foundation will support both goals: keeping up with rapidly changing compliance demands while supporting the drive to obtain business value from your data. We hope you will find these new resources of value.
The CGOC is the only organization focused on cross-functional, unified information governance, bringing together experts and insight from every discipline. Since 2004, we have developed resources and hosted events to help our members mature their governance programs and overcome other complex information challenges. Our updated Information Governance Process Maturity Model has helped hundreds of organizations understand how to improve their information governance programs, and our reference guides, webinars and meetings are vital resources regularly consulted by some of the world’s top organizations.