Information Governance:
What It Is And Seven Reasons Why You May Need It If you’re already familiar with Corporate Governance and Transparency, Information Governance, or IG for short, is exactly what you might think it is. TEXT VANESSA VROLIJK
According to the Business Dictionary online, governance is: “the establishment of policies, and continuous monitoring of their proper implementation, by the members of the governing body of an organization. It includes the mechanisms required to balance the powers of the members (with the associated accountability), and their primary duty of enhancing the prosperity and viability of the organization.” One of the more popular definitions of information governance is, courtesy of Wikipedia: “Information Governance, or IG, is the set of multi-disciplinary structures, policies, procedures, processes and controls implemented to manage information at an enterprise level, supporting an organization’s immediate and future regulatory, legal, risk, environmental and operational requirements.” If you are a medium to large sized organization, all of the above are applicable; it might be not as complex as is the case for international corporations, but enough to give you grief while trying to figure it all out.
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IG is managing information where required, to take the way your organization works into account. This could include: 1. L egislation and directives that are applicable in your line of business (OECD regulations, local fiscal laws, IFRS); 2. Security and authorization; 3. Documents and records; 4. L ifecycle management (How long does your company keep its records? How and where? Who can access them? Who can create and manage files?); and 5. C ompliance and risk management (ensuring due diligence as well as managing risk for your organization).
So the question is: Do I need IG in my organization and if yes, how do I go about it? The short answer is: probably, yes. As for how to go about it, there is no short or simple answer. What you can do however, is use the following points as a guideline for assessing whether or not you should start considering an IG strategy or revamping your existing IG strategy.
Know your Relevant Information Not all information acquired within your organization is relevant or is equally valuable, so why treat all of the information in your
