There is no secret sauce to achieving information governance nirvana. The reality is someone must take ownership of an organization’s information governance program. The industry as a whole has been discussing organizations appointment of a chief information governance officer (CIGO) or its equivalent, to lead information governance efforts. The title is not important—the skill set is.

If your organization appoints a CIGO, the CIGO can’t drive the information governance program on his or her own. Stakeholder groups from Legal, Compliance, Records Management, Privacy, Security, IT and other business units must be willing to get their hands dirty and get involved. It’s truly a team effort.

After the team has been assembled and roles have been defined, it is essential to list out the how the roles of each member of the team work together. No doubt, stakeholders from Records Management, Legal and Compliance will focus primarily on taxonomy and metadata, while IT, and Privacy and Security will focus heavily on infrastructure and technology.

Next, the information life cycle of a document must be defined from creation to disposition. This is the nucleus of any information governance program. No matter if the document is shared, stored, retained for discovery purposes or disposed of, it’s imperative that governance rules and permissions are applied at every point of the document’s life cycle.

In line with the information life cycle, is the execution of technology. This will include the many applications, hardware, networks, service-level agreements and licensing that makes the magic come to life.

Last, but certainly not least, is focusing on the various policies and procedures which define the information governance program. These policies and procedures may define metrics, processes, roles, standards and performance, all with a common denominator of accountability and decision rights.

As mentioned, the creation of an information governance framework is by no means an easy task. It will take much time and effort to align your strategy with the business goal and objectives to ensure the highest level of impact, but it is imperative to a company’s risk management program.

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