What Are Your Peers’ Biggest IG Priorities?

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In the meantime, take a look at data from the 2015-16 IGI Annual Report.

How would IG practitioners prioritize their IG projects if they had the authority and budget to do so? We gave practitioners a list of seven potential IG projects and asked them to rank them in the order they would tackle them.

Overall project ordering was interesting. Defining and implementing a corporate governance framework for IG and updating policies and procedures were in the top two. Executing a comprehensive legacy data clean-up project and executing a big data analytics project were at the bottom. Defensible deletion, data loss prevention, and implementing legal hold tracking fell between the two bookends. So what does this ordering mean?

In part, the overall project ranking reflects a logical order in the development of a working IG program—first things need to be handled first. An overall framework and clear policies and procedures are foundational elements of an IG program and logical precursors to the next projects on the list. For example, you should not delete or undertake a more comprehensive remediation project unless you know what you must keep or how your information must be handled with respect to other legal, regulatory, and business requirements.

Practitioners may also be interested in prioritizing smaller, more manageable projects. Two big projects ranked at the bottom, and executing a comprehensive legacy data clean up dropped from fourth last year to sixth this year. For practitioners, data loss prevention moved up by two over last year’s ranking at sixth, perhaps reflecting a heightened awareness of data security issues. Overall, we feel the ordering of these projects continues to reflect the risk-focused activities that served as the catalyst for many of the first organizational IG programs and indeed drove interest in IG in the first place.

If you are just getting started with IG, look to this list for some ideas of where to begin. We believe that the top projects here are a good starting place for many organizations. Strongly consider handling foundational elements of your IG program first or at least concurrently with other projects. Also, consider doing smaller, more manageable projects before tackling a monster. Small wins can add up in terms of building momentum for your program by showing the value of IG projects as well as developing the IG discipline among the facets. Ask yourself what would work best for your specific organization. Effective IG should not be an end in itself at your organization. It should be a means to a better business overall.

The IGI has begun the process of developing the 2016-2017 IGI Annual Report, building upon the success of the last two years. As part of the research for our Report, we are conducting a survey of information governance professionals. Please participate in our survey to help us create a great resource for the IG Community. The results will be published in a comprehensive Annual Report which will include a variety of infographics and other tools we will freely provide to the IG Community under a Creative Commons license. These infographics have become part of many IG practitioners’ internal presentations, and the Annual Report has become the go-to reference guide for many in the industry. In the meantime, take a look insider last year’s report. All data you provide through this survey will be reported anonymously.

As a thank you for completing the survey, we will provide a discount code for a reduced rate for some of our upcoming events including the 2016 IGI Internet of Things Summit in Ft. Lauderdale, December 11-13, 2016.