Information Governance: The Importance of Data Management

In March 2013, an analyst and data company called 451 Research released a report on eDiscovery practices. This report surveyed 2,320 respondents who represented a combination of large, small, and midsized organizations. The report covered such areas as enterprise IT, asking tough questions about how these businesses approach the access, management, and retention of their data.

The 451 Research report states that less than half of the study respondents believed that information management was important for their enterprise. In general, larger organizations felt more strongly about managing their data properly compared to smaller companies. Only 32% of respondents who were in senior management felt a need for clear information management strategies, while over half of the respondents who were IT staff felt that setting up these strategies were important. With senior management, rather than IT staff, making the financial decisions about internal developments, the numbers indicated that future investment in information governance among those particular organizations was unlikely.

A survey conducted by AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) specifically on information governance, reports that 31% of their respondents reported having problems with audits, regulating bodies, and courts due to issues with poor data storage and organization. Rather than taking a look at making existing processes more efficient, over a quarter of those surveyed reported that they just bought additional storage in response to increased data management needs. In addition, one-third of the surveyed enterprises said that 90% of their current IT expenditures are not adding value to their business.

The AIIM survey respondents also stated that most of their employees are likely to have multiple copies of files and emails across their devices (mobile, laptop, and desktop), and yet 12% of respondents still lack any official archiving policy for company emails. Companies, who do have these types of policies already in place, are often still conducting eDiscovery searches manually in the event of litigation. Many businesses have yet to implement official information governance policies, while those who do have them are not enforcing them, and/or are not training their staff to follow the new guidelines.

The 451 Research report respondents added that social media and the greater variety of types of data companies use today are making eDiscovery considerations much more complicated than previously. AIIM reports that 42% of their respondents are actually seeing increases in terms of physical paperwork, rather than moving toward paperless operations. Additionally, those surveyed are reluctant to move away from paper records and aren’t quite ready to trust the security of their record storage to cloud services providers.

To read more about Information Governance, download our most recent white paper: Information Governance: Managing Risks & Rewards.