Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello. Thank you for joining us. Welcome to what Counts, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of information governance. Here we highlight proven solutions developed through our experience working with companies across various industries. We talk about how you can apply these solutions to your company. Whether you're interested in information governance, have a need, or just curious to hear about information management challenges like email management, retention management, or asset data management, this podcast is for you.
This is Lee, and in this episode, Mora and I will again use the fact or fiction format to bust some of these myths around information governance, otherwise known as ig.
Okay, well, we had a good episode last time and went by really quick.
So there's a couple more things that we wanted to cover in this fact and fiction.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Okay, you ready?
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Sure.
Okay. Is fact or fiction? Governance is too rigid for innovation.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: How do you feel about that? So that's funny because it goes back to that dusty binder. Right. Whereas I feel like information governance is all about innovation.
We're trying to keep up with how quickly new data types are created and new technology comes into play. And what does it mean to make things easier? And what does it mean that sometimes makes things harder?
But that I think ig, I think that's definitely a fiction that we are too rigid.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: But help me with this one.
I'm going to explain it this way.
We were at a client site and you were explaining what you wanted, how you wanted things to work in the future.
And I don't think you really knew whether this item was created or not. In the world of technology.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: That'D be the ingest engine.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Well, yeah, but it was at a client site where we were like, yeah, we can make those connect with that and we can make this data connect with that because of unique ID and so forth and so on. And I was sitting there going, I don't think that exists in today's world. Where does she come up with this stuff? And so, but it was, it was an innovative. And the path to it was very logical and it was definitely some. Something that should happen in today's world.
Okay, best I can do. Can you remember any more detail around that?
[00:02:40] Speaker B: So I think it was, I don't think it was the, the ingest engine. I think it was the data connector, the asset data connector. And. But they both are connected. They both are related actually. And it's, it's solving this problem of, in the world of M and A, especially when you are talking about buying and selling real world physical assets because there's so much data and it's in Multiple systems and it's all organized differently with different IDs and yet you can't.
If you have multiple sources of data about this, well, or building or train or whatever it is, you have multiple sources of data that describes something, some part of, of this thing.
And in order to really understand how is this thing working, is it safe, is it efficient, is it making money for us, does it need to be replaced, what's going on with it?
You have to pull all the sources of data together and that's what business intelligence tools are for and data analytics tools are for.
But if you haven't done the work of mapping the, the IDs so that you know what level of granularity is each set of data happening, is it rolled up over in this system, but it's at a much lower level over here. So if you try to do apples to apples, you don't have them. You have apples and trees or something.
So I'm taking the metaphor too far, but that vision of the data connector was, is a logical outgrowth of all of the work of information governance of identifying data and the thing the data describes.
So yeah, thanks. I think I'm innovative.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: Definitely be innovative.
Okay, how about fact or fiction?
Information governance professionals are the records police.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Yeah, that was one we definitely fought a lot early on.
It is, it is fiction. We are not the records police.
Information governance professionals are here to help you do your job better, help you get the information that you need to do your job.
And it's really a trust relationship.
It takes a lot of trust to let data go from your clutches that you know you're going to need to do your job next week or tomorrow or next year.
And if you don't trust the central systems or the central storage locations or the information governance team or the other parts of your organization that are adding to the data that you've created or they are using it for part of a process and then you have to get it back. If you can't trust the way the data flows around your organization and know that you can go back and get it when you need it, then you're going to start creating your own data hoard. And this is where we got the reputation as the records police, because we would say everybody's storing their own copies. And that means that as an organization you don't know which one is right because people are storing it and they're making changes and then you don't know which one's the real one. And two people have made changes. You have to go Compare them. That takes extra time.
Somebody has the wrong version, they start making another decision or a derivative document or something, and it's wrong and they have to start over.
This is how we got the reputation as the records police. But really what we're trying to do is be for before any of that happens, help set up a process and data flow that meets all those needs so that you don't have to have your own hoarded data that is immediately out of date and wrong.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: I was in a assessment meeting with the client in Chicago, and they knew that the information governance consultants were coming in to talk to him and this person, first thing they said was, well, let me tell you what I did. I got cleaned out my email.
I checked all those emails that I got that said that I had stuff for retention, and I'm checking on all of those boxes that I have in storage. And I mean, they just, they were so scared that I was there to bust them for not doing something.
Instead, I really wanted to understand their process so that we could incorporate information governance much more easily, seamlessly into their process. Right. But they were just, I did this, I did this, I did this, I did this.
Yes.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: Right. You wanted to know their real process. Because anything new we set up needs to meet that same need.
If it doesn't meet that need, they're going to find a way around it.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: I remember at a point when you were, I don't know, writing articles, ranting and raving, talking about. Workarounds are the bane of everyone's existence.
And what they are is a symbol that something is wrong. They're a symptom. Something's wrong with your ig. If everybody has a workaround.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: Yes.
All right.
Governance is only for regulated industries.
Information governance.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: That is absolutely not. That is definitely fiction.
Every business needs to run.
That's why you're in business.
Regulated piece is reporting and demonstrating compliance. Absolutely. But if. If you didn't have a business, you wouldn't have to demonstrate compliance with anything.
Regardless of any compliance, you still need to run your business. You still need that data to.
To do whatever it is you do.
Even if you are nonprofit, you still need data to know what you've done.
Absolutely. So it's.
You're in business for the reason you went into business, and you create records to support that business. You need information to support that business. Information governance helps you use that information to improve your business.
Compliance in regulated industries is one part of your business, but not the whole thing.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Excellent. And do we have one more?
[00:09:43] Speaker B: We have one more That I think is a new one. And maybe I just feel it personally that the IG professionals are anti AI.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Because I'm a librarian, I feel like I also get a little bit of that blowback because there is value in the structure of information. There's value in tagging, there's value in context that comes from process and AI, which is an outgrowth of sort of automatic classification or keyword searching or all of those sort of abstract functions that want to give you access to a lot of information without doing the work of structure and context and tagging.
It's a challenge.
However, information governance professionals are not anti AI. We're skeptical. Perhaps we have a healthy skepticism, but I would say back to the innovation side of things.
We're actively looking for how to make that work, how to make AI work better for organizations and, and still meet those same goals, that of managing information to the betterment of the business.
So I'm going to keep quiet AI, but maybe, you know, healthy skepticism.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: I'm going to keep quiet because I used AI to help me write the script for these episodes.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: So like I said, we're not anti AI, but we're, we're, we're, you know, exploring and assessing.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: Excellent.
Anything to add?
Right. Close.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: That is it. I feel. This is. I feel we've done a good job on these myths.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that was good. If you have any questions, please send us an email at info trailblazer us.com or look us up on the web at www.trailblazer.us.com or look, check for our Trailblazer Learning academy@trailblazer learningacademy.com thank you for listening and please tune in to our next episode. Also, if you like this episode, please be a champion and share it with people in your social media network or like it or subscribe. We could always use more listeners, but as always, we appreciate you, our current listeners.
Special thanks goes to Jason Blake, who created our music.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: And please feel free to send comments or questions because we'd love to know what else you would like to learn about.
