Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
What was there to learn at arma? Infocon 2026.
Hello, and welcome to what Counts. Every organization hides a story in their data.
This is a podcast that digs into the governance problems people inherit, ignore and discover too late. I'm Lee and as always, this is my co host, Maura Dunn. Maura, let's begin with our exciting journey this week.
InfoCon Arma InfoCon 2026.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Yeah, so we've already told everybody we were down there and it was good to get back to our roots at ARMA and meet a lot of people and reconnect with people. But of course, the reason we went was to learn new things and see where the, where the industry is going, where the profession is going. And you kind of teased it yesterday morning on our.
Our second podcast episode from the. From the location by saying,
[00:01:12] Speaker A: AI, AI, AI.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Yeah,
[00:01:15] Speaker A: and not to get in trouble just because it's not official yet. I'll say Sisi also, I just don't want to get kicked off the air.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: So one of my sessions actually talked about super intelligence coming later in the process. Yeah,
[00:01:32] Speaker A: later I could see that because we're not there yet,
[00:01:35] Speaker B: that it's more of a theoretical future state.
But they all talked about AI one way or another.
Some did a better job, I think, of incorporating it than others, but it was the theme, for sure.
And I had a couple of thoughts on that. As I were coming home, I was thinking about.
There was definitely a lot of questioning going on right of everywhere.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Yes. How do you control it? What do you do with it? What do you do with the prompts? What do you do with. How do you use it? I mean, there were a lot of questions around it and a lot of people who kind of sat back and said, they're going to do what they want to do,
[00:02:24] Speaker B: they're going to do what they want to do. Meaning someone outside of that room was going to do what they wanted to do.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I wasn't going to be specific, but yes, they, it, they, the engineers, they. The rest of the corporation, you know. Yes.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Yeah, there was a lot of, there was a lot of questioning around. Okay, this could change things. How. How do we need to react?
But it was very much react. We're not necessarily stepping out in front. There were a few sessions that were about stepping out in front, though.
There were some talking about skills that records managers need to have in the age of AI and using that phrase, records managers, like stepping back to the origin story of managing final records, evidence of transactions and decisions and obligations.
So that Was good. That was interesting to me. All of this is interesting. I don't have a good or bad yet, but it was all interesting. It was, okay, where do we come from? And now this new thing is coming at us and what do we do with it? Right?
[00:03:34] Speaker A: The interesting vibe I got though was that there, I thought there were a greater majority of people who wanted to, I can't say capitalize, but wanted to be, take the profession, information governance profession that is to the forefront. Because this is what we've been talking about all along.
I agree with that being get organized, right? Get ready.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: The principles of information governance, the foundations of information governance around accountability and transparency, retention and disposition, identifying, traceability and accuracy of knowing that your data supports your business and it provides evidence of what you've done in your organization.
That those principles are so important for AI, for AI to be successful, for your business, to use it successfully as, as a game changer and not as kind of a shiny, shiny new toy to test it out. And I agree the vibe was this is, this is us. We were made for this moment.
But. But then, but then it was sort of like a brick wall. Like. And now what,
[00:04:54] Speaker A: now what do we do? They won't let us in the room, meaning they won't let us talk to the right people. So now what do I do?
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Right? Are we. How do we get invited? Can. Do we. Do we want to be invited?
Do
[00:05:08] Speaker A: I want to be a naysayer? Should I, you know, how do I change the conversation a little bit so that I'm not a naysayer?
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Right? But how do we do that without blowing up who we are? Because that origin story of being the records managers.
Listeners of the podcast know that I love to talk about the King of Ur and how he hung on to being a records manager in 3000 B.C.
and how important that was because it was the, because of the contracts on the clay tablets with the envelopes and having a verifiable and accurate copy of things.
Because it underlies the business of running a kingdom, the Kingdom of Ur, but it also underlies the business of running any organization. Today we have to have records that we can, that everybody can agree on, that both sides of a party can agree.
Both parties of a transaction can agree. This is what we wanted, what we said we would do, and this is how it's going to play out in terms of delivery and quality and payment or payment in kind doesn't have to be money, but just that we both agreed this is what's going to happen and we need something that we can count on to prove that.
And so that is a hard thing right now. The something we can count on is a hard thing because it's so easy to create it out of nothing.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Yes. And I will say if you just turn AI loose in your organization, you will have problems.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: Yes. I heard over and over again in different sessions that what AI is good at is confidence.
AI will give you a very confident answer or give you an answer with great confidence.
Whether the answer is right is a different story. And we heard all sorts of speakers talking about experiences where you have a bad set of data, you have conflicting data. How often do you have conflicting data in your organization?
What saves you from it is knowing, oh yeah, that was an early draft and we corrected that, or that was a similar circumstance, a similar document, but actually there were major differences in the one that we're looking for.
So it's that context that is so important to records and so much of that foundation, the traceability, the transparency, the accountability, that is sometimes lost. Well, actually, I'm going to go with it's always lost if you just turn AI loose because data is data and it doesn't get all of that.
So I think that was interesting because what we saw was everybody trying to figure this out.
What we didn't see as much, but there were some glimmers is what's next.
So two things stood out for me. One, there was a theme of we don't want to be the we don't. We want to say yes and instead of no.
And, and I felt like. I like that. That's a good starting point. But, but I felt like some people took it a little bit far.
And, and, and some of the things that people talked about to me felt like we were sort of abandoning what makes us information governance professionals, some of those foundational things, and then they kind of came back around. But it felt like it was like we undermined it and then we tried to sneak it back in. I didn't like that path so much. The path I liked better that I heard a few people talk about was, okay, let's look hard at this. Is there something that we need to change?
Is there something that we're going to need to adapt? So we're not abandoning our principles, but how do we work with them in this new space?
How do we go from a retention and disposition program that is based on very tight controls to a retention and disposition program that is based on a good faith effort or based on confidence levels and what's the risk associated with that, because is it possible to get the control that we used to have over paper for sure, but even over electronic data up until now, when it was unstructured data in a content management system or unstructured data in folders that were clearly mapped in shared drives and, and structured data and databases, and it was a relatively small volume. The volume is not small anymore, even in any given organization. And once you've added AI onto it, the volume is hard to get your hands around.
What's the risk of going from the tight control? We know for sure we've got all of the data that belongs in this category, and we have applied the disposition to it appropriately.
We have weighed all the factors, we have outlined all the algorithms, we have done our due diligence, and this is our best faith effort that we have appropriately categorized and destroyed the data in accordance with the schedule. There wasn't an answer for that. It was really a question, and I think that's the right question to be asking is if we can't impose the level of control that we used to, that in the paper world we could control and that we've been really struggling for the past 10 years to impose in an electronic environment, then let's be more thoughtful about what are we giving up, because if that's not possible, then we shouldn't keep saying we're going to do it. And I thought that was a really good path, and I only heard a little bit about it in the sessions, so I thought it was a good start, but there's a lot more to explore. So those are the two things that came out for me in terms of where do we go next as an information governance profession.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: Okay.
I, I'll say that we came up with a little saying that says that it secures it, meaning the data privacy limits it and information governance proves it.
And I like that. But a good information governance professional can do all three of those for you.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: I agree. And a good information governance program incorporates all of those.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: Yeah,
[00:12:06] Speaker B: yeah.
And that proof, I think where I'm going is that proof is not 100% locked down. It's an understanding of the confidence level and the risk factors that are in it.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: Before we go, I think the other dip. The other thing was that you went to a more technical track of sessions than I did. And so you got to see what some of the technologists are thinking about, some of the vendors are thinking.
Mine was more philosophical.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Yes. And I don't, I, I don't know what I want to say on that. Just because I don't want to like down any system that's out. Right.
So I do want to say that people are, are really looking at Purview, Microsoft Purview to do a lot of the work to harness what AI can see in your organization.
And I do think Microsoft is putting a lot of money into co pilot so they, they want it to see your whole organization. And I don't know if the controls are perfected yet to be able to limit that yet.
Yet.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: I wasn't trying to
[00:13:30] Speaker A: cautious enough. I
[00:13:32] Speaker B: was very cautious and I wasn't trying to put you on the spot. It was more just that that's. That world of technology is taking a bigger role in ARMA now than it did the last time we were there.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Yeah,
[00:13:47] Speaker B: it was definitely more of an afterthought.
I think Purview
[00:13:52] Speaker A: itself is a massive, massive tool that Microsoft has and depends on your license, what level of things you can do, your Microsoft 365 license, what you can do. But I've heard a lot of horror stories that people are getting locked out of documents when they shouldn't be. I've heard good stories. So I think there's some work.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: I was going to say we're just beginning to learn about it, so don't know, don't know enough to say anything yet.
So just anecdotally you've heard some things.
But yeah, where I was going is just more that I like that path being there in the information governance professional space because then we have more visibility into it and we have the opportunity to say, hey wait, think about this, Think about this.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: And I think that's important going forward.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Even the file plans that we do are important when it comes to that.
When it comes to labeling, the sensitivity labels, the records categories, all that is extremely important.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And builds, builds on those foundations that we started with.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: We know. Great.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: All right. So, so successful return to ARMA infocon.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: I think so. Yes.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: I think so too.
Well, look forward to learning more as we keep going.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Great. If you have any questions.
Sorry, did you want to say something?
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Thanks for coming on our little trip.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: Okay. If you have any questions, please send us an at info trailblazer.us.com or find us on the web at www.trailblazer.us.com. like the lead nod there?
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: Check out the Learning Academy. Start with IG Navigator. That's always an important free item that you can do a little assessment. Eight questions assessment on your organization.
Thank you for listening. Please tune in to our next episode if you like this one, please be a champion and share it with people in your social media network, like or subscribe as well.
We appreciate you the listeners. Special thanks goes to. Jason Blake created our music.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: Thanks everyone.
