by Angela Guess
Chris Maxcer recently posed the question, who owns a data governance program? His article begins, “Because successful information governance efforts are ongoing programs rather than projects with finite endings, the question of ownership is an elemental one. Someone has to secure funding, make the difficult decisions and ultimately take responsibility for an organization’s information governance policy development and enforcement processes. In certain situations the legal department can provide an easy starting point, but the process still demands some careful thinking.”
Debra Logan, an EIM analyst at Garner noted, “In risk-averse or highly litigious companies, the legal department should own the information governance program, but they should hire an information management person at a high level… Lawyers understand the risk and need and they will delegate responsibility – they have a hammer and see the nails that are sticking up.”
Maxcer points out that the question of ownership is rarely clear, quoting Barclay Blair, president of ViaLumina Group: “Many executives mistakenly assume that the person on the management team with ‘information’ in his or her title is taking care of the information management problem… However, while most CIOs view infrastructure – software, hardware, cables – as their problem, they consider the information flowing through that infrastructure to be someone else’s problem – usually the people who created the information. On the flip side, most group managers say that they do not have the authority, knowledge or money to control what happens in IT.”
Maxcer continues, “CIOs still need to work with their C-level peers, to take ownership and accountability and open up resources. Business stakeholders need to articulate the impact and opportunities that high-quality trusted information can deliver – and that collaboration between business and IT is what will make an information governance strategy successful.”
photo credit: quinn.anya
