Web Governance

At Vamosa, we define ‘Information Governance’ as the set of policies and procedures designed to govern a piece of information from its inception through to its destruction. Information governance activities include: the design and implementation of formal policies that define how information is stored and shared among employees and stakeholders; addressing preventable risks to sensitive information; better preparing for new compliance mandates; ensuring quality, compliance and protection of information; and increasing the business value of information.

The 451 Group’s article ‘The Rise of Information Governance’ (August 2009) similarly defines ‘Information Governance’ as the practices and technologies involved with proactively managing what information is retained, where it is stored and for how long, who has access to it and how it is protected.

Information Governance

Whatever the definition, ‘Information Governance’ needs to be a priority and included as part of enterprises’ wider compliance strategy i.e. regulatory compliance – national or industry-specific compliance mandates – technical compliance, for example, Web accessibility; and compliance with corporate policy, such as brand guidelines, recruitment practices and so on. One of the significant challenges is translating these ‘Information Governance’ policies into day-to-day behavior, particularly when it comes to unstructured data.

Managing unstructured data (web content, email, Blogs, user-generated content) is inherently different, and in many ways more challenging, than controlling its structured counterpart. This is why we have coined the phrase ‘Enterprise Content Governance (ECoG) to focus attention on this often uncontrolled ‘digital landfill’ as AIIM would have it.’ Effective Information Governance is impossible without controlling and structuring your content and that’s exactly what ECoG does for organizations.

Enterprise Content Governance

Enterprise Content Governance is the act of ensuring your content is structured and controlled; it’s the process of not only achieving, but maintaining good content ‘quality’ in order to satisfy key business challenges. This is where our definition and the process of ‘Information Governance’ differs slightly from 451 Group. Being compliant doesn’t just mean you’ve proactively managed content, but that you’ve controlled and structured that content from its inception and then monitored and maintained it throughout its lifecycle so that you can truly stand by its quality.

To learn how to start to get a grip on the uncontrolled data in your organization and implement policies to keep it under control, download the Rise of Information Governance White Paper.