The Information Behind Every Great Decision: Why Governance Is a Leadership Responsibility
A leadership imperative for building trustworthy organizations through effective records management and information control.
10 Rules for Information Governance: Why Great Projects Are Built on Great Information
Every organization runs on information.
Senior executives rely on information when making decisions about investments, approving designs for release to construction, authorizing contractors to begin work, and determining strategic direction. Information is therefore a critical organizational asset and must be accurate, current, accessible, and, most importantly, trustworthy.
Information management frameworks describe the processes through which information is exchanged, recorded, versioned, organized, and managed throughout the lifecycle of assets and projects (International Organization for Standardization, 2018).
Yet information management is often carried out behind the scenes.
It shouldn't be.
As organizations grow more complex and increasingly dependent on technology, information becomes one of their most important assets. Poor information management can cause problems that extend far beyond disorganized documents and files.
Decisions can be made using outdated information. Approval processes can become difficult to track. Responsibilities can become unclear. Critical information can be lost. Multiple versions of the same document can create confusion. In the worst-case scenario, organizations can lose confidence in their own information environment.
A strong information management system is therefore built on sound records-management principles. These include policies and procedures, clearly assigned responsibilities, monitoring and control, metadata, defined records-management processes, and mechanisms for the creation, capture, management, and control of records throughout their lifecycle (ISO, 2016).
Rule #1: Information Governance Must Be a Leadership Priority
This is why I believe information governance must be discussed within organizational leadership.
It must be mandated.
Governance cannot remain something that happens quietly in the background while leadership focuses exclusively on operations, technology, budgets, and strategic initiatives.
If information drives decisions, then governing that information is a leadership responsibility.
Governance Creates Trust
Information management frameworks provide processes for managing information throughout its lifecycle and across an organization's assets and projects. These processes include exchanging, recording, versioning, organizing, and managing information (International Organization for Standardization, 2018).
Rule #2: Technology Matters, but Technology Alone Cannot Create Governance
A highly developed information system is not enough to create effective information governance.
Clear definitions of ownership, permissions, metadata, processes, and revision control are required to create a well-governed information environment that enables an organization to manage complexity effectively.
Technology can facilitate governance.
It cannot define governance.
Rule #3: Strong Governance Creates Something Much More Valuable: Trust
No one should have to open a drawing, report, specification, or other critical document and wonder whether they are looking at the most current version.
They should know.
Trust in information is not an accident. It is something that must be designed into the information environment through processes such as information exchange, recording, versioning, and organization throughout the asset lifecycle (ISO 19650-1).
When people trust the information they are using, they can make decisions with greater confidence.
Rule #4: Document Control Is Not Administrative Support
One of the biggest misconceptions about document control throughout my long career is that it is simply an administrative function and that anyone can do it.
Modern document control is a control function.
It sits at the intersection of people, processes, technology, risk, and accountability.
The Information Professional establishes the mechanisms necessary to manage organizational information and determine:
- What information is current?
- Who has reviewed it?
- Who has approved it?
- What changes have occurred?
- When was it distributed?
- To whom was it distributed?
- What actions resulted from its distribution?
Effective records management depends on the creation, capture, management, and control of records within defined business processes (ISO, 2016).
Consider something as simple as issuing a document.
What the business needs is not merely proof that a file exists. It needs a complete information trail that includes:
- The document version number
- The status of the document at the time of issue
- The person or people who authorized the document
- The person or people who received it
- The reason for its distribution
- Subsequent actions taken as a result of the distribution
These details are supported by metadata principles that preserve contextual information associated with records, processes, and systems (ISO, 2017).
Those details create traceability.
And traceability creates accountability.
Rule #5: Technology Should Strengthen Governance, Not Replace It
Technology supports information governance, but information management encompasses far more than the systems used to store information. Standards such as ISO 19650 describe not only the technology used to manage information, but also the policies, responsibilities, controls, and processes required throughout the information lifecycle (ISO, 2016, 2018).
Implementing technology is not the same as governing information.
First, leaders must determine what can and should be automated.
Who owns the information?
Who is allowed to change it?
Who needs to approve it?
What metadata is required to identify it?
What constitutes a record?
Where is the authoritative version maintained?
How are revisions managed?
How is information made obsolete?
These are governance questions before they are technology questions.
Effective information management encompasses more than the information held by a system during a particular stage of its lifecycle. ISO 23081-1 and ISO 23081-2 provide guidance on the aspects that need to be managed to achieve effective information management (ISO, 2016, 2018).
In a strong information environment, systems are established to operate within clearly defined business rules.
Those rules should govern the system—not the other way around.
Rule #6: Metadata Is Part of the Strategy
Some of the most powerful elements of information governance are also the least visible.
Metadata is one example.
A simple document number, revision number, status, discipline, project number, originator, approval status, issue date, or list of associated assets can provide significant context to a file.
That context is metadata.
ISO 23081-1 provides principles for the use of metadata in records management and, more broadly, information management, covering records, processes, systems, and organizations (ISO, 2017).
Metadata transforms a file into contextualized information.
It can power workflows. It can enable dashboards. It can identify bottlenecks. It can support compliance. It can distinguish current information from historical information. It can provide leadership with insight into what requires attention.
Metadata can also help demonstrate the integrity, authenticity, reliability, and usability of information by recording the context in which information was created and the events that occurred after its creation (ISO, 2017).
When metadata is governed effectively, organizations don't simply have more data.
They have greater visibility into how their organization operates.
Rule #7: Good Information Supports Better Decisions
Leadership decisions are only as good as the information on which they are based.
This is why information management cannot begin and end with storage. The objective is to create an environment that supports information in all its forms and throughout every phase of an asset's lifecycle. Information-management principles used across the design, construction, operation, maintenance, and demolition of built assets demonstrate the importance of managing information throughout the entire lifecycle (ISO, 2018).
For leaders, that translates into something tangible:
Confidence.
Confidence that teams are working from current information.
Confidence that approvals can be demonstrated.
Confidence that responsibilities are visible.
Confidence that information can be retrieved when needed.
Confidence that organizational knowledge is being protected rather than scattered across inboxes, personal drives, disconnected systems, and uncontrolled copies.
Rule #8: The Information Professional Is Becoming a Strategic Leader
Information professionals will play an increasingly important role as organizations become more digital.
The future Information Professional will not simply manage documents created by others. They will help design environments in which information can be governed and managed throughout its lifecycle.
Information professionals can become strategic leaders because they understand information from a systems perspective.
They understand technology and policy.
Operations and risk.
Data and human behavior.
They are systems thinkers, people professionals, technology experts, policy practitioners, operations specialists, risk managers, and data professionals.
We wear many hats, and that requires leadership.
Information professionals have an increasing opportunity to influence how organizations are structured and how they operate. They can influence technology decisions, measurement, knowledge retention, risk management, and decision-making processes.
Rule #9: Our Value Is Not Defined by How Many Documents We Process
Our value is demonstrated through the control, transparency, efficiency, and trust we create within organizations.
That is the difference between processing information and governing it.
Rule #10: Great Projects Are Built on Great Information
One of the core principles of information management that I have carried throughout my career is simple:
Great projects are built on great information.
Great information does not simply mean information that is available.
It means information that can be trusted.
A record is more than information with context. Effective records management also requires ownership, status, history, access controls, and a lifecycle that is managed throughout organizational and asset lifecycles (ISO, 2016, 2017, 2018).
When information is governed effectively, organizations can make better decisions, reduce risk, improve accountability, and protect institutional knowledge.
Information Management can therefore become much more than a support function.
It becomes part of organizational leadership.
The organizations that create the most information will not necessarily be the most successful. The advantage will belong to those that know how to govern, trust, and use the information they already have.
Because ultimately, great projects are not built on more information.
They are built on information people can trust.
References
International Organization for Standardization. (2016). ISO 15489-1:2016 Information and documentation—Records management—Part 1: Concepts and principles.
International Organization for Standardization. (2017). ISO 23081-1:2017 Information and documentation—Records management processes—Metadata for records—Part 1: Principles.
International Organization for Standardization. (2018). ISO 19650-1:2018 Organization and digitization of information about buildings and civil engineering works, including building information modelling (BIM)—Information management using building information modelling—Part 1: Concepts and principles.
