Sound information governance policies can help organisations avoid the confusion that is being created by the increasing volumes of information they have to grapple with.

So said Debra Logan, research VP and analyst at Gartner, presenting in Johannesburg, on how big data and extreme information are transforming business and IT.

“When it comes to information, we all have too much, but we almost never have enough. This is the information paradox. To solve the information paradox, organisations need to apply the principles of information governance,” she said.

Logan defined information governance as the specification of decision rights and an accountability framework to ensure the appropriate behaviour in the valuation, creation, storage, use, archival and deletion of information.

“This includes the processes, roles, standards and metrics that ensure the effective and efficient use of information in enabling an organisation to achieve its goals.”

Highlighting the paradoxical facts about information, Logan pointed out that, despite increases in volume and velocity of information, people seem to want more and more of it. On the other hand, she noted, as information creates more risk and requires more governance and policy to manage, enterprises seek to control it less and less.

“As connectivity, access and technology become ever more ubiquitous, citizens, employees, suppliers, regulators and governments want information access to be better and better,” she added.

According to Logan, information governance provides a structure for making better, faster decisions about information.

However, she noted, governance is technically complex, organisationally challenging and politically sensitive.

Logan also explained that the goals of governance are to make sure information supports business goals effectively and efficiently.

“The definition thus implies that we must first decide what information assets are worth investing in from a governance perspective. Too much time and effort are wasted on creating and maintaining that which is not of business value – duplicate copies of files, old and outdated information, and so on.”

She raised concern that companies are still struggling with the issue of information governance – a concern they have been trying to address since 2001, when the current upswing in government regulations started.

“By 2010, many of our clients still had not formulated effective information governance policies, let alone implemented them.”

Logan urged organisations to adopt an enterprise information management system, which she said is “an integrative discipline for structuring, describing and governing information assets, regardless of organisational and technological boundaries, enabling business insight.

“While we have good methods for managing application information and many good examples of process-specific or departmental information management efforts, what’s missing in most companies is an enterprise-wide, strategic view of information.”

TOTAL RETHINK

Enterprises must completely rethink how they leverage information to create business value, as simply modifying existing IT assets is not sufficient.

This is according to Regina Casonato, Gartner’s managing VP, speaking during a seminar themed: “How big data and extreme information are transforming business and IT”, in Johannesburg.

Casonato noted that most organisations have reached a point where information can be used to describe, manage and execute business processes as well as to audit their business, and it is no longer a competitive advantage or even a differentiation to do so.

“What we are ultimately suggesting is that organisations manage information as an asset and that IT has an opportunity to lead this effort. When information is managed as an asset, and made available as a service to processes and systems, it becomes possible to create entirely new revenue streams and business models,” she said.

Casonato pointed to Gartner’s predictions that information volumes in organisations would double every 12 to 18 months. “Determine a strategy now that links archiving and storage approaches to the multiple ‘perish’ dates on your information assets,” she advised.

Further, she noted the challenge in managing data today is that it is not just about the volume (big data).

“In addition, velocity, variety and complexity must be considered. Also, the entire concept of the technology, information classification, linked data, shared data and even governance all come into play.”

According to Casonato, big data is the first taste of the extreme information challenges that will become increasingly difficult to address.

“Data volumes are so large that even as storage technology and network infrastructures increase in capacity, the data simply grows at a faster rate.”

In addition to volume, she explained, information assets will exhibit irregular rates of change; governance rules will become increasingly fluid; and new asset types will continue to emerge.

In the face of these challenges, she urged organisations to plan to use cloud storage to support a data retention structure.