Attending the ARMA Southeast/Southwest Regional Leadership Conference from July 11th-12th, 2019 got me thinking. I credit the participants and speakers for helping to reiterate and concretize these ideas that have been spinning in my head ever since I joined our chapter in 2014. Now that I understand the following, my self-awareness, hence confidence, about my Information Governance role in my organization is solid:
✓ You benefit your company when you increase your knowledge of your business operations and Information Governance. If your goal is effective integration, it is not an “either-or” situation. They are not mutually exclusive but intersect in multiple ways. For example, if you are building a paperless office, it behooves you to understand the details to ensure a smooth transition away from paper data entry and retrieval.
✓ Businesses place Information Governance in different parts of an organizational chart. For example, Administration, Legal, Compliance, Information Technology, or Records Management. Just as there is no set way to set up and name colleges in a university, there are many different ways companies can logically organize to function optimally.
✓ Many organizations struggle to move to a mature Information Governance model, pending budget approval and key leadership support, hence the multiple layered Maturity Model. Accept that mature Information Governance does not happen overnight.
✓ Legacy systems are costly to maintain, but the more we transition to better platforms for ease of accessibility, the more we can leverage and manage analytics.
✓ Even the newest systems must have retention periods to save on storage costs.
Thanks for letting me represent our chapter.
Sincerely,
André M. de la Fuente
2019-2020 President
Baton Rouge Lafayette ARMA Chapter