{"id":5407,"date":"2016-02-11T09:41:50","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T17:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.careersingovernment.com\/tools\/?p=5407"},"modified":"2016-02-11T09:41:54","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T17:41:54","slug":"information-governance-insights-the-magic-black-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.careersingovernment.com\/tools\/gov-talk\/about-gov\/education\/information-governance-insights-the-magic-black-box\/","title":{"rendered":"Information Governance Insights: The Magic Black Box"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"information<\/a>We\u2019ve talked a lot about Information Governance<\/a> and the goal of increasing the productivity of employees, lower costs, increase operational opportunities, and cover downside risk by providing consistency, integrity, security and availability of information throughout the information governance lifecycle. We\u2019ve built a program from the ground up<\/a> and it\u2019s working as intended. However, the amount of information the organization is creating on a daily basis is expanding and it\u2019s getting harder to keep up with it all<\/a>. What to do? Remember at the very beginning of this series I said that effective Information Governance is about Process, People and Technology – in that order. Now is the time to add the efficiency that technology can bring to the table.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s talk about getting the right system for your organization. We\u2019ll start by saying there is no magic black box that will swoop in and solve all of your problems. At some point compromises will have to be made, just make sure that the compromises you make are on the process side of the equation. I stress this because I never want to customize software to match some business process because \u201cthat\u2019s the way we do business.\u201d While that may be the case now, it is cheaper in the long run to modify a business process than to deal with software customizations you\u2019ve made to a business critical system when the manufacturer sends out an update in the future – and those updates will come.<\/p>\n

Over the years I\u2019ve developed an objective process for procuring electronic document management systems<\/a> that helps focus everyone involved on what is important to the organization and avoid buying something you don\u2019t need. The key part of that last sentence is \u201ceveryone.\u201d This is another job for the Steering Committee because; 1) you can\u2019t do everything involved by yourself and 2) what you need in a system is not necessarily what others need. The first step in the process is documenting those needs before you pick up the phone and talking to vendors. It is time to get that committee together to create a list of requirements that will become a checklist you will ultimately use to rate the various systems you will see during this process.<\/p>\n

The hardest part of the entire process is creating a list of requirements. Fortunately, you already have several critical ones already developed through the information governance program you have created! Here is a brief list of requirements based on the documents we have outlined in previous articles:<\/p>\n