{"id":5515,"date":"2016-03-12T12:15:04","date_gmt":"2016-03-12T20:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.careersingovernment.com\/tools\/?p=5515"},"modified":"2016-03-12T12:56:10","modified_gmt":"2016-03-12T20:56:10","slug":"information-governance-insights-trust-but-verify","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.careersingovernment.com\/tools\/gov-talk\/about-gov\/education\/information-governance-insights-trust-but-verify\/","title":{"rendered":"Information Governance Insights: Trust But Verify"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"trust<\/a>Well, time marches on and your Information Governance<\/a> program is humming along like the well-oiled machine that it is! You know this because things are getting filed, requests come in, orders go out and everyone’s questions have slowed to a bare trickle. A testament to your prowess at building and training the program! Right? Are you sure? Now is the perfect time to introduce another facet to the program: its time to talk about auditing.<\/p>\n

I know. Nobody likes that word because it is usually stressful, means a lot of hassle to prove that you know what you are doing and almost everyone thinks it’s a huge waste of time. I get it, but in the Information Governance world auditing is an essential part of establishing a defensible program. In order to have a program that will hold up in a Court or qualify for any Industry Quality certification it must be fully documented, trained upon (documented there as well) and followed EVERY TIME. The only way to prove that is to do periodic audits, so buck up and let\u2019s take a better approach \u2014 one that focuses not on a game of \u201cGotcha\u201d with the staff, but on identifying additional training or process improvement needs in the program itself. That may sound rather soft, but it\u2019s important to remember that the goal is to achieve a consistent process that meets the organization\u2019s needs. It is quite possible that the process that was designed in committee doesn\u2019t work in real life. These are the types of things you will find in an audit. It\u2019s important to take the approach that an audit is just as much about process improvement as it is about compliance.<\/p>\n

So lets talk about the audit process. The first step in developing an audit process is to develop a checklist of what you need to look for when you go out into the field. Keep in mind that this isn\u2019t just a quick check to see if they\u2019ve filed things in the right place. You want to understand everything involved with the program and how it works for the business.<\/p>\n

The checklist should include such things as:<\/h4>\n