Information Governance – 2013 In Review

2013 was the year that the term "Information Governance" or "IG" began to be widely used outside of technical circles. Despite that fact, the concept of IG is not well understood. Gartner, a premier information advisory company, defines IG as the specification of decision rights and an accountability framework to ensure appropriate behavior in the valuation, creation, storage, use, archiving, and deletion of information. It includes the processes, roles and policies, standards, and metrics that ensure the effective and efficient use of information to enable an organization to achieve its goals.

Information management is not the same as IG. IG represents a strategic, as opposed to tactical, enterprise-wide approach to the governance of the entity's information. It requires coordination across all business units, as well as IT, security, compliance, privacy, and legal. A successful IG program will avoid siloing and require strategic coordination among all