Many organizations think they are taking the right approach to information overload: buy ever-cheaper storage solutions, lower compliance risk by saving all data and focus more resources on solutions for turning all this data into actionable intelligence. Unfortunately, storing and managing data stores that only get bigger with time is very expensive, and instead of reducing risk, it dramatically increases costs and risks associated with e-discovery.

According to Gartner, IT shops already spend between 2 and 3 percent of revenues on data management, which can add up to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars each year. And according to IDC, corporate data volumes grew by about 50 percent last year. The fact is, no matter how inexpensive storage devices become, the total cost of managing data will continue to grow. And while some data must be retained for its business, legal or compliance value, retaining data that has no such value increases the complexity and cost of every hold issued by the legal department in response to an e-discovery request.

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How can IT organizations defensibly dispose of data to control IT costs while satisfying the requirement for legal holds? The answer is a robust, cross-functional information governance program.

The Rise of Information Governance

Gartner’s defines information governance as “the specification of decision rights and an accountability framework to encourage desirable behavior in the valuation, creation, storage, use, archival and deletion of information. It includes the processes, roles, standards and metrics that ensure the effective and efficient use of information in enabling an organization to achieve its goals.” This complex definition reveals that the domain of information governance is a function of information management and also extends beyond it, because it implies managing information according to its legal and regulatory obligations.

In practical terms, a key operational business goal of information governance is to resolve the disconnect that exists between legal and record information management on one side, and IT on the other. Legal and RIM answer to a “records retention schedule,” which defines not only how certain information must be stored but also how long information should be kept based on all the myriad complex laws and regulations that govern a business (e.g., privacy, safety, hiring practices, Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank legislation, etc.).

While legal and RIM struggle to keep their records retention schedule up to date, they have no robust mechanism for communicating this schedule to IT. And even if they manage to publish an updated schedule, it is typically built around the now ancient concept of one paper form and one location for a record in any given class with no conflicts between country laws and no costs associated with choosing the longest retention period where several regulations apply.

In the face of this, IT, with its ever-changing, business-driven, complex and often global information storage structures and the same information existing in hundreds or thousands of places, has no way to confidently identify relevant information and ensure it gets retained or disposed of. Modernizing and unifying data governance processes based on information as digital data managed by IT, not RIM, is essential to reducing IT costs, improving regulatory compliance and ensuring a proper e-discovery process.

via Getting Rid of Data: Why it s So Hard.