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49 I L T A N E T . O R G Automating Information Governance It's in this last box (in green above) that things are developing rapidly. We're seeing a much greater application of automation today. We're seeing a broader range of automation tasks that are falling to IG professionals - tasks that had previously lived in security, privacy, and yes, even legal (think legal holds and legal hold audits). There are seemingly more tasks that are moving up a level and executed under the umbrella of IG - these are frequently multi-stakeholder tasks or tasks that don't fit neatly into a single sub-discipline. With tasks increasing and staff also growing, but at a slower rate, IG professionals are now reliant on more automation. One area of particular note is how frequently we're seeing organizations leveraging sensitive information scanning for things like PII (personally identifiable information), PCI (credit card information), and PHI (healthcare information). An early trend I'm noting is companies leveraging those scans to begin proactively remediating their information deficiencies - a combination of automation and human oversight. Another area of automation that has been discussed in-depth but had previously been less frequently seen 'in the wild' is auto-classification - or automating the proper filing of information. Auto-classification has been around for quite some time, first primarily driven by workflow processes - and now, more frequently, artificial intelligence capabilities. While at the surface, the pandemic, remote-work years of 2020-21 have looked like a step backward in our Information Governance capabilities, I don't believe this is the start of a long-term trend, but rather, a reset. Things were darkest when ARMA International's Information Governance Maturity Index Report shared their 2021 results: "However, maturity rankings are down as compared with the previous year across all areas with the exception of infrastructure. In some cases, they are down considerably. ... We would have expected an upward trend in IG programs over time. However, the data for this year's report were collected towards the end of 2020, a year that was far from ordinary." – ARMA International. "Information Governance Maturity Index Report – 2021." April 2021. I believe that a "far from ordinary" year only displayed a downward trend in Information Governance, but what I see as I'm talking with companies across all sectors isn't a long-term decline, but a reimagining. Companies have been busy determining what's possible as they utilize new capabilities and draw their Information Governance programs closer to eDiscovery. With all these trends coming together simultaneously, I expect the coming years to show substantial ongoing progress for Information Governance and eDiscovery maturity. ILTA Nick Inglis, CIP, IGP, INFO, is recognized as a passionate thought leader, advocate, and supporter of Information Governance. He has nearly twenty years of experience supporting learning, innovation, and economic development in facilitating the creation of the profession of Information Governance. Today, Nick serves as the Director of Information Governance at IPRO and Founder/Show Host at InfoGov. net (Show, "The Strategy of Information")..

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