Peer to Peer: ILTA's Quarterly Magazine
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/1463380
47 I L T A N E T . O R G provide a new avenue for organizational improvement. Imagine a review process that also includes a duplicate option to identify near-duplicates. That could be enticing too. Things get interesting when we start including AI and active learning into this process - we could identify through the use of AI and active learning across any number of information deficiency categories, then use the review process as a point of human validation when necessary. Bringing together IG and eDiscovery can combine all these types of processes, resulting in stronger, more accurate review. The Impact and Result of Automated Collaboration This process, as described above, could begin the work of optimizing your information environment(s) without adding new work. No, not every piece of information will go through a review, but let's take advantage of the fact that a fair amount of organizational information will, depending on your organization, whether you have these processes or not. When you put all these practices together, what should happen in this modified process when someone identifies a new category of deficiency during a review? Surely, deliver that news to someone who has the organizational seating to remediate that deficiency: Information Governance. While, in an ideal world, Information Governance and eDiscovery professionals would be walking hand- in-hand towards information improvement, the reality is that in most companies, that isn't the case today. Too often, these disciplines remain completely siloed from one another. A common point of crossover where any exists is the legal hold process. I urge professionals in both fields to use the legal hold process as a beginning point of gathering - set up a meeting to discuss that process and the interaction between the disciplines; it's a targeted opportunity to start to build the bridge that both disciplines will need to cross soon. Culture Change Impacts IG Success It should come as no surprise then that we can impact IG's success by changing the disconnected cultures between these two disciplines. When we're able to build the IG- eDiscovery bridge, we're building a bridge not just for the professionals to pass over but for improvement to flow over as well. Many processes in eDiscovery are informed by how well Information Governance has succeeded (e.g., if IG has recently run a deduplication project that directly impacts eDiscovery). The direct impact of culture change has been elusive to measure but seems obvious to those of us who work across companies and can see, plainly, the differences between a functioning, collaborative culture between IG and eDiscovery and one that isn't functioning. The functioning, collaborative culture doesn't just make for a better workplace (it does), but it also makes information advancements much easier to achieve. Information Governance is supposed to be a collaborative discipline; it will take some more bridges being built in some companies to realize benefits. Harnessing Information Governance as a Process In my recent work, I've been evaluating Information Governance as a process. It's an intriguing look at how the work we do as Information Governance professionals grows and matures over time. We've found that most programs, despite a wide variety of activities, tend to follow a common path in the types of activities they are performing.