Written by Doug Austin, Editor of eDiscovery Today
As I wrote back in December, EDRM released the Final Draft of the Information Governance Reference Model (IGRM) 4.0 diagram for public comment in June last year. The IGRM Revision Project team established a deadline for public comments, extended it, and ultimately had to push back the release of the final version of the new IGRM model to address the large number of comments they received during the public comment period (which shows how much interest there was in it).
This week, EDRM announced the release of the final IGRM version 4.1, which is available here. That’s a great accomplishment! But a model like IGRM only establishes the framework of what an effective information governance program looks like.
Let’s look at the latest IGRM model and what comes next in terms of putting it to use.
Looking at the IGRM 4.0 and 4.1 Model Versions
Version 4.0 involved a significant redesign of the IGRM model, providing a new updated design graphic. It also expanded the stakeholder groups from five to seven, breaking Risk into its own group and breaking Privacy and Security into separate groups as well.
The other three main changes were to change up the center boxes designed to reflect the lifecycle of information to streamline the flow, to remove the Duty, Value and Asset references and definitions and to replace the Policy Integration/Process Transparency directional ring with a solid ring that stated the phrase “Balancing Value, Risk and Cost”.
Apparently, some people missed that Policy/Process directional ring.
Version 4.1 restored the Policy/Process directional ring (dropping the words “Integration” and “Transparency”) and moved the phrase “Balancing Value, Risk and Cost” to become a sub header underneath the title. Win-win for everybody!
EDRM stated: “The entire project team continues the work to organize explanations of each segment and element and how they work together.” And they will hopefully update the EDRM diagram with the new IGRM 4.1 model (to replace the IGRM 3.0 version) as soon as possible as well!
Getting Stakeholder Buy-In
Identifying the stakeholder groups via IGRM is a great start. But effective information governance requires stakeholders to buy-in to information projects – without that, IGRM is just a terrific concept. Stakeholders may range from adverse to specific information projects to an evangelist for those projects, or they may even be unaware they exist (which is arguably even worse than adverse to the projects).
Nick Inglis had a terrific post this week regarding how General Counsel within corporations can align executive stakeholders for information governance projects. He discusses two basic tools for stakeholder engagement for each information governance project:
- Information Lifecycle: He created one for ARMA International back when he was Executive Director of Content and Programming for them (which is very similar to the lifecycle of information in the center of the IGRM model) and has six stages.
- Spreadsheet Tool of Your Choice: Who doesn’t love spreadsheets? For each project, Nick discusses taking the six stages and then listing the stakeholders and prioritizing the impact of each stakeholder on the project by simply roughly estimating their engagement across three measures (personal project impact [PPI], fear/comfort [FC], community impact [CI]).
Nick defines how he uses each of the measures in his post (I’ve stolen enough of his thunder for one post, so please check out his post for more information) and how you can determine your project approaches, build working groups and develop your stakeholder engagement plan. It’s a terrific look at the next step in effective information governance!
Conclusion
Congratulations to EDRM and the IGRM project team for a terrific new version of the IGRM model! The new model not only looks great, but it’s also cleaner and more straightforward.
Of course, a terrific model is just a first step, as EDRM acknowledged in the release of the IGRM model. For a truly effective information governance program, you need stakeholder buy-in! Just ask Nick Inglis.
For more educational topics from me related to eDiscovery, information governance, cybersecurity and data privacy, feel free to follow my blog, eDiscovery Today!
Learn more about IPRO solutions for each stage of the EDRM—as well as the IGRM.
