Happy Global Information Governance Day!

Today (February 21st, 2013) is the first annual Global Information Governance Day. This special day was created as an international celebration of all things information governance. Through establishing and recognizing Global Information Governance Day, we hope to raise awareness of information governance across the globe. See the Wikipedia entry for more information on this important day.

As we define it, information governance is a comprehensive program of controls, processes, and technologies designed to help organizations maximize the value of information assets while minimizing associated risks and costs.

Success in information governance can only be achieved by challenging and changing the way we see information. This is why Global Information Day is important: it will help to raise awareness of the critical importance of information governance.

As you celebrate Global Information Governance Day with your friends and family, here are some key points to remember:

1. Most companies (and individuals) create and and store an enormous amount of digital junk.
2. Over half of the information many organizations create and keep is redundant, outdated junk.
3. Keeping this digital junk around only wastes capital that could be deployed elsewhere – to create jobs, for example – and unnecessarily harms the environment through massive electricity waste.
4. The global failure to manage burgeoning digital information is a demonstrable threat to the civil and criminal justice system due to the out-of-control costs of electronic discovery. Many cases and investigations are settled rather than properly adjudicated simply because the cost of finding and producing digital evidence is unreasonably high.
5. The global failure to properly classify unstructured information is represents a growing threat to individual privacy. Every day your private information and mine is at risk of theft and unauthorized disclosure by the companies and governance agencies because they lack consistent and cost-effective techniques to separate personally identifiable information from non-private information.

How can you celebrate Global Information Governance Day? Here are some ideas:

• Chip away at your email inbox to try and achieve Inbox Zero.
• Clean up and shut down an old departmental shared drive, just for fun.
• Take your IT department out for a drink and find out where the legacy information bodies are really buried.
• Drink some herbal tea, read Zen Buddhism for Dummies, and try not to panic when you think about how big the problem is at your organization.
• Take six or seven hours and try to explain to your friends and family, what exactly do you do for a living again anyway?
• Participate in the first annual Global Information Governance Day Twitter chat.

In honor of Global Information Governance day, I will be participating in a Twitter chat at 11 am EST on February 21, 2013 with several other information governance experts. Click here for more information, and I hope to see you there.