Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Caught between tomorrow's onslaught and today's data requirements?

The press is alive with stories predicting a huge wave of data coming. Some say within a short period of time, it's going to dwarf all the digital data created and stored to date. Wow. Like any other hot topic, the speculation is quite wild, yet, somewhere in there is a truth: the realm of digital data is growing and there's no foreseeable end to it. As a government focused guy, I know this phenomenon is top of mind with folks on all levels of government.

Now, let's swap gears for a moment. Last week, I had lunch with Adelaide O'Brien from IDC to catch up with my new gig at Cleversafe and she brought up the subject of records management within the context of the impending Data Tsunami. At first, I thought, Records Management? That's a stale conversation, all that work has already been done. Silly me. I should know better! Adelaide gave me a number of things to think about that are anything BUT stale, yet, not necessarily weighing heavily on many government people's minds (or, at the very least, not getting any press). Governance, FOIA & eDiscovery are the more compelling topics. As we talked, I began to realize there may be somewhat of a disconnect between the senior IT leaders and those a little father down in the organization. (Bear in mind, these are not the words of Adelaide or representative of her position, they are my impressions only.) The gist is this; the senior folks seem confident that their agencies are successfully handling records management, FOIA requests and are well positioned for eDiscovery, yet, the folks doing the work are not as confident, citing many examples of records being kept too long, the need to break FOIA responses down to paper, etc.

The conversation left me wondering how government can be preparing for the next wave of data without continuing to address it's current state.

I would love to hear from others who can continue to help me shape my thoughts on this issue. Am I on the right track? Am I missing the point altogether?


5 comments:

  1. Leaders at too many organizations (private and government) want to run long before they're done learning how to crawl. That attitude continues to be exacerbated by vendors who aggressively market running shoes to organizational infants rather than helping them understand that they need to grow up first. Classic example of putting the cart before the horse.

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    1. I suppose this has always been the case in technology, the new shiny things gets all the attention even before the current thing is fully optimized. In retrospect, this is not necessarily limited to leaders in organizations, it is also a behavior of many typical consumers. Consider how many people rush out to buy the latest new phone when the one they have still performs as designed.

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  2. Thanks Bobby for the interesting perspective and comments. Thought I would mention two things:

    1) I think you are right about potential disconnects inside organizations. Some of that is human nature, I think. The only way around that is proactive communication inside those offices.

    2) Regarding the analogy of the coming data Tsunami, there are some things wrong with that analogy. Tsunami's are bad, always. Lots of data may very well be the best thing that ever happened to humanity. It may give us ways to solve some incredible challenges. Another issue I have with that analogy is that Tsunami's eventually recede. The data shows no sign of going down.

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    1. Always enjoy engaging with you Bob. I had not considered the flaw with the analogy, however, now that you point it out, yep, I agree. The data challenge coming our way is unlikely to abate. :-)

      And yes, Tsunamis are always bad.

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  3. If firms actually had retention schedules that were simple to understand and had the technology to enforce it, the ensuing tsunami shouldn't be as overwhelming. Unfortunately, few firms care enough about records management until they get burned by failing to do it properly. Firms need to be proactive about this stuff! There's actually a small firm in St. Louis called Jordan Lawrence that's trying to help firms do this instead of them hiring consultants or doing it in-house with retention schedules that are impossible to actually use.

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