The Keys to Successful Information Governance
Zach Wahl
February 15, 2012
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Agenda
• Governance Overview
– The Challenges
– The Benefits
• The Keys to Successful Governance
• DFAS Case Study
• Governance Best Practices
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Governance as a Constant
• Governance should be a constant within your organization:
– Project Governance
– System Governance
– Content Governance
• Leverage governance as a facilitation and communications
tool.
• “Sell” governance as an enabler instead of encumbrance.
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How You Picture It…
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The Reality
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Benefits of Governance
• Creates boundaries, reinforces authority,
clarifies roles & responsibilities.
• Resolves ambiguities; outlines a
common set of principles and a
framework within which to achieve
shared goals.
• Ensures consistent decision-making that
supports the long-term vision of the
system.
• Simplifies maintenance and reduces
rework/cleanup, saving time and money.
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Effective governance will help
you to ensure the hard work that
went into an initial design has
not been lost. The stage of
maintenance and evolution is
where many organizations are
currently failing. You must
recognize that once you’ve
designed your system and
populated it with content, your
job has just begun. There will
always be new or different
content and functionality needs
to which you must respond.
Managing these needs
effectively will ensure the longterm sustainability of your
system.
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Benefits of Governance
• Project Governance:
– Define clear lines of authority.
– Engage end users.
– Manage change.
– Define/maintain scope and schedule.
• System Governance:
– Consistently sustain and evolve system.
– Give users a voice.
– Keep system healthy and users happy.
• Content Governance:
– Keep content NERDy (New, Essential, Reliable, Dynamic).
– Maintain overall findability.
– Ensure effective use and reuse.
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Sustainability
• Initial efforts can quickly be degraded without effective
governance.
• Lack of oversight will result in content quality, naming, and
findability issues.
• Lack of coordination will result in duplicated, inappropriate, or
incorrectly placed content.
Documents in Directory: 10,000
Folders in Directory: 90
Directory Depth (Levels): 4
Duplicate Content: 0
Documents in Directory: 20,000
Folders in Directory: 150
Directory Depth (Levels): 7
Duplicate Content: 5,000
Documents in Directory: 40,000
Folders in Directory: 250
Directory Depth (Levels): 15
Duplicate Content: 15,000
Time from Rollout (months)
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The Keys to Governance
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The Keys to Governance
•
Identify Project/System/Content Objectives and Business Case
– Clearly define the scope
– Set expectations upfront
– Sell constituents on why they need it (both governance and the larger system)
•
Define Project Roles and Responsibilities
– Give people ownership within the project
– Set up domains of responsibility
•
Create High-Level Policies and Procedures
– Decision-making processes and rules
– Security Rules
– Global Settings
•
Provide Communication and Education
– Give users the ability to learn about the project/system/content
– Create two-way communications and prove it means something
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Objectives, Business Case, and Value Statement
• The standard value statement is not sufficient – “We want to make
it easier for our users to find information”
• Specify details that will set expectations and control scope:
–
–
–
–
–
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What information?
Where is it located?
Who is it for? Who are your users?
What is the return on investment?
What is the business value?
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Roles and Responsibilities
• Establish groups, authorities,
and responsibilities.
• Clearly outline expectations
for each role/group.
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Policies
Define simple policies that can be easily followed and will support the long-term
sustainability and usability of the taxonomy and content.
Folders
• Empty folders will be
immediately deleted or
hidden
• Folders with less than three
documents will be deleted or
hidden and their content will
be promoted to the next level
• No more than 12 subfolders
at each level
• No acronyms or abbreviations
in folder names
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Content
• No duplicate content in the
system
• No “irregular” security
• No content that will not be of
value to others
• No outdated content (No
older versions of current
document)
Metadata
• All metadata values must be
powered by standard
taxonomies
• No acronyms or abbreviations
in document names
• Do not duplicate information
in any fields
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Procedures
• Componentized procedures for the create/edit/delete of any
system component.
• Map process to established roles and responsibilities as
well as decision
points.
• Review procedures
for governance team
to maintain system
quality.
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Communications, Education, and Marketing
•
Give users the ability to learn about the
project/system by a range of means:
–
–
–
–
–
–
•
One-on-one meetings
Live presentations
Documentation
Animated Tutorials
Context Sensitive Help
White Papers
Create two-way communications and prove it
means something
– Document decisions and archive all input
– Make all feedback available to end users
– Provide means of communication via the system
•
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Market the value of the system and effective
metadata use – mandates will not be sufficient
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Communications and Engagement Cycle
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Translating Communications into Action
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Communicating Performance
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Focus on the Business
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Case Study
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About DFAS
• Mission: Provide responsive, professional finance and
accounting services for the people who defend America
– Process 104M pay transactions to 5.9M military, civilians,
retirees and annuitants
– Pay 12.6M commercial invoices
– Manage military and health benefits funds ($234B)
– Make an average of $455B in disbursements to pay
recipients
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DFAS Information Configuration
Employee
Directory
Document Management
1. Content
Managers submit
documents and
create folders
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2. Documents
Reviewed for 508
Compliance and
published
Collaboration
News
Feeds
Enterprise Intranet
3. Enterprise search,
navigation, and
tagging.
Issue Identification
Users were not finding the information they needed to
do their job!
Employee
Directory
Document Management


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Collaboration
News
Feeds
Enterprise Intranet
Browse experience was confusing and difficult
Search returned the “wrong” documents
Issue Identification
The technology worked, the process did not!
• Taxonomy
– No naming conventions
– No creation review process
– No overlying strategy
• Documents
– Duplicate and outdated
materials
– Cumbersome metadata
requirements with no quality
control
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As a result:
• Non-intuitive folder structure
built along organizational
lines
• “Siloed” content where only
owners could find it
• Dilution factor from mass of
low-value content
• Poor search results from
inconsistent/nonexistent
metadata
Issue Identification
•
•
•
•
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Taxonomy design went 14 levels deep
Folder names included “Misc.”, “Other”, and “Docs”
Metadata was copied from field to field
Over 8,000 documents in system, with less than 3,000
opened more than a few times in last 6 months
Governance at DFAS
Applied clear governance design to project, system, and
content.
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Clearly stated Value Statement that
sets user expectations and helps them
to understand and exploit the full
benefits of the system, as well as the
governance model itself.
Established roles and responsibilities
to maintain the system, respond to
requests, populate and maintain
content, and conduct regular quality
audits.
Policies and Procedures defined and
easily accessible as a quick reference
for all constituents.
Education, training, and marketing
materials all readily accessible via the
intranet along with an established
annual communications and
prioritization cycle.
Accomplishments
• Users now understand the system and are finding what they
need through search and browse.
• Content is no longer hidden in verticals.
• Taxonomy Team is using governance procedures to evolve
the taxonomy.
• System usage and user approval have both gone up.
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Best Practices
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Establish a Steering Committee
•
Ensure participation from across the enterprise
–
–
–
•
•
•
Establish a charter with clear lines of authority and
responsibilities.
Involve the project sponsor as an active chair and facilitator
Spawn implementation committees, working groups, task
forces as needed to investigate issues and options, make
recommendations
–
–
–
–
•
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IT stakeholders
Director-level business heads, business managers
Subject matter experts
Design & Usability reviews
Identity management/authentication
Taxonomy & Content Management
Metadata Design
Meet on a regular (monthly or quarterly) basis
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Distribute Ownership
•
•
•
•
•
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Although some decisions (e.g., technology, categorization approach) should
be made by a central body such as a Steering Committee or Program
Office…
Information systems touch too many stakeholders and lines of business to
centralize all decisions and development.
Get buy-in from across the enterprise (upper management, IT stakeholders,
business managers, end users).
Clarify who owns which policies; ensure they can enforce and audit
compliance.
Reassess ownership at key points.
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Focus on the End User
• Are your decisions benefiting the end user?
• More is not better.
• Balance the needs of sustainability against service to the end
user.
– Don’t make it too difficult to make change
– Agree upon consistent response times
• Talk to your users.
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Employ Active and Passive Analytics
• Active (Survey/Interviews)
– Perform online and in-person interviews
– Provide feedback mechanisms on every screen
– Conduct pre- and post-rollout surveys
• Passive (Usage Monitoring)
– Identify components that are not being used in order to address
improvements
– Alert administrators to empty folders, too many documents, or a
proliferation of other components
– Identify most popular components in order to learn from them
– Identify the terms users are searching for and the folders in which
they are browsing to provide similar content
– Identify inactive users to address their issues
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Zach Wahl
Vice President of Strategic Solutions
Project Performance Corporation
Email: zwahl@ppc.com
Phone: 703.748.7082
Web: www.ppc.com/Pages/KMWorld2011.aspx
Twitter: twitter.com/#!/ZacharyWahl
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