Here is the fourth video in our five-part series where I asked 30 Information Governance experts the same question, then produced a 5 minute video of their responses. As you watch the series, it is very interesting to see the common threads that weave through the answers, depending on the role and the type of organization the interviewee comes from.
In the third (3 minute) video of our Information Governance video series, we ask 30 IG experts, “What are the biggest benefits of Information Governance?”
Once again, I wanted to think all of my interviewees, who did an amazing job answering these questions under pressure.
This is the second video in our series, “5 Questions about Information Governance in 5 Minutes.” In this video IG experts answer the tricky question, “Who Should Own Information Governance?”
There is more interest in Information Governance than ever before, but there still continues to be a lack of clarity regarding IG fundamentals. To address this, I’ve produced a video series where I ask 30 IG experts the same 5 questions about information governance. Each interviewee had five minutes to answer the five questions, thus the name of the series: 5 Questions about IG in 5 Minutes. The, we edited the answers into as series of short videos. Watching 30 experts answer these questions rapid-fire is pretty compelling and instructive.
Each day this week I will post a new video, and I will be posting the full-length interviews as well. You will be able to find them here and on our YouTube channel.
Here are the 5 questions I asked:
I wanted to thank each one of my interviewees. I really believe the IG community will benefit enormously from your time and insight.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was working on new feature article for Law Technology News about about how making more and more data “easily accessible” is both essential for Big Data to fulfill its promise and also a huge risk to privacy, intellectual property, and so on.
The promise of Big Data is based on a central assumption: that information will be easily, quickly, and cheaply available, on a grand scale. The plumbing of Big Data — the technology infrastructure — is designed to bring internet scale to enterprise data. Some of the surprising insights that data scientists hope to gain from Big Data analytics come from correlating information from disparate sources, in a context that was never imagined when the information was first created — such as correlating the type of computer used to book a trip with how much a traveler is willing to pay for a hotel room. Or using prescription drug history to screen health insurance applicants.
The problem of protecting privacy, intellectual property, and other rights will only grow more complex as our ability to access and process information becomes more sophisticated.
I also write about how these issues came to the forefront in the wake of the shooting tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newton, CT. I also explore emerging technology that allows electronic content to “self-destruct.”
The article has now been published, and you can read it here (free registration required).
I was also interviewed about the article by Monica Bay, Editor-In-Chief of LTN, on Law Technology Now. You can listen to our discussion on the embedded podcast below.
Author: Barclay T. Blair
Early this year I was lucky enough (thanks to a great sponsor) to carve out some significant research and writing time to answer a complicated (and maybe even complex) set of questions: what does unstructured information really cost? How do we answer this question? Which kinds of costs should be included in the answer? Can we use this answer to drive desirable Information Governance behaviors?
I looked at existing models for structured data, studied the emerging Big Data market, talked to clients and experts, and developed some answers to these questions that I think are actually pretty novel. You can download the entire paper here now (at the website of Nuix, the sponsor), and you can also follow along here as I discuss out some of the key ideas and findings over the next few weeks.
A PowerPoint slide (with notes) is available for download here: IG PowerPoint Slide of the Day from Barclay T Blair-10 Factors Driving Unstructured Information Cost. If you do use it, I would appreciate you letting me know how and where.
Unstructured information is ubiquitous. It is typically not the product of a single-purpose business application. It often has no clearly defined owner. It is endlessly duplicated and transmitted across the organization. Determining where and how unstructured information generates cost is difficult.
However, it is possible. Our research shows that there are at least ten key factors that drive the total cost of owning unstructured information. These ten factors identify where organizations typically spend money throughout the lifecycle of managing unstructured information. These factors are listed in Figure 1, along with examples of elements that typically increase cost (“Cost Drivers,” on the left side) and elements that typically reduce costs (“Cost Reducers,” on the right hand side).
[i] Nicholas M. Pace, Laura Zakaras, “Where the Money Goes: Understanding Litigant Expenditures for Producing Electronic Discovery,” RAND Institute for Civil Justice, 2012. Online at,
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2012/RAND_MG1208.pdf
[ii] “A Detailed Guide to Imaging and Workflow ROI,” The Accounts Payable Network, 2010
[iii] For detail on the source of this number, see my blog post here.
Update: Interesting article from NY Mag claiming that SnapChat is, “absolutely blowing up right now” on Wall Street because “the chances of incriminating material ending up in the hands of a boss or a compliance officer – or in a Daily Intelligencer story, for that matter – are low.”
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This weekend I was finishing up my next opinion piece for the fine Law Technology News. My piece is about how making more and more data “easily accessible” is both essential for Big Data to fulfill its promise and also a huge risk to privacy, intellectual property, and so on. Look for that in the next issue.
Part of what inspired me to write about this was the success of Snapchat, a mobile app that lets users “chat” using photographs instead of text. Neat idea, but the twist is that the images automatically disappear after 1-10 seconds (the time is set by the sender). As you would imagine, Snapchat has gained a reputation as a teenage sexting tool, despite some indications otherwise. I set it up to see what all the fuss was about, and cajoled my wife to install it as well. Frankly I would say that any service that automatically deletes any self-portrait I have taken after turning 40 is doing me a huge favor. Anyway, Snapchat was quickly copied by Facebook, with its Poke application, although Poke seems to be less popular than Snapchat to date.
I did some more digging around in this space, and it turns out there are a number of startups focused on so-called self-destructing messages. For example:
The category of “disappearing email” has been around at least since the late 1990s. In that era, a company called ”Disappearing Inc.” got a lot of attention, but was not successful. A similar company called Hushmail from that era is still around, but suffered from some bad press when email that users thought had been “disappeared” was turned over in the course of a lawsuit. In any case, neither company ushered in a new era where email automagically goes away. However, given this new crop of startups, I wonder: were these 90s companies ahead of their time, poorly managed, or just a bad idea?
On the corporate side, I don’t see a large appetite for this kind of technology. I have had this conversation with clients many times, and although they love the idea in concept, they are very worried that using the technology will create the appearance of evil (just as the first thought we naturally have about Snapchat is that is must really be for sexting). Executives in particular feel that the use of the technology creates the impression of having something to hide. Perhaps if email had had this capability from the beginning, the risk would not be there. Corporate culture is conservative by nature, and no company wants to draw attention to itself in this area.
This fear is not without justification. Many general counsels are fearful of deleting any corporate email messages at all, which is why many of the world’s largest and “well-managed” companies have hundreds of terabytes of old email sticking around. Remember that in the world we live in, prosecutors sometimes chastise companies for not keeping all their messages forever because, after all, tape storage is “almost free.” There certainly is a case to be made that spoliation fears are generally overblown, given the number of times spoliation actually leads to a a fine or judgement, but the fear of throwing away the wrong thing is not groundless. Getting rid of junk defensibly requires a logical, justifiable process.
Unless an organization is in a highly classified environment, I think most general counsels and their litigation partners would tremble at the thought of explaining why most of the company used “normal” email but their executives/salespeople/take your pick used “special” email that disappears. It does not pass the smell test. Selective use is problematic.
On top of that, you have users who find operational benefit from having records of their business activities in email. You also have the emerging world of Big Data, where email in aggregate potentially has big value if you get it onto Internet-scale infrastructure and point the right tool at it.
In any case, check out the full piece when it runs in the next issue of Law Technology News.
Author: Barclay T. Blair
