The scale and speed at which modern enterprises generate and consume information is familiar to all of us. Realizing the full value – and limiting the risk – of this strategic asset means managing it in a way that ensures quality, accessibility, security, and overall usability. Information management is a significant business challenge.
Meeting this challenge rests on two considerations:
- Architecture
- Governance
These are complementary foundational elements for any organization pursuing a mature information management strategy.
Some Definitions and Capabilities
Information Architecture
Information Architects (IAs) of my generation were often introduced to the discipline through the famous Polar Bear book, which remains an excellent resource.
As this book explains, broadly speaking, the goal of information architecture is to help users discover, access, use, and share information across the full spectrum of technical channels and organizational structures: what is often called a semantic layer. In terms of methodology, this means building the structures, such as taxonomy models and related knowledge representations, that describe and organize information assets, and overseeing the implementation of these structures in technical platforms, processes, and workflows.
The work of describing and organizing information creates business value when it is used in conjunction with data management tools and technologies to enable and enrich business capabilities. These capabilities range from information discovery, to defining KPIs and analytics, to content personalization, data integration, and general management of structured and unstructured data throughout its lifecycle. Today this is more true than ever, when AI capabilities that rely on structured and defined inputs are frequently incorporated into enterprise applications and business processes.
Information Governance
The driver for information governance, whether of taxonomies, metadata, structured or unstructured data (content), records, books, academic journals, or any other digital or physical information asset, is to ensure that it’s managed and used in a consistent and controlled way, using standardized and repeatable processes.
Governance should provide transparency into information management processes while managing change in a predictable way. Governance guidelines define review and decision points for creation, publication, access, storage, update, and retirement of enterprise information assets, as well as the roles, processes, and technology environment where these assets reside.
Information governance should be proactive and enable self-service problem solving. Process and workflow automation are important parts of governance and need to be a goal. Manual audits and cleanup are probably necessary at the start of a governance initiative but extensive manual processes aren’t scalable and are unrealistic in a modern enterprise information environment.
This description barely scratches the surface of information governance, which as a discipline is both broad and deep. Relevant standards include ANSI/NISO Z39.19, ISO 25964-1, and ISO 25964-2, that provide guidelines for development and management of controlled vocabularies, taxonomies and thesauruses, while frameworks and certifications such as the DAMA Data Management Body of Knowledge (DAMA-DMBOK) and the ARMA Information Governance Implementation Model (IGIM) are important resources for practitioners.
Two Complementary Disciplines
These distinctions between information architecture and information governance are based on their respective approach to information assets: information architecture describes how to manage them, while governance defines what is controlled, and— importantly—why.
That is, while information architecture tends to have an operational focus, information governance provides strategic and functional oversight.
Both are required for effective information management, and indeed each provides important enabling capabilities for the other. For example, classifying information assets and defining workflows in terms of lifecycle stage, access control, intended use, user engagement, and many other aspects of information management is impossible in the absence of the applied metadata and information models created by information architects.
Similarly, governance provides scope, guardrails, and accountability for information management projects. The policies defined by the governance team, whether they’re based on business goals, tech stack capabilities and limitations, or legal requirements, provide targeted guidance for information architecture.
Together, they create the necessary foundation for information management.
