Information Governance, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 5Strategic Planning and Best Practices for Information Governance

A strategic plan is the process of envisioning your organization's desired future state, developing business objectives that must be accomplished to progress toward it, and then determining the steps and milestones needed to achieve the desired future state. Your information governance (IG) strategic plan should support and be in alignment with the organization's overall strategic plan.

Securing a sponsor at the executive management level is always crucial to projects and programs, and this is especially true of any strategic planning effort. An executive must be on board and supporting the effort in order to garner the resources needed to develop and execute the strategic plan, and that executive must be held accountable for the development and execution of the plan. These axioms apply to the development of an IG strategic plan.

Also, resources are needed—time, human capital, and budget money. The first is a critical element: it is not possible to require managers to take time out of their other duties to participate in a project if there is no executive edict and consistent follow-up, support, and communication. Executive sponsorship is a best practice. And, of course, without an allocated budget, no program can proceed.

The higher your executive sponsor is in the organization, the better.¹ The implementation of an IG program may be driven at a high level by the general counsel (GC), chief risk officer, ...