Information Nation: Seven Keys to Information Management Compliance, Second Edition

Chapter 16. Use Auditing and Monitoring to Measure IMC

An organization's work is not complete, even after it has drafted policies and has trained employees. Rather, organizations need to continue their commitment to IMC by establishing programs to audit and monitor compliance with the Information Management program.

Information Management Auditing and Monitoring

Auditing in the financial world is, of course, a formal discipline practiced by highly trained auditing specialists. The term audit as used in this book has a more general meaning that includes any practice designed to periodically measure and report on compliance with a set of standards or criteria. In this sense, auditing activities in the Information Management world are often referred to in many other ways, such as assessment, evaluation, review, survey, validation, and so on. Although these terms all have specific, formal meanings in a variety of financial, technical, regulatory, and operational environments, the focus of this section is not on differentiating among these activities but on exploring how their concepts can be used to help organizations increase IMC.

Monitoring is a related, but separate, concept. The goal of monitoring is generally the same as auditing, except that it is performed on an ongoing basis. So, Information Management monitoring is the ongoing measurement and reporting on compliance with a set of standards or criteria. In other words, Information Management auditing and monitoring are both designed ...