Information Governance at the LDS Church
Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 11:49 am
Information Governance Management at the LDS Church Written by Pablo Riboldi Wednesday, 20 February 2008
Less than a year ago I took the position of Information Governance Manager for the LDS Church. As a business analyst with the Physical Facilities Department I was painfully aware of the need for the Church’s information systems to share information better. Information governance is the set of policies, organizations, strategies, and processes to ensure that information is securely shared among authorized users. One of the first actions taken in this effort was to establish a Data Stewards Policy to initiate the organization and processes for appropriate governance.
The second action was to compose a set of general principles to guide further actions. To be effective, principles need to be few in number and of general applicability. Deriving the “right” set of principles is not a trivial matter. Below I share the set of principles I have proposed for information governance, and I invite your feedback, comments, and suggestions.
Information Governance General Principles:
• Avoid data duplication that causes data reconciliation and differences in management reporting.
• Avoid development of duplicate functionality in information systems.
• End-user experience should not be compromised by systems’ efficiency.
• Specific enterprise information is clearly owned and resides in one system of record.
• A system of record manages (add, edit, delete) the information it owns for the needs of all
departments, not just the department that owns the system of record.
• Systems of record provide visibility of their data to other systems as needed and authorized.
Less than a year ago I took the position of Information Governance Manager for the LDS Church. As a business analyst with the Physical Facilities Department I was painfully aware of the need for the Church’s information systems to share information better. Information governance is the set of policies, organizations, strategies, and processes to ensure that information is securely shared among authorized users. One of the first actions taken in this effort was to establish a Data Stewards Policy to initiate the organization and processes for appropriate governance.
The second action was to compose a set of general principles to guide further actions. To be effective, principles need to be few in number and of general applicability. Deriving the “right” set of principles is not a trivial matter. Below I share the set of principles I have proposed for information governance, and I invite your feedback, comments, and suggestions.
Information Governance General Principles:
• Avoid data duplication that causes data reconciliation and differences in management reporting.
• Avoid development of duplicate functionality in information systems.
• End-user experience should not be compromised by systems’ efficiency.
• Specific enterprise information is clearly owned and resides in one system of record.
• A system of record manages (add, edit, delete) the information it owns for the needs of all
departments, not just the department that owns the system of record.
• Systems of record provide visibility of their data to other systems as needed and authorized.