Information Management Responsibility?

The management of information is primarily the owner’s responsibility and secondly the responsibility of all other stakeholders that may have a vested interest in the information, or the data owner. In a world where individuals and businesses are becoming engulfed in new data every day; personal ownership needs to take a more pro-active role in its management.

This is not a blog about the ins and outs of the granular policies to use when managing your information, but a KISS (Keep It Simple), the approach to self-responsibility and ownership:

• Your personal interactions on social media networks are normally under the guise of ‘your own views and opinions’ with minimal governance on what, how and when you should communicate. So there is already an assumption that you should be personally held responsible for the tone of voice and acceptability of any consequential actions arising from your content.
• Your business interactions on social media networks are normally controlled via an internal governance policy that provides guidance on how you should engage on social media and what content is acceptable. In this respect your employer/organization must be held responsible for the management of such information, including its capture, storage, security, preservation. The organization should ensure that the delivery of such information is in an appropriate and responsible nature. But that does not mean that the line of responsibility stops there, “you own what you write”.

Remember that in the world of social networks, what happens in Vegas gets around the world before the slot machine has stopped; you provide your information with a level of permission for them to exploit you; 140 characters is restrictive and can be misread to mean something not originally inferred; there is no such thing as privacy! A friend today may [at a click of a button] un-friend/unlike you and turn your interactions into ammunition tomorrow. So it’s not rocket science to realize that only freely disclosable content should be exchanged, and only in times of emotional control, with confidential, personal and company comments held back for face to face interactivity.

Information management should be a dual responsibility that needs to be addressed and followed from the upper most senior levels of management to the front line worker. Organizations must be held accountable, along with their employees, when communicating content. It’s important for organizations to engage with technology and education, and the company is obliged to instil clear guidelines for online communication, but employees should also ask for guidance and leadership rather than pleading ignorance.