Thinking about search and information governance

I was fortunate last week to be the keynote speaker at the Document@Work event in Brussels and the Hartman Event in Utrecht.  Totals and highlights for the Document@Work event were about 250 attendees and 16 exhibitors; for the Hartman event (more of a symposium), 100 attendees and 20+ exhibitors. Both events reaffirmed that the ECM/E20 community is alive and well in the Benelux region. 

Martin White raised some interesting points on search and information strategy at the HartmanEvent that continue to rumble around in my mind.  

One of the issues that bedevils organizations trying to develop an information strategy (see AIIM's free e-book) is that these exercises typically become exercises in detail rather than strategy and in technology thinking rather than business thinking.  

Martin made the point that the best strategy and governance documents are not necessarily the longest, in fact, just the opposite if they are well crafted.  His example of the Magna Carta -- still used nearly 800 years after it was written as the basis for court decisions in both the UK and the US -- is perhaps the best example.

A strategy should not be a 100 page document that sits on the shelf and gathers dust.  Martin made the case that we would be better off thinking about information charters rather than strategies.  Charters that would be designed to answer these kinds of questions:

Can the employees in our organization...

1. Find the internal and external information they need to...
2. 1. make effective business decisions that reduce organization risk;
   2. enhance the achievement of strategic and organizational objectives; and
   3. enable them to develop their careers
3. Trust and rely on the information they find to be the best and most current available;
4. Easily understand how and where to publish information so that it can be found by other employees at some point in the future; and
5. Easily take advantage of the skills and knowledge of others in the organization.

This all seems to me to be a very concise way of defining information strategy in a way that the business people and average employee can understand -- as opposed to something that only the high gods and goddesses of IT can appreciate.

Thoughts? Any good examples out there?

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You might also find useful...

1. AIIM's new e-book.
2. AIIM training courses.