The instances of paradox that exist in ECM are what make working in this space so interesting. For instance, control versus flexibility or information democracy versus security. For this post, I’d like to focus on user freedom (as in WFH) versus policy or governance.
While essential to a secure environment, governance isn’t the most exciting topic for frontline staff, however critical. As many organizations continue at least partial WFH, there will be a heavier reliance on collaboration platforms (Laserfiche), it’s more important than ever to ensure that settings for access, file sharing, and content creation are bespoke for each market, organization, department and even user.
Defining Governance for WFH at Your Organization
Governance is a framework to manage information and align it with mandates, regulations, standards, best practices, and business value. Furthermore, the framework ensures consistency and security. Here are some items and actions to consider when defining governance for your organization:
Securing staff’s digital footprint
Content, collaboration, and knowledge sharing
Client and external partner encounters
Automation, AI, process, and workflows
Risk mitigation, security, meeting compliance mandates, and government regulations
Governance for WFH is the system of decisions and controls that affect the portfolio of tools that comprise the staff’s digital experience. Each of these tools should have governance applied to them from implementation to launch and enterprise growth.
For example, Consider Laserfiche as a digital workspace. The ECM has owners within the organization, typically the records manager and IT. The owners have a lot of power when it comes to implementing the Laserfiche workspace. In this situation, the purpose of governance would be to ensure access rights, sharing permissions, collaboration, workflow rights, retentions, and dispositions (lifecycle), and other components are managed according to company policy even though they are being accessed from the employee’s residence.
Why Do We Have to Follow these Guidelines?
When staff poses the inevitable “why” question. (Why do we need to follow these requirements?) (and they will.) The answer is simple: it's to help users effectively store, manage and retrieve information and data at scale. When governance decisions are made ad-hoc by individual users may seem small at the moment, mistakes and inconsistencies will happen. Without a documented, defensible governance initiative the organization may experience productivity loss, the potential cost of non-compliance, or reputational damage.
Today, manual governance is just not practical. Even less so when considering the speed and velocity that information is created and retrieved. Active, automated management of all aspects of governance, including classification, security, and the final disposition, enables organizations to leverage the benefits of a governed WFH environment.
If you are interested in learning more about WFH governance including key problems that stem from no oversight, who should “own” WFH governance, and some key facets to good governance stay tuned for Part 2.
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