One of my greatest frustrations as a governance consultant is clients’ insistence that they’ll worry about preparing their information for system migration “when the time comes.” Until then, everything’s jake, apparently, so why stress about it?
The problem is, when the time finally does come, it’s usually NOW because something suddenly has gone wrong with the system in question. For evidence, I refer you to the recent spate of air traffic control outages Newark Liberty International Airport, which are being attributed to failures in the old infrastructure. Given all that was known about its age and condition, the powers-that-be shoulda, coulda done something before the problem went critical. But they didn’t. They just didn’t.
In governance circles, incidents like these likely won’t threaten the safety of airborne passengers. However, they certainly will curtail the ability of the people we serve to find, work with, leverage, and dispose of their information – in other words, to do their jobs.
Things Break. Deal With It.
My frustration stems from the fact that we KNOW old systems break down and eventually need replacement, and we usually have a decent idea as to when that will be. So why do so many ignore this reality and just let things ride? Seems to me the best time to begin preparing to move to something better is the day you first turn a new system on.
Whether you do it by plan or under duress, your goal is to avoid migrating more information than you have to so; by minimizing the volume of data you’re moving, you’ll reduce the time and cost of the overall process, simplify post-move testing, and enhance quality control. In terms of information governance, this means performing such familiar tasks as eliminating ROT, ensuring retention has actually been applied, finding and eliminating duplicates, etc.
Make a Noise. Grab a Seat at the Table.
Migration typically is an IT responsibility, and absent a loud noise, the information aspect of the task usually focuses on structured rather than unstructured data. To avoid having to retroactively and expensively include the latter, the two sides must be joined at the hip as early as possible in the process.
Who makes noise to this effect, and how/to whom they do it, depends on the vagaries of each organization. But one thing that doesn’t is the fact that migration represents yet another opportunity (along with the likes of AI, privacy, and cross-border data flow) for document and records folk to agitate for a seat at the data-side table. Not to have one is a good way to lament how you shoulda, woulda done something preventative.