Information Governance: Concepts, Strategies, and Best Practices

CHAPTER 1

The Onslaught of Big Data and the Information Governance Imperative

The value of information in business is rising, and business leaders are more and more viewing the ability to govern, manage, and harvest information as critical to success. Raw data is now being increasingly viewed as an asset that can be leveraged, just like financial or human capital.¹ Some have called this new age of “Big Data” the “industrial revolution of data.”

According to the research group Gartner, Inc., Big Data is defined as “high-volume, high-velocity and high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing for enhanced insight and decision making.”² A practical definition should also include the idea that the amount of data—both structured (in databases) and unstructured (e.g., e-mail, scanned documents) is so massive that it cannot be processed using today's database tools and analytic software techniques.³

In today's information overload era of Big Data—characterized by massive growth in business data volumes and velocity—the ability to distill key insights from enormous amounts of data is a major business differentiator and source of sustainable competitive advantage. In fact, a recent report by the World Economic Forum stated that data is a new asset class and personal data is “the new oil.”⁴ And we are generating more than we can manage effectively with current methods and tools.

The Big Data numbers are overwhelming: Estimates and ...