Governance News & Articles

Armed with new ideas and inspired by great conversations, we bid adieu to the JBoye Philadelphia 2010 conference, where governance was a hot topic this year.

There was a lot of talk about planting web governance seeds to grow beautiful governance flowers as it pertains to future-proof intranets, governance in social media and ways to exercise it most efficiently. According to some, governance is just like sex.

The growing use of social networks has received a considerable amount of attention this week from companies looking to mitigate the risk associated with the information that appears in them. There are also further moves in Washington to protect personal information.

With the introduction of Rights Management Services (RMS) for its ECM Suite, Open Text (news, site) has added another layer of security to information that may be secure in a repository, but once out of the repository risks being sent to, and used by, people or companies that have no business with that information in the first place.

There is a new buzzword in the business world, or rather buzz abbreviation. GRC -- or governance, risk management and compliance -- has invaded the language of consultants (including the major accounting firms), analysts such as Gartner and Forrester Research, and software vendors. Increasingly, it is an abbreviation used in the executive suite and boardroom. Unfortunately, there is no single, commonly accepted definition of GRC.

When the CEO of The Human Factor, Holly Green, asks her audience if best practices are their worst enemy, she says she always gets the same reaction: "They look at me like I'm nuts!" And so perhaps the title of this article brought you here to find out if CMSWire had finally fallen off its rocker. On the contrary, we're intrigued by the number of people that agree with Green's notion. 

Could it be true? A social report from NetProspex says so, and Microsoft's Facebook-friendly Docs.com announcement certainly serves to buttress that notion.  

There have been a number of research papers and studies published this week covering GRC, not least of which is one that pinpoints how Federal agencies are looking at the cloud. Document Management systems may also be loosing ground to enterprise content compliance systems.

Governance and social media are at the forefront of most discussions these days. Companies are either actively searching for viable solutions or choosing to ignore social media altogether. Choosing to be proactive about managing and archiving social media communications will help most companies in the long run, just as implementing eDiscovery strategies before regulatory disasters ensue has proven successful.

Following IBM’s release of new tax compliance software, Autonomy has licensed its IDOL technology to the IRS to keep track of companies’ tax liabilities. While it might be difficult to secure Federal IT contracts now, it could be about to get a lot harder.

Companies are regularly dealing with social media and how enforcing policies earlier on can help mitigate risk. Perhaps even more daunting for companies is the stack of information needing to be archived and managed. This week we share insights about each.

In a recent survey on top providers of Early Case Assessment (ECA) services, Digital Reef (news, site) did not fair all that well. But now, with the release of a new ECA Application, their position on the list of favorites may just change.

Enterprise Content Governance (ECoG) provider Vamosa (news, site) has extended its existing partnership with SchemaLogic (news, site), the makers of MetaPoint metadata management software.

As part of this deal, Vamosa gets to resell and support Schemalogic’s MetaPoint -- software integrated with MS Office and MS SharePoint -- in Europe, extending the breadth of its own ECoG suite of products.

PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance standards protect personal information and ensure security when transactions are processed using a payment card. Thanks to ClearPoint Metrics new PCI compliance management solution, organizations can manage PCI compliance risk more effectively, and reduce the cost of auditing and reporting.

The new metrics-based PCI assessment application will be delivered as Software-as-a-Service (Saas) on the Amazon cloud.

This week in GRC focuses on the many challenges 2010 poses for companies, in regards to spending, compliance and risk management.

The Gilbane (news, site) San Fransisco conference is a few months away, but things are already starting to take shape. Depending on your area of interest -- web content management, enterprise content management, internet, intranet -- there will be something new for you to learn.

The pre-conference workshops have just been announced, here's a look:

• Insider's Guide to Selecting WCM, Collaboration, and Social Software: Join Tony Byrne of CMS Watch to get a better understanding of the converging marketplace, who the key players are and how to traverse the roadmap to making the right technology/vendor decision for your needs.
• Learn to Develop an Actionable Intranet Strategy: Scott Liewehr, a Gilbane senior analyst, will take you through the steps required to build an actionable intranet strategy
• Managing Smart Content: How to Deploy XML Technologies across Your Organization: In this workshop, Gilbane senior consultant Dale Waldt and other members of the Gilbane practice on XML technologies will talk about their XML experiences and provide practical usage strategies.
• A Methodology for Web Governance: Christine Pierpoint of WelchmanPierpoint, will guide you through the component of a Web governance lifecycle, take a look at the steps to create a Web governance framework and discuss best practices and model.

You can also take a closer look at the conference schedule which is broken down into tracks for Colleagues and Collaboration, Content Publishing, Customers and Engagement, and Content Technology.

The Gilbane San Francisco conference takes place May 18-20, 2010 at the West Market Street Hotel in San Francisco. Registration is open and every Conference Plus Package comes with a free Kindle.