I gave a recent presentation with Op Risk and Compliance Magazine on the application of Enterprise 2.0 concepts to manage risk. Most of the audience was non-technical and I doubt many attendees read TechCrunch, but the message around Enterprise 2.0 seemed to resonate quite well. The reason was quite clear – they wanted to better harness their “informal networks”.

The Business Problem

Prior to the meeting we conducted a survey with over a hundred individuals, from the CFO/CRO level to delivery leads.

• Most had made substantial investments in Information Management programs, including a better approach to governance, but still had huge challenges.

• Across virtually every type of risk, respondents relied on phone calls, e-mails and ad-hoc meetings as a major source of risk information.

• Most expected costs to keep going up from long-running Information Management programs; the strong services market for Information Management was causing turnover issues and knowledge was being lost.

• Despite the investment in governance programs, the defined standards and architectures weren’t always applied.

The results were largely as expected but it did help frame a discussion around Enterprise 2.0.

The Relevance of Enterprise 2.0

Most of these financial services organisations thought they were getting a better handle on their information assets and that their governance programs were helping. Feedback, however, stressed the relevance of the “informal network” in solving problems – the emails, hallway discussions and phone calls that place on a daily basis or in a crisis. What the session covered was that both formal Information Management frameworks and informal networks are important – and risk managers should make use of both.

When it comes to bringing the informal network together with a formal approach, technologies and techniques from Enterprise 2.0 are a great fit: collaboration, search, tagging and aggregation are the keys to bridging the gap.

Networked Information Governance

For purposes of the discussion I referred to the approach as “Networked” Information Governance. Networked Information Governance = Information Governance + Enterprise 2.0. The idea for the name came from an excellent article published by Paul Strassman in 2001. At the time of its authoring in 2001, networked business models were continuing to grow in popularity, from the military to the most agile Fortune 2000 organizations. What it pre-dated was the radical advances in collaborative technologies would occur over the next few years. His introduction frames the problem:

“”Governance” is what information management is mostly all about. Information management is the process by which those who set policy guide those who follow policy. Governance concerns power, and applying an understanding of the distribution and sharing of power to the management of information technologies”

Governance may include “centralized” power, but traditional push-down models of architecture and standards only provide part of the solution. Implemented the wrong way, they hamper innovation and agility. We need standards for some stuff, or we can’t be agile or innovative – we’re always fighting fires. With a foundation of standards, we can distribute power and empower a community to be far more productive.

I described the approach by starting with more traditional principles for Information Governance and then focused on the additional areas (listed below) for Enterprise 2.0. I tried to avoid terms like mashups (relevant to aggregation and application of standards) but I did use some more familiar technology terms.

• Collaborative Community. Collaborative technologies can streamline communications to capture content in informal network as well as build the formal.

• Organizing the Informal Network. Build a content model that is easily populated through user-driven categorization, informal collaboration begins to take on more formal structures.

• Aggregation of Ideas. Not all good ideas have to come from the inside. Social Computing techniques provide an easy way to bring linked content together.

• Linking the Informal to Formal. The same principle of applying content categories can be applied to formal governance processes.

• Searching the Knowledge Network. Enterprise Search techniques should be implemented to make this information easily accessible.

• Collaborative Asset Management. The maturity of your business and technology assets should be a known quantity and this information easily shared across the organization.

• Global Standards Bodies. Having an external perspective through a central authority can help to balance competing interests and work to a similar approach.

If you want to see the approach in more detail, you can reference it as part of the Open Methodology Framework.

Governance 2.0

Can this approach be extended beyond Information Governance? I believe it can. Governance techniques can generally benefit from this approach – from a corporate board decisions to managing compliance with environmental regulations. I see some of the benefits of Enterprise 2.0 as enabling agility when we are formal (e.g. long-tail development) and more organised when we are informal (e.g collaboratively developing a solution). When we bring it together (e.g. collaborating on an architecture design standard) the value-add really comes in.

In summary, if you are trying to implement Enterprise 2.0 you may find that your biggest allies will come from some of the places you least expect to find it. Risk and Compliance leaders feel the pain of knowledge loss and transparency issues. Speak to them about their issues and then talk about Enterprise 2.0 and you’ll see some lights go on. Then send them a link to TechCrunch.