A colleague asked me why information governance is more on everyone's mind now, compared to before. From my point of view, there are three reasons for this, but I would like to give some background information first.

When I begin my career as a programmer the mid 80's, I quickly learned the concept of garbage in, garbage out. Fast forward to the early 2000 when I begun using IAF v3, and modelling the information aspect in architecture. We already then talked about quality attributes for information and information ownership, but these topics were not prioritized.

Digitalization is the first main reason for increased need for information governance. With less people, and more integrations between systems, flaws in data quality will have more impact now, than when humans fixed the errors.

The second reason is regulations. More and more regulations are addressing data quality issues, from GDPR to DORA and everything related to cybersecurity.

Third, ever heard of AI? Without data quality, you are lucky if you get garbage out from your newfangled AI-solution, as it could get even worse, fast.

Here is the catch-22, try to do information governance without a proper information architecture? You appoint persons in your organization to have information ownership, without defining what this is. What you get is still garbage in, garbage out.

Disruptive architecture