Along with Big Data is the recognition that much of the information to be governed is now beyond an enterprise’s firewall. Residency in the Cloud does not excuse an organization from effectively governing this information. If anything, it makes it even more critical for ensuring things like privacy, access and timeliness remain intact.
The reality is, the cloud is here to stay. The benefits and value that cloud applications and storage bring cannot be ignored. That being said, this existence of information beyond an organization’s traditional perimeter presents special challenges to the governance program.
Use of external sources for information means there is a lack of direct control by the adopting organization and also challenges the visibility into the source. Ensuring the privacy, confidentiality, availability, integrity, and security of the data becomes more difficult. Additionally, there is an added complexity in the harmonization and integration of multiple sources that are potentially semantically inconsistent. All of this impacts the trust in and the reusability of the information, which, for governance, directly impacts one of its critical success factors – ensuring and preserving the trustworthiness and usability of information.
Further complicating the situation is that adopting these solutions no longer requires IT involvement, or even their awareness. This means there is potential for “shadow IT” and significant overlap and redundancy in the overall information architecture. This lack of organizational control furthers the imperative for a robust and business-focused governance program, but the governance model must be able to adjust to this new paradigm and ensure it is a facilitator in the adoption of these solutions – not a barrier.
To learn more about this trend and the other trends impacting healthcare governance, download our recent guide, Healthcare Governance, Trends to Watch.
