INFORMATION GOVERNANCE ASSIGNMENT
Security Transport Professionals (STP) Incorporated desires to increase its share of the transportation market for high risk, sensitive, top secret, regulated "goods" by establishing itself as being the premier freight hauler who can rise to the task of moving its customer's product to its destination in the quickest, most efficient, confidential, safe and secure manner possible, while maintaining a comparable cost of moving and storage. This means that it wants to be identified as THE hauler who incurs the smallest amount of damage, destruction, and delays to the customer's product while the product is in STP's care and possession, and who transports the product in a legally defensible manner, exposing its customers the smallest legal exposure possible. STP's objectives include having a system of management and governance of its data that is readily accessible for decision making, secure and exposes the organization to the smallest degree of risk possible. The strategic plan for achieving this organizational objective includes designing, planning, implementing, testing, auditing, evaluating, and continual updating or revising an overall organizational Information Governance program that is aligned and synchronized with the organizations' overall strategic plans, goals and business objectives. The Information Governance program should include key concepts from records management, content management, Information Technology and data governance, information security, data privacy, risk management, litigation readiness, regulatory compliance, long-term digital preservation and business intelligence. To do this, STP recognizes that in order to support the organizational objectives, its Information Governance (IG) goal must be to design and implement a plan/program that provides for a standardized and systematized method of handling information wherein it can efficiently analyze and optimize how information is accessed, controlled, managed, shared, stored, preserved and audited.
During Phase I, you as the project manager have had an opportunity to give some thought to which members of the organization you would want to have on your IG team from those listed in the project description who have expressed an interest in assisting in the creation of the IG program at STP. You have also had an opportunity to give some thought to what you expect might be the greatest security risks that STP may face through your risk analysis and risk profile. You have had an opportunity to research the differing regulations in the different states where STP operates primarily. In Phase II you had an opportunity to consider the types of records STP deals with through your records inventory for a least one area of the organization. You have considered a records retention plan and have identified the types of records that may be periodically tagged for destruction, which should be archived, and which are subject to long term digital preservation. You are now ready to design your first Information Governance Program.
While it should go without stating, information related to each of STP's customers and their products is highly sensitive, and in some cases top secret. You want to make sure that the IG Program that STP implements will allow STP to retain all of the information about its customers, the product transported, and the particular haul that it is required to keep pursuant to federal and state law. You want to insure STP that the proper information will be retained that it might need for purposes of litigation and e-discovery. You will need to consider disaster recovery and business continuity. You don't want STP to keep unnecessary information for extended periods of time, thereby increasing the cost and time involved with processing and retention, and also increasing STP and its customers to litigation risks. Therefore, you will want to give serious consideration to STP's data disposition or disposal plans.
INSTRUCTIONS
You are to prepare an Information Governance Policy/Program for STP. All IG policies or programs are somewhat different and unique to the industry and to the organization. There are a number of sample Information Governance Policy/Program templates and samples on the internet. Attached to the end of this document is a sample Information Governance Policy template that was copied verbatim.
Feel free to browse the internet to get a flavor for what an actual IG Policy/Program might look like. If you desire, use the template attached to the end of this document as an outline for how you might choose to format your IG Policy/Program for STP and what you might want to include in your IG policy/program. It is certainly not a requirement that you use the attached sample as a guideline for formatting your own. You may determine that you have something better! This sample at the end of this document is merely attached as one example of what might be contained in your IG policy/program, and in what format. Browse as much as you want to determine how you want to format your own IG Policy/program, and the types of things you will include. Even if you do decide to use the attached sample, still you are required to customize this sample to meet the distinct characteristics and needs of STP.
Do not misconstrue the sample/example format attached hereto. You must complete the actual content or provide instruction for each section listed, and include your own sections where appropriate. For example, you will see on one portion of the attached example the following:
Roles and Responsibilities
The first major section of most frameworks clearly define key roles and their responsibilities, including:
Text Box: Information Governance Committee Information Governance Team Information Risk Management Information Asset Management Records Manager Line-of-Business Managers Employees.
"Roles and Responsibilities" is merely a category or heading for one portion of the IG policy/program. The sentence that reads, "The first major section of most frameworks clearly define key roles and their responsibilities including:" is nothing more than an instruction from me to you describing the section. Then the 7 lines that follow is just an example of the key players for this particular example. It still needs to have the roles and responsibilities inserted and described in sentence form for each of those 7 positions listed. So you will not include in your IG policy/program my description of what each category is used for. Please remember that I said I want you to use sentence form. Please don't just give me listings like each of the 7 listed in the Roles and Responsibility example above. The IG policy/program that you submit should be so much more than just bullet items with sentences of explanation. You will lose a significant number of points if you decide to give me bulleted items only.
However, please, please, please do not plagiarize by copying another IG policy that you find on the internet (or anywhere else). Remember I will run the IG Policy that you submit through a plagiarism checker that will compare it with others on the web and with those of the other students in the class. Where it finds a match it will give me the source. In addition, it will break down your paper and will tell me what percentage of your entire paper was plagiarized from different sources. If you use anything from an IG policy that you find on the Internet, please give credit to the source so that the plagiarism issue will not come up. If you find a good IG policy/program on the internet, or from any other source, please give credit to the source by listing it as a reference. If you use the sample that is attached hereto, please reference it as well. References should be in the form of endnotes, and not footnotes as footnotes would most likely detract from the IP Policy/Program.
The IG Policy that you develop should be specific to STP and unique to the organization's needs. Where you decide that STP should use cloud computing, mobile devices, and to the extent that you decide that it is appropriate for STP to engage in enterprise social media, state the decisions you have made as those things will be reflected in your IG policy. Explain any decisions or assumptions you have made for STP that were not outlined in the description of the company.
Is an extension for the deadline for submitting phase III and a departure from the deadline given in the syllabus. Make sure to submit the project in WORD format. Use 1 inch top, bottom, left and right margins on each page. Include a cover page that will contain the Course name and number, semester term, your full name, student id, and the title "STP INFORMATION GOVERNANCE POLICY/PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION
PHASE III".
This portion of the semester project is worth 10% of the overall grade. You should submit this assignment using iLearn. Go to the content section where you will see a folder labeled "SEMESTER PROJECT-STP". Select that folder. You will then see selections for submitting Phases I, II and III. Please select Phase III, then and upload the WORD document that you created. This assignment must be submitted no later than 11:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Monday, June 25, 2018. Assignments will not be accepted late. This means that you should not plan to contact me at 11:35 p.m. or 11:59 p.m. and tell me that you thought Phase III was due at midnight, or any time other than 11:35 p.m.
SAMPLE TEMPLATE FOR FORMAT AND CONTENT OF AN INFORMATION GOVERNANCE POLICY
The remainder of this paper was reproduced for educational purposes in its entirety.
A Definition of Scope
The framework should begin by establishing the full extent of the Information Governance program. An example of this could be:
"The Information Governance framework covers all staff that create, store, share and dispose of information. It sets out the procedures for sharing information with stakeholders, partners and suppliers. It concerns the management of all paper and electronic information and its associated systems within the organization, as well as information held outside the organization that affects its regulatory and legal obligations."
Roles and Responsibilities
The first major section of most frameworks clearly define key roles and their responsibilities, including:
Text Box: Information Governance Committee Information Governance Team Information Risk Management Information Asset Management Records Manager Line-of-Business Managers Employees
Information Policies
Information Governance covers a wide range of policies. The framework should set out which corporate policies are relevant to the Information Governance program. These may include:
- Information security policy
- Records management policy
- Retention and disposal schedules
- Archiving policy
- Data privacy policy
- ICT policy
- Information sharing policy
- Remote working policy
Information Procedures
A major part of the Information Governance framework should set out how the organization and its employees work with information. This can be broken into separate sections covering:
- Legal and regulatory compliance
- Creating and receiving information
- Acceptable content types
- Managing the volume of information
- Managing personal information
- Storing and archiving information
- Collaboration and sharing information
- Disposing of information
Working with Third Parties
As more and more information that affects a business is created and stored elsewhere it is essential to establish how the organization operates and shares information with stakeholders, partners and suppliers. The framework should:
- Define the policies for sharing information with third parties
- Define how the organization can manage how third parties handle personal and confidential information
- Define how Information Governance fits within supplier relationships and contractual obligations
- Define measurement and metrics for third party meeting the organization's Information Governance goals
Disaster Recovery, Contingency and Business Continuity
The framework should set out the organization's approach to:
- Reporting information losses
- Reporting information security breaches
- Incident management and escalation
- Back up and disaster recovery
- Business continuity management
Auditing, Measurement and Review
Information Governance is a continuous improvement process so it must be underpinned by a continuous monitoring procedure. The framework can set out the organization's approach to:
- Monitoring information access and use
- Monitoring effectiveness of regulatory compliance
- Monitoring the effectiveness of information security policy and procedure
- Monitoring of ICT and storage infrastructure performance
- Risk assessment and auditing
- Information Governance review
Like many things in Information Governance, there is a balance to be achieved with the Information Governance framework. The more comprehensive the document, the better. However, it shouldn't become so large and unwieldy that it ends up gathering dust on the shelf.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.