20 Years After Google: In Search of a Better Way to Search

Rafael MoscatelArtificial Intelligence, Ethics, Information Governance, Privacy, Search Engines, , , , ,

From its inception the internet has always been about search…. searching for that answer, that perfect example, that one you love? But search has also changed the way we think about information, about primary sources and really about each other in wildly different ways that aren’t always, well….helpful.

In the wrong data steward’s hands the integrity of our records and information, both in the style and context in which it is delivered, can be easily and unfairly distorted. This has worsened over time and is horrifying when you consider the extent of “deep fakes,” “fake news” and other purposeful misleading propaganda being spread. A trend towards misinformation and bias is clearly what has happened over time with Google’s search results and it’s having disastrous unintended consequences on the pursuit and preservation of knowledge, wisdom and the humanities around the entire world.

With exciting new A.I. tools like Alexa and Siri becoming commonplace, search has entered a second renaissance and results have even more power to shape hearts and minds. Yet nobody, no one monopoly, should be in the business of brokering access to facts or opinions.

We need new tools that deliver intelligent results that protect the privacy of its users and promote resources which enrich our lives, communities and world around us without exploiting our vulnerabilities.

With proper regulation of monopolies like Google there’s going to be a better way to find what you “need” without being subtly persuaded how to believe and incessantly pestered about what you should “want” along the way. In other words, a return to search that offers a wealth of information minus manipulation.

True search results should provide access to knowledge you can rely on for personal, professional and academic growth. A search engine should steer you away from groupthink and encourage critical thinking, not bully you into becoming a “follower.” We need independent thinkers to reclaim their independence as information consumers, as teachers and students, as citizens, as moms, dads, brothers, sisters and yes, even as politicians. After all, the internet has the power to be the great equalizer in spreading knowledge. But that knowledge can only bring light to our present darkness if it can shine through the praetorian ideologues that have begun to guard its boundless prism.

Google was perfect for its time and helped both connect and open the world to itself. Yet now, as our collective tastes become more refined, we realize our search time is equally as valuable as increasingly for-profit algorithms. Rather than wasting another moment sifting through information curated through a corporate or political filter, knowledge seekers should demand to be able to create their own!

We deserve new tools that deliver intelligent results that protect the privacy of its users and promote resources which enrich our lives, communities and world around us without exploiting our vulnerabilities.

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Building the Bridge Between Strategy and Governance Aboard the IT Enterprise – An Interview with Kevin Gray of the City of Burbank

Rafael MoscatelAnalytics, Artificial Intelligence, Information Governance, Information Technology, Internet of Things, Interviews, Professional Development, , , ,

Building a Bridge Between Strategy and Governance Aboard the IT Enterprise – An Interview with Kevin Gray, CIO of the City of Burbank

Eleventh in a series of in-depth interviews with innovators and leaders in the fields of Risk, Compliance and Information Governance across the globe.

Kevin Gray is the Chief Information Officer for the City of Burbank, leading an IT department responsible for administrative and network management, geographic information systems and technical services for more than 1400 city employees across 15 departments. Before assuming this role he served as VP of Global Media and IT for Viacom, one of the world’s premier entertainment companies, overseeing an international team located across six continents. He received his Bachelor of Science from California State University, Long Beach and is a certified Scrum Master and PMP. I spoke with him over lunch this May about aligning governance with business strategy, balancing risks and opportunities in AI and his insights on career growth.

Kevin, you began your career path at Orion Pictures administering Unix systems and then directed data center ops for DreamWorks. How did this early hands-on experience with application design and DB administration prepare you for future IT leadership positions at Viacom and ultimately the CIO role with the City of Burbank?

Well I started out on a service desk actually, really at the entry levels in IT, and I’ve been lucky to have grown up through all aspects of it. I think climbing that ladder one rung at a time definitely helped give me a clear vision to see across all the disciplines of technology.  It enabled me to see the forest through the trees, the big picture, gave me the ability to design operations, develop strategy… and equipped me with a vision to incorporate it all. And now I can more thoughtfully pull together a clear plan for how to run an organization, understand how to innovate, how to drive change through both a specific business unit or an organization. Experience is what best prepared me to lead.

One of your focal points has always been the importance of properly aligning IT governance with an organization’s business strategy. What are some of the practical ways IT teams accomplish this goal and how critical is the relationship building component that accompanies that synchronicity?

I think the most practical way to accomplish this is to focus on the people. Focus on the people developing the strategy and look at how their business is trying to implement it, because the most important thing is to be in alignment with the shared goal, in alignment with the people you’re partnering with. You have to be a true partner with the business. And that has to be the focus, not the technology. The technology is the secondary piece. Technology is what you use to try to find the solution for the business problems that they’re trying to solve. And those business problems don’t always stay the same, they change. They change based on economic conditions, they change based on market conditions, they may change based on who might be occupying the seat that you’re trying to partner with.

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So, you have to stay close and you have to stay connected. That allows you to stay aligned. Then you can figure out the solutions that are going to help solve that business problem. You have to be agile. You have to be able to switch directions. When the business switches direction, you have to be able to switch direction. And I think too many times, IT organizations, they don’t stay connected. They believe that they’re trying to solve this business strategy, that they’re trying to solve the business’ problems. But then the business problems change, the strategies change, and they’re suddenly not connected and eventually they’re heading down the wrong direction for another three to six months, which is a lifetime in technology.

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Harnessing Analytical Insights and Illuminating the Physical Realm of Dark Data – An Interview with Markus Lindelow of Iron Mountain

Rafael MoscatelAnalytics, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Data Governance, GDPR, Giving Back, Information Governance, Interviews, Privacy, Records Retention Policy, , , , , ,

Harnessing Analytical Insights and Illuminating the Physical Realm of Dark Data – An Interview with Markus Lindelow of Iron Mountain

Eighth in a series of in-depth interviews with innovators and leaders in the fields of Risk, Compliance and Information Governance across the globe.

Markus Lindelow leads the IG and Content Classification Practice Group at Iron Mountain, the world’s largest information management company, where he’s been pioneering breakthrough analytic techniques for over a decade. He holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Information Systems from Saint Edwards University and consults across a broad set of industries. I interviewed him in November to discuss his thoughts on the evolution of metadata, content classification, AI, and how organizations are using the new pillars of data science to break down their silos, help customers get lean and discover the hidden value in their big data sets.

Markus, you work with all kinds of companies to help them better understand and address the often incomplete metadata tied to some of their most valuable information assets in the form of historical paper records and materials retained over decades. In many cases, institutional memory has been completely lost and they’re struggling to figure out whether to dispose of these business records, balancing costs of over retention with risks of untimely destruction. How does your team leverage diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics to make sense of what little data they might have to make informed decisions?

Our content classification process focuses on making the best use of the available metadata. This means classifying records with meaningful metadata as well as analyzing the classified inventory in order to create classification rules for records with little or no metadata. We have identified a number of attributes within the data that tend to correlate with classification conclusions. We assess the classified records associated with an attribute to create a profile that may inform a rule to classify the unclassified records sharing that same attribute…

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Book Review: Infonomics – How to Monetize, Manage, and Measure Information As An Asset For Competitive Advantage by Douglas B. Laney

Rafael MoscatelAnalytics, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Book Review, Data Governance, Ethics, Information Governance, Information Technology, Management, Professional Development, , , ,

Are CFO’s finally ready to heed the advice of their Chief Data Officers and begin adding information assets to the balance sheet?

Although the commonly used quote “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” is regularly and erroneously misattributed to Victor Hugo, originating from his account of the French coup d’état of 1851 that brought Napoleon III to power, I feel it’s almost appropriate for Douglas B. Laney’s passionate argument on Infonomics. It’s an idea he’s been meticulously developing and arguing for almost two decades and has at last fully articulated in his latest book published by Taylor & Francis entitled Infonomics: How to Monetize, Manage, and Measure Information As An Asset For Competitive Advantage. Laney previously published his thoughts on Infonomics in Forbes back in 2012.

This brilliantly researched book, supported by industry giant Gartner, is steeped in both a mastery of information technology as well as economics, in particular accounting methodology and complementing business disciplines that range from supply chain economics to compliance frameworks.

Laney, with brevity and unfailing pragmatism, weaves his impressive understanding of the business of information, it’s flow and it’s enormous potential into a convincing pleading that I believe is a must read for not just the aspiring digerati, but any CFO, Chief Data Officer or executive hoping to survive and thrive in the Information Age.

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Turning Collective Wisdom Into Strength - An Interview with Andrea Kalas of the Association of Moving Image Archivists

Turning Collective Wisdom Into Strength – An Interview with Andrea Kalas of the Association of Moving Image Archivists

Rafael MoscatelArchives, Artificial Intelligence, Business Processes, Data Storage and Archiving, Filmmaking, Giving Back, Information Governance, Interviews, Millennials, , , , , , , , ,

Turning Collective Wisdom Into Strength – An Interview with Andrea Kalas of the Association of Moving Image Archivists

Fourth in a series of in-depth interviews with innovators and leaders in the fields of Risk, Compliance and Information Governance across the globe.

Andrea KalasAndrea Kalas is a recent President of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Prior to her current role at Paramount Pictures as SVP of Archives, she led the preservation program at the British Film Institute. I had the opportunity to sit down with her in June to discuss bit loss, digital asset management, artificial intelligence and the benefits that millennials are bringing to the profession.

Andrea, you’ve spoken and taught at length about the challenges of bit loss and how it affects the race to preserve not just America’s rich film history, but that of other countries and cultures.

How does a global team like yours even begin to prioritize its preservation goals as you race against the clock?

Digital preservation has the basic goal of avoiding bit loss, technically. However, the work that really requires technologists and archivists to effectively collaborate involves the treatment of files as valuable records, art or artifacts. This goes against so much of how basic information technology systems work. For example the word “archive” has been used as a term to mean data written off-line and put on removable media on a shelf, never to be touched again. This is a sure path to bit loss. For an archivist this definition is completely counter-productive. It as much about communication and clear technical requirements from archivists as it is building technical solutions.

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GDPR - General Data Protection Requirement - Information Governance Perspectives

Emerging From The Dense, Digital Fog – An Interview with Dr. Ulrich Kampffmeyer

Rafael MoscatelArtificial Intelligence, GDPR, Information Governance, Information Management, Interviews, Privacy, Professional Development, Records Management, SharePoint, , , , , ,

Emerging From The Dense, Digital Fog – An Interview with Dr. Ulrich Kampffmeyer

Third in a series of interviews with leaders in the fields of Risk, Compliance and Information Governance across the globe.

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Dr. Ulrich Kampffmeyer is the Managing Director of Project Consult in Hamburg, Germany and a renowned expert on digital transformations, business intelligence and enterprise content management. I had the opportunity to sit down with him in May and discuss the GDPR, artificial intelligence and social issues emerging from the dense, digital fog we all find ourselves in.

Ulrich, you write and teach extensively about the cultural and social changes in work environments that are a direct result of the emergence of digital transformations. Now that data is at the fingertips of everyone…

What changes should society expect that the business world may have already?

The pace of digital transformation accelerates day by day. Cloud technologies, artificial intelligence, IoT and other developments are happening so fast that there is a danger they’ll get out of control. The mightier AI becomes the larger the danger that it gets uncontrollable.

Consider Soshana Zuboff (one of the first tenured women at Harvard Business School) and her three laws:

  1. Everything that can be automated will be automated.
  2. Everything that can be informated will be informated.
  3. Every digital application that can be used for surveillance and control will be used for surveillance and control.

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