This year’s conference takes place May 4-6th in Chicago and features Information Governance sessions on Privacy, eDiscovery, Data Remediation, emerging technologies, and operational best practices from the industry’s leading experts, along with the experiences of knowledgeable practitioners.
Using Information Governance with a Privacy Compliance Plan as the Fulcrum for Data Privacy and Compliance – Monday, May 4, 2020⋅2:10 – 3:00pm
Tackling data privacy and maintaining consumer trust is harder than ever, especially with the sheer amount of information you need to manage and with constantly evolving privacy laws (CCPA, GDPR, etc) moving the goalposts. The usual checkbox compliance, ad-hoc governance, and reactive information security policies will fail, if they haven’t already, and create too much organizational risk. To achieve a state of consistent compliance and minimize corporate risk you must provide three things to your business: transparent governance, frictionless security, and continuous validation. To provide these things, you must build a strong information governance framework and privacy compliance plan to succeed.
Meeting Evolving Business Needs – A Conversation Between RIM Educators and Thought Leaders – Tuesday, May 5, 2020⋅11:45am – 12:35pm
This special, two-part panel discussion facilitated by the ICRM will compare current academic curricula with the existing ICRM exam to identify gaps and areas of improvements for both academia and the ICRM. University Professors will discuss their programs and IG industry leaders will add perspective from the business world. There will be ample time for members of the audience to share their thoughts as well. It is time to close any gaps between what is taught at the university level and what is needed in the world of business. More effective preparation of the next generation of IG professionals will benefit all organizations that depend on these practitioners to address the business opportunities and challenges of the future and it will provide more fulfilling careers for those emerging from school into the world of business.
GDPR – Two Years On -Monday, May 4, 2020⋅12:50 – 1:40pm
The GDPR will celebrate its second anniversary on 25 May 2020 – a good time for US companies impacted by this regulation to understand what they should expect in the coming months. In this presentation, Legal professionals working in Europe will discuss how the GDPR has been enforced so far in Europe, what the regulators’ future direction might be, and the key areas US organizations will need to focus on in the coming months. Is there a higher risk of enforcement on the horizon? What is the level of privacy awareness among Internet users, consumers and individuals in Europe? Should US organizations that collect and process personal data of EU data subjects be worried about these regulatory trends?
ICRM will not only conduct their spring Board and Business meetings at the MER Conference next May in Chicago, but will also facilitate a panel discussion “Meeting Evolving Business Needs: A Conversation Between RIM Educators and Thought Leaders.”
The panel of experts include: John Isaza, Esq, FAI, Rafael Moscatel, CRM, IGP, CIPM, and Wendy McLain, MLIS, CRM. The panel of Academic Partners include: Patricia Franks, Ph.D, CRM, CA, IGP – San Jose State University; Gregory S. Hunter, Ph.D, CA, CRM, FSAA – Long Island University, Palmer School of Library and Information Science, and Tao Jin, Ph.D – Louisiana State University, School of Library and Information Science.
The desired outcome is to expand and nurture an ongoing and productive dialogue between our profession and academic institutions to ensure graduates are well prepared to fill current and future positions in key areas of Records and Information Management (RIM) and Information Governance (IG). If interested in joining us at the MER Conference – go to their website and register for conference. https://www.merconference.com/
Compliance & Privacy Partners provides smart and affordable privacy compliance, data governance and risk-management solutions designed to help organizations build privacy programs, assess, manage and remediate risks and demonstrate defensible compliance. We offer and support a variety of data privacy management platforms which include data subject fulfillment workflows, records and PI inventory management, vendor assessment and policy adherence tools, privacy impact assessments, file analysis projects and records retention enforcement.
A Records Retention Schedule is a TOOL that EMPOWERS organizations to GOVERN and DEFENSIBLY DISPOSE of their information.
Records retention is first and foremost about complying with laws and regulations. However, a retention schedule, when properly developed and utilized, is not simply a tool that tells you how long you must keep (or when to destroy) your records, it is a blueprint that provides powerful insight into the information lifecycle and knowledge management capabilities of your company as a whole. It saves you money on storage and helps shape the way you curate your information enterprise-wide.
Records retention is first and foremost about complying with laws and regulations. However, a retention schedule, when properly developed and utilized, is not simply a tool that tells you how long you must keep (or when to destroy) your records, it is a blueprint that provides powerful insight into the information lifecycle and knowledge management capabilities of your company as a whole. It saves you money on storage and helps shape the way you curate your information enterprise-wide.
OUR RETENTION SCHEDULES:
Serve as a primary tool for ensuring records compliance with federal, state, local laws, regulations and business requirements
Identify business continuity records
Document all records categories, records formats, systems of record, retention requirements and data classifications
Can be updated automatically and integrate with IT infrastructure
Reach out to us today to schedule a free consultation at 323-413-7432
By Rafael Moscatel, Certified Information Privacy Manager (CIPM)
HEY BOSS, LOOKS LIKE PRIVACY IS KIND OF A BIG DEAL NOW
IAPP’s Privacy.Security.Risk. Conference 2019took place in Las Vegas over four days at the end of September and was attended by more than 2000 attendees hailing from all over the United States as well as a number of countries. The Fortune 500 was well represented but I also met a number of other astute organizations and took a tour of the industry’s big vendors on the showroom floor. Although I live tweeted the event I’d been waiting to share my complete thoughts until after I passed my CIPM exam, which I did just a couple days ago. More on that later…
THE FIELD OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT CONFERENCES GROWS MORE CROWDED
First, as a Certified Records Manager (CRM) and Information Governance Professional (IGP), I’ve been to and spoke at my share of conferences touching on best practices for information management, privacy, security and content. What made this one different? Well, besides how well the conference was organized and the venue, The Cosmopolitan, almost all of the workshops were just first rate, chalk full of real take home targeted content and timely. The vast majority of the presenters were seasoned and even the first-timers made the grade. Here we are on the heels of one of the biggest new privacy laws, the California Consumer Privacy Act, and these sessions were speaking directly to its attendees on how to take specific action and plan for additional state directives. The education aspect and sales piece blended well, with technology complementing best practices and not the other way around. And the conference also left me with a lot of questions…
DO WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN?
I didn’t attend the training sessions on the first two days but made it to the opening keynote by Former Chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler who gave the audience a 30,000 foot view and shared thoughts from his new book, From Gutenberg to Google. A great way to set the tone for the conference and then it was followed up by Janelle Shane who focused on rudimentary examples of AI but didn’t really connect her topic that well to Privacy. Nonetheless, it was an interesting takeaway. However, my favorite keynote came in the form of a play by Sharyn Rothstein and directed by Seema Sueko entitled The Right To Be Forgotten. The play examined a concept that we find in Europe but which still hasn’t taken hold in the States. It follows the impact of a young man’s juvenile mistakes and how they follow him around as he gets older, impacting his reputation and his life.
IS THERE A PLACE FOR DIGITAL ETHICS?
I know a number of people who have been personally affected by the internet, both by their own doing and also unfairly, and so this was a terrific way of introducing these challenges to the audience. The problem was that the rest of the conference didn’t really touch on this topic because it was more focused on CCPA and the corporate aspects of privacy program implementation. That’s fine but it left me wondering if in the United States we’re really where we need to be on the privacy front. We seem to only be focused on the issue from a data protection standpoint rather than an ethical one, whereas GDPR and other parts of the world take a more holistic view. Yes, we have HIPAA and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) but it feels like many of our laws are still really about breaches and liability and not about the value of privacy.
The conundrum seems to be that while we’re moving, as industries, toward a business culture of privacy, our culture as a whole is moving in the opposite direction, away from arms length communication and behavior and towards oversharing and a lack of discrepancy. How do these two worlds exist? We know that hackers are now using personal information voluntarily shared with the world to design more sophisticated phishing attacks and deep fakes. We know that thieves use location and vacation information shared through social media to know when you’re home and plan robberies. And despite all of these controls supposedly put in place around the world, we continue to give more of our personal information away which ends up being held as ransome against our companies. Yes, we know we have to share this information to enjoy convenience and in many cases now, to simply survive and get daily errands completed, but it still feels like digital sisyphus. In the age of the personal brand, are there even any private people around anymore? What good is all of this data protection if society as a whole has given up on the ethics of privacy? Besides the play at the conference and some of the discussions around children’s privacy, I didn’t see much of a discussion here, but perhaps it wasn’t the venue. I recently had a discussion with noted Data Privacy Professor Anita Allen, who wrote the first casebook on privacy law, on these ethical aspects of privacy that will soon be available in my book, Tomorrow’s Jobs Today.
THE RISE OF THE MACHINES
So, full disclosure, I work with a few vendors in the privacy space but my thoughts on privacy vendors are not influenced by those relationships. I saw some amazing products at P.S.C.19. The products seem to be maturing and there is a lot of venture funding going into developing large enterprise scale platforms that do an A to Z job in addressing GDPR and CCPA. There are a couple big players in the business and the industry should be grateful for their sponsorship of conferences like this and generally moving the ball forward in terms of conversations around privacy.
What I’m seeing is a lot of enterprise product that is designed specifically for large organizations and a lot of file analysis, enterprise architecture and other similar companies trying to adapt their solutions to solve the problem. The problem is that the problem is constantly evolving and despite a pretty clear prescription in the CCPA legislation, I just don’t think one size fits all. Especially if you’re looking at a capital investment to check a compliance box that might be covered in a more strategic manner. Let me explain…
I had the pleasure of sitting with a team of folks from a major multinational and a peer and I questioned them about their approach to CCPA. It was pretty impressive. They had half a dozen folks attending the conference from a number of their offices. They had hired an industry leader to implement their program. So lots of investment, lots of buy in and it was proportional because their size makes them a natural target for a regulator. One of the more amusing partners in the group casually replied to me after I asked if they were ready by saying, “Yeah, but I’m going to be really pissed if we did all this work and don’t even get one request!” That’s of course what a lot of organizations realized following the GDPR where the flood of data subject requests turned out to be a trickle. So, despite their aversion to risk and likely thorough, appropriate strategy, I still wonder it it’s right for everybody. What about the companies with a smaller footprint and much smaller budget? Does it make sense to have an omnibus-like enterprise product, with dozens of API’s and infrastructure demands take over a section of your IT department?
WHAT ABOUT STRATEGY?
Here’s the truth about privacy programs and tools. There’s no silver bullet. Dumping a ton of money into an existing IT or Records Management program or hiring a team of half a dozen twenty-six year old MBA’s from one of the big four to turn your enterprise upside down (yes I’ve seen that) is not even close to a smart information governance strategy. Unfortunately this is the first time many organizations have had to take a close look at their information and records management programs. In many cases, especially with regulated industries, information management has played a role in meeting regulatory and audit demands but it wasn’t necessarily center stage the way it is now. Many companies have a retention schedule or policy but were probably over-retaining a lot of their data and not taking action on some of the other aspects of it like data classification until the privacy movement came along.
Data Protection Impact Assessment with CAPP using LogicGate
Privacy-centric records management is basically the ideal Information Governance project or initiative. That’s because to accomplish privacy goals, companies need to not simply revise policies, they need to holistically understand how those policies work with other areas of their business like data security and records management. Fortunately, a lot of the groundwork has already been in place at many organizations, specifically in Finance and Health, in order to integrate a privacy-centric framework. If it has been performed you should also complement it with a DPIA or Privacy Impact Assessment.
That said, how do you get the most value of the technology you implement? I think you do that by having the types of conversations that allow the best minds in your organization to become stakeIholders in the ultimate solution. Before you buy product, you need to survey your landscape. It may be that you need a privacy program and privacy protections for your consumers, employees and vendors but your data subject requests are not so cumbersome that you require an overhaul of your inventory and integrations.
Can you use an Enterprise Architecture and data mapping tool in concert with a separate data subject request tools instead of automating everything? Maybe. Consider the investment and time that might go into continuously monitoring a complicated, heavily API dependent and seldom-used privacy tool. Might that effort be better put into maintaining an EA tool that not only supports the mapping requirements of data privacy legislation but also supports other areas of the IT business? Don’t we want our organizations to be agile and be able to swap-in and swap-out tools as needed? Do we really want to tie an entire business process to one solution? Haven’t we learned anything from our legacy mainframe days? Remember how hard it was, and is, to untangle ourselves from those.
Mapping Data for GDPR with CAPP in Ardoq
I’m not saying that an enterprise-wide product isn’t right for large organizations with a lot of risk and endpoint exposure. I just believe that companies need to consider the process as a whole and take their time building these programs. Although California may serve as the baseline, we still don’t know what the rest of the States will do or what the future brings.
BEING A NEWLY MINTED CIPM
I can’t comment on the substance of the exam as I’m prohibited to by the agreement I signed. What I can say is that like most designations the value I find is not necessarily in the certification as much as the legwork and study necessary to achieve it. The reward is in the knowledge you acquire along the way, not just the medal you get at the finish line. If you check out the publicly available study materials and Body of Knowledge (BOK) available on the IAPP site you’ll see that it looks very much like the protocol of other information management organizations.
My belief though is that this BOK is evolved precisely because it’s privacy-centric. It covers many areas familiar to IG and Data Privacy disciplines but it is much more a holistic model and prescription than I’ve ever seen. It’s one of the reasons I’m so impressed with the IAPP.
THE RACE JOURNEY BEGINS
I came back from meeting with data privacy officials and business people in Brussels in 2018 knowing that Privacy was going to change the world. It’s one of the reasons I decided to engage more fully in it professionally. I’ll be spending more time talking about my journey towards privacy and speaking about the CCPA and related issues over the coming months and in my new book which should be available early next year. The concept of privacy is not just important for data protection and to check a compliance box, it’s important because it affects the lives of our colleagues, our friends, our children, our parents and pretty much everything around us. We need to not only protect our data but we need to value it and teach others to value theirs and that’s what I’m dedicated to.
I’m available for consulting opportunities and interviews and would love to discuss your corporate challenges. Feel free to contact me at rafael@capp-llc.com to schedule a free two-hour workshop or just give me a buzz at 323-413-7432.
LEVERAGING A GDPR COMPLIANCE INVESTMENT FOR CCPA / PRIVACY BY DESIGN WORKSHOP
Part I – Join European attorneys and privacy compliance experts from Brussels based law firm Ethikos to learn how to leverage GDPR compliance investments for California’s new Consumer Privacy Act. In this presentation they’ll review key data protection concepts and privacy by design strategies already in place across the EU and explain how they’re now spreading throughout the United States. Find out what you need to know about the rules of transferring data and records internationally, PII records retention requirements, rules for managing content on customer facing websites and the impact of these new records management guidelines in contract negotiations.
SELECT THE LINK BELOW TO VIEW THE WHOLE PRESENTATION.
Part II – Meet solutions engineers from Active Navigation who will show you real world examples of how state of the art privacy software helps apply concepts and rules from GDPR and CCPA directly into an information lifecycle program. Learn about machine learning classification, consent validation, uncovering dark data and many more intricacies of implementing a privacy framework as part of your Information Governance roadmap.
Presenters
Miguel Mairlot, Ethikos Law Firm, Brussels
Miguel Mairlot is a trusted compliance expert, with significant breadth of experience across Europe. He provides clients with advice and support on all aspects of their compliance program. His areas of expertise include Asset Management, Wealth and Insurance businesses to cover cross-border regulatory issues, risk management, contractual documentation and product development, advising and influencing senior stakeholders at executive committee level, enabling them to meet their responsibilities across a range of group policies and local requirements, including MiFID II, GDPR, AML, ABC and Sanctions. Before Ethikos, Miguel has worked for prestigious international law firms and financial institutions as Head of Compliance. Miguel speaks English, French, Dutch and is a Certified Compliance Officer (Febelfin Academy) since 2013 and a Data Protection Officer. He has written and spoken widely on compliance and financial law topics and teaches at the Cooremans Institute. He also serves on the Editorial Board of “la Revue de Droit Bancaire et Financier”.
For almost 65 years, ARMA International has provided an exceptional level of educational value, professional resources and guidance to members of the information management field and business community. Those efforts have aided organizations in recognizing the importance of RIM/IG practitioners’ unique skillsets and helped incorporate them into their IT and governance programs. Indeed, both public and private entities benefit enormously from the mission of this organization, which much like its subject matter, has swiftly transformed to meet evolving civic and corporate demands. This rich history and dedication to its members, the business community and the public is exactly what I’d like to see continue in the coming decade. But my hope would also be for all of our membership, from fellows on down, to more enthusiastically apply the insight, lessons and strategies they’ve acquired over their careers to help ARMA in both achieving its long-term strategic plans and in exceeding its annual goals.
ARMA can lead the way by developing and fostering cutting edge information strategies that sit on the peaks of this new horizon and by driving the conversations that illuminate the valleys in between.
For the last twenty years I’ve held prominent leadership roles at both Fortune 500 companies and revered legal firms including Farmers Insurance, Paramount Pictures, Relativity Media and Kilpatrick Townsend. My work history has taken me from the trenches of service bureaus to the hot seat of penthouse boardrooms. Along the path I’ve attained a set of credentials beginning with a CRM from the Institute of Certified Records Managers in 2013, followed by an IGP from ARMA International in 2014. In June of 2016 ARMA International selected me for its Member Profile and in 2017 my team’s efforts at Farmers Insurance earned us ARMA’s coveted Excellence for an Organization Award. Because of all this I am eternally grateful for the opportunities which ARMA has provided along my career path. I’ve also been affiliated with the local ARMA-GLA chapter for the better part of the last decade and had the chance to see how powerful and influential a local chapter can be in bringing education and awareness to members of the organization as a whole. Those chapters need our resilient support and their leaders deserve most of the credit for keeping ARMA together all these years. They are the pillars of this intellectual edifice.
The next few years will see organizations in all industries balancing a world ripe with business opportunities with an evolving universe of risk and regulations. Technology, processes, people and the associations they subscribe to are being forced to adapt to this dynamic new digital landscape in both their personal and professional lives. ARMA can lead the way by developing and fostering cutting edge information strategies that sit on the peaks of this new horizon and by driving the conversations that illuminate the valleys in between.
As we dive into the second decade of the 21st century, I want ARMA to emerge as a defining voice in the global digital disruption and transformation discussion. By the same token, the professional development and success of ARMA’s members is central to that voice being heard loud and clear. The imminent need for effective information governance throughout the software and document lifecycle will likely broaden ARMA’s appeal to groups, professionals and verticals once unfamiliar with its offerings. In continuing to partner with and perhaps exploring mergers or acquisitions of like-minded organizations and businesses, ARMA can enhance its niche, enrich the knowledge offering and bolster its network.
We’re excited to share that pre-registration for the ARMA Conference 2019 opened January 1st as our final countdown announcement! This is the lowest price available and will only be offered until full registration opens. #getitnow#savenowhttps://t.co/3y9RSg9vKSpic.twitter.com/hmwutZHJ55
With the right choices, ARMA is poised to stand as a premier educational and professional service offering for this brave new world, in part by having established itself as the knowledge and resource mecca for Information Governance standards, but equally as a promoter and champion of its members, helping them connect to tangible digital transformation solutions. This means enabling and encouraging our colleagues to rise to the challenges that will shape and define the newest careers in the Information Age.
ARMA should also find new ways to play an instrumental role in highlighting and refining best practices and approaches around not just Enterprise Content Management but Big Data, Blockchain, AI, Privacy, the Internet of Things and Quantum Computing. It must pursue unique engagements with new corporate sponsors who are at the forefront of much of the change and innovation we’re witnessing. I would hope ARMA would want to have a valued and notable sponsorship level presence at the major technology conferences in the coming years including BoxWorks and BlackHat which are hungry for our narrative and talent. ARMA must strive to remain platform agnostic but must also accept the realities of dominant technologies and embrace their significance.
The association should work closely with the legal, regulatory and ethical bodies and communities that study the impact of digital transformations on businesses as well as the individual in society. This need is evidenced by the increase in privacy regulations and laws recently passed in the EU and in the United States. Building on these relationships will lend credibility to our certifications and designations. That credibility should in turn be used by ARMA leaders and members to participate in media commentary on newsworthy information management events and issues. ARMA should strive to have those perspectives sourced by popular media and journalists alike, thus bringing further recognition to the organization and marketing its relevance. ARMA should act to elevate its experienced speakers as well as new disruptive voices. Our expertise is newsworthy and needs to be heard!
The next few years really are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to seize on this demand for Information Governance solutions and tap the potential of the professional community that supports it. My hope is that community will be the people that love and celebrate ARMA.
Rafael Moscatel, CRM, IGP, is the Managing Director of Compliance and Privacy Partners, LLC. Reach him at 323-413-7432, follow him on Twitter at @rafael_moscatel or visit http://www.capp-llc.com
I’ve attended and spoken at many different “information management” conferences over the years and each has their strengths and weaknesses. But I’m especially excited to speak at DSF ’19 this year, sponsored by companies like OpenText, Quadient, Adobe, PitneyBowes and Doculabs. Why am I so thrilled? Besides the fact that I get to share my thoughts and experiences for the first time representing Compliance & Privacy Partners, this conference is practitioner driven, with a stellar board of advisors that has spent time with its presenters, making sure the content fits the program tracks AND elevates the conversation.
At the very heart of all the buzz surrounding “big data and artificial intelligence (AI) lives a universal truth- Information is the critical asset of every organization. Information flows through people and applications at such a rapid pace that it demands effective management. Enterprises are flying blind if they don’t have an information management strategy. It is impossible to understand customer needs and improve their experiences without the right information feeding decision making systems. Without proper management of info, employee engagement is doomed. The bottom line is that effective information management will dictate critical decisions for both internal and external facing processes that bring the intersection of employees and customers into context. –David Mario Smith in the latest Document Strategy Magazine
How to build and automate your Information Governance strategy using the right policies, technology, and stakeholders
How to recognize the right collaboration opportunities and strategically partner on the projects most likely to support and advance your agenda
What approaches to take when introducing your plans to senior leadership and how to effectively manage the optics around your contributions to your company’s bottom line
Tickets may be available if you act now but the event is quickly selling out. You can learn more here.
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.
My Mother is 86 and doesn’t have a LinkedIn profile. But if she ever did, her headline would read something like… “Former ingenue, entrepreneur, dreamer, and the rest is none of your damn business, honey.” But to those who’ve had the privilege to know her over the decades her mantra has always been, quite simply, to treat everybody with dignity!
Here are 3 timeless business lessons she’s taught me to go along with that mantra.
3. The worst “they” can say is “no.” – Opportunities were not exactly flowing in depression-era Los Angeles, but that didn’t stop one young lady from putting herself out there. She helped my father through chiropractic school by working long hours as a Hollywood extra throughout the 50’s and 60’s. Though never quite achieving stardom she knocked on enough doors to get a lot of work, save some seed money and establish relationships that would eventually transform her life. Mom leveraged her new, tough shell to find opportunities, sell her strengths and laugh off rejection. “It’s no big deal,” she constantly told me as a kid. At the end of the day you should never be afraid to ask for what you want because the absolute worst “they” can say is no. And you still get to keep your dignity.
2. Get everything in writing. – Unurprisingly, Mom had to learn this lesson like most of us… the hard way. This was the mid-century after all and commonplace to make agreements on a handshake. But it only took a few rotten deals for her to realize that keeping good records was key to helping a business stay on track and prospering. Putting it in writing lets the other person know that you need to be, and you will be, treated with dignity.
1. Don’t burn your bridges. – The keyword in the old adage that you can’t make a lot of money without making a few enemies is few. Just as one door opens and another closes, Mom never wanted to find herself in a new room with an old enemy. By treating everybody with dignity she managed to avoid burning many bridges. And for every bridge she burned, she’s probably built a thousand more. When a job or a deal doesn’t go your way, take the high road and don’t make it personal. You never know what the future brings or who might be bringing it.
Mom’s success, not just in business, but among the people she calls colleagues, friends and family is based on dignity. And while there were many times in her life where she was unfairly treated, put at a disadvantage and rejected, she never forgot that. I guess that’s why I never had much of a problem following the 5th Commandment. Anybody remember that one?
I can’t comment on the substance of the exam as I’m prohibited to by the agreement I signed. What I can say is that like most designations the value I find is not necessarily in the certification as much as the legwork and study necessary to achieve it. The reward is in the knowledge you acquire along the way, not just the medal you get at the finish line. If you check out the publicly available study materials and Body of Knowledge (BOK) available on the IAPP site you’ll see that it looks very much like the protocol of other information management organizations.
