It's most important role: ensuring information integrity.

AuthorCunningham, Patrick
PositionCover story

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

As workers have gained access to more powerful technology, become savvy and independent in using it, and begun interfacing with external services, IT involvement with processing and managing the information being created has significantly decreased. But, with electronically stored information under intense scrutiny by courts and regulators, IT must now focus on ensuring the organization's ability to produce records and information that are authentic and reliable.

About 20 years ago, the fundamental relationship between information technology (IT) and the end user shifted irrevocably. The personal computer became a part of moot office workers' lives, and the ability of the end user to customize and personalize their computing experience began.

Prior to the early 1990s, the personal computer, as a novelty to IT, did not have an impact on strategy or operations. IT guarded the big computer systems, and end users settled for masses of green bar reports in order to consume information. The data was protected behind locked doors. Computer programs were changed carefully and evolved slowly. There was no question about the reliability and authenticity of the data and the reports coming from IT.

Changing Dynamics=Changing Focus

Today, an entire generation of office workers knows little or nothing about how the office functioned before e-mail or before the personal computer. A new generation of workers has always had the Internet at their fingertips. The 9-to-5 office job is a thing of the past. People answer e-mails at all hours; they interface with co-workers on different continents. They carry their information on their hips and are expected to be responsive to the needs of their job wherever they are and regardless of what they are doing. In exchange, workers demand access to needed information and the ability to customize their experience of that information.

At the same time, the tools the end user has have become far more powerful than ever before. Savvy users can create a database and manipulate data. They can create interfaces into corporate databases, saving themselves time and effort to update information. They can input information from a mobile device--placing an order, requesting service, or signing a business deal--right from their office, a coffee shop, or the front seat of their truck.

In addition, the end user is now not solely interfacing with the company's IT resources--they may be entering data into a system managed by an IT outsourcer or by a third party contracted to provide a specific IT service. Increasingly, IT has little to do with directly processing and managing an organization's information.

The dynamics have changed; the requirements have changed; the technology has changed. At the same time, the need to ensure that the information is reliable and authentic has never been higher. Events in which data was improperly and illegally manipulated have driven...

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