IGHS30 - Interview with Trevor Banks

Jim Merrifield (00:00.377)
Well, hello and welcome to the InfoGov hot seat. I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today is Trevor Banks. Welcome Trevor.

Trevor Banks (00:07.621)
Thanks, Jim. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. That old cliche stuff, but I love it. It's great.

Jim Merrifield (00:09.945)
Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Now it's great to have you on the hot seat. Let's jump right in and get to know a little more about yourself. Can you tell us a brief introduction of your role and one fun fact about yourself?

Trevor Banks (00:24.965)
I'll start with a fun fact. I'm a long time IAMR, started in 94. And so I've been chipping away at how to both position this business, express this business, teach this business, explain this business since then. So where I'm at now is actually a really neat seat. In the Government of Canada, there's a rulemaker and that department is called the Treasury Board Secretariat. So it runs the administration on behalf of the government. And in there, you've got an office of the CIO and it pushes out the policy on information management and IT.

And what we're doing in the government of Canada is we're going from an acronym called IMIT to something called the digital community. And that is why I love ARMA and that's why I love being on the hot seat because we are going to have that kind of conversation today and carry that conversation further into our event in Calgary.

Jim Merrifield (01:11.129)
Yeah, that's a nice segue into Calgary. I know you're gearing up for the Canada Conference just a few days, and I'll see you up there, down there in Calgary. I guess it's out west, right, from where we are out east. What are you looking forward to at this year's conference?

Trevor Banks (01:26.981)
Okay, so a combination of another fun fact. I'm looking forward to the trivia. I'm looking forward to the trivia because it's just where our community connects. What I love about ARMA is it brings the community together. Do we have a lot to talk about? Yes. But do we want to have a sense of community? Do we want to get together and laugh and chat? And that's what the trivia event does. And that's what we've been doing. So I'm glad to see it back. I'm glad to be able to host it. So I'm looking forward to that. Am I looking forward to our panel? Yes. As far as the topic of the future, what we're discussing, I'm looking forward to when we talk.

What is this merger between information management, data management? What is this nomenclature between management and governance? Where are we going as this business? And it's not just esoteric stuff that we've talked about in the past. No, it's concrete. There's positions coming to the forefront and it's time to figure out what our relationship is with those positions like a chief data officer.

Jim Merrifield (02:16.953)
Yeah, 100%. I couldn't agree more. Now I've heard a lot about that trivia. I heard there's a trophy. Is that, is that true?

Trevor Banks (02:22.821)
It is not just any trophy. It is not just any trophy. This trophy has a long rich history, which we don't have time, but I'm going to try to figure out how to synthesize it out. This is a wood carving of wood carvings. And you might think, wow, boy, this should be regifted and never seen again. No, no, that's where you're wrong. This is a beautiful wood carving of a beaver that screams trivia award winner. So it came to us from one of our longtime ARMA members, and it was being raffled off back when we did raffles as a fundraising mechanism.

but its destiny was being in the arms of the winning trivia team. And what we do, it's got the back of it, the winning team carves its name in the back, a bit like the Stanley Cup, they get to carry it around for a night. They end up taking pictures that can't be shown in public after with it. It's a fantastic trophy. It weathers the storm. It's a beautiful trophy.

Jim Merrifield (03:14.361)
Awesome, I can't wait to see it. So let's get back to those sessions. I know you're slated for two sessions this year. Can you give us a preview into the two sessions you're speaking about and possibly the topics as well?

Trevor Banks (03:26.469)
The number one is the actual work that we're doing here on redefining the information management community in the government of Canada. And so as the manager of organizational design, I'm going to walk through kind of the why and then the how. So we got to understand our context and what this word digital means in this story and how much of an impetus it is to this winds of change. All right. But our audience likes to practical.

What do you want me to do with that? So I plan on in the second part of my session, walking through that. Here from an organizational design perspective, job description, definitions of the boss, the C -Suite as we like to call it. That's what I'm going to leave the audience with. And then we're just going to have a discussion of what does this all this mean? So I'm really looking forward to our discussion, Jim, when we get on the stage and go through this change. What does this change means to our community? So that's going to be a nice rich discussion that I hope segues actually back to this idea of community.

where people in the audience, we can have deeper discussions over coffee.

Jim Merrifield (04:29.689)
Absolutely. I can't wait for your session and also to share the stage with you. Looking forward to discussing information governance versus IG, right? Why does it matter? What's the difference? That'll be an awesome, heated discussion.

Trevor Banks (04:42.341)
Yeah, do we stay alone? Do we merge? Do we get out of IT and go in with the data, folks? There are options. There are options. I'm willing to present and stand behind one of those options and have that discussion. But sure, let's have a nice rich discussion about it. Absolutely.

Jim Merrifield (04:57.465)
Yeah, looking forward to it. So any final thoughts about this year's conference?

Trevor Banks (05:03.909)
I'm glad to see that the Canadian audience can still get there. So I'm glad to see that we have this opportunity as this region to still pull together as a community. And I think it's important. I think this one's going to be an important milestone. Not the end of the conversation, but I think it's important that we get together and say, wait a minute, there are changes happening outside of profession. How do we become part of that change?

Jim Merrifield (05:28.345)
Yeah, I can't wait to be in Calgary with you. And again, I can't emphasize more just like you did to just keep the conversation going. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today on the hot seat. Again, look forward to seeing you in person in Calgary in just a few days. And it's important to note too for our audience that registration is still open. So there's still time to book your ticket to Calgary.

Trevor Banks (05:52.997)
And once you're there, you go to the ARMA booth and that's where we'll register you for the trivia.

Jim Merrifield (05:57.849)
Yep, that's what you do, right? Trivia, education, what could be better, right? And Canada, I heard there's awesome mountains out there, Banff tour and all that good stuff.

Trevor Banks (06:06.501)
Stay around. Oh yeah, if the conference has it's over, get in there early and go for a hike.

Jim Merrifield (06:11.609)
Yeah, absolutely. So again, thank you for attending today's episode of the IG hot seat. Please visit our website, infogovhotseat .com to view our latest episodes. And if you'd like to be a guest on the hot seat, like Trevor here, all you need to do is submit your information through our website. And thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day.