IGHS41 - The Importance of Information Governance in the Age of AI with Colin Cahill, InOutSource

Jim Merrifield (00:00.558)
Pleasure to be here. Yeah, it's great to have you on the hot seat. So let's kick it off and get to know you a little better. Can you give us a brief introduction of yourself, your current role and one fun fact about yourself? Sure thing, I'll try to keep it brief. Yeah, I've been doing this stuff for and counting 30 -32 years now, which is a little nuts.

I always find it interesting to hear how others in this industry, sort of how you sort of fell into this, right? mean, very few of us, I think, sort of were born and grew up wanting to be in records management or information governance. So, you know, my path was probably as, you maybe not as interesting as others, but I went to school for biology.

undergrad for biology and then went to grad school for ecology. So it was a natural progression to this stuff. I got a job probably like anyone else, right? Needed a job, needed health insurance, had my first son. And this was one of the jobs that I got that provided that. And you just eventually start to grow into it.

So yeah, 32 years later, it's been a great ride, continues to be a great ride. I've had an interesting career, divided it really in half, 16 years in -house, 16 years consulting. I've held a number of jobs in -house. I was the director of records and conflicts and intake at Ropes and Gray, Chodeholme Stewart.

I've been the global director of information governance at Bain and Company and Draper Labs and Wellington Management and few other places. And on the consulting side, I've worked with, I think it was like 45 % of the AmLaw 200 law firms and about, you know, over three dozen Fortune 500 companies across different industries. So really interesting experience over all these years, you know.

Jim Merrifield (02:20.524)
lots of different companies and in luck, very fortunate to, you know, pretty much all the organizations I've worked with, be it in -house or consulting, you know, world -class organizations. So that's been a pleasure. Learned lot, experienced a lot. And, you know, now I'm Senior Solutions Manager of Information Governance and Collaboration at InOutsource

started very late last year, really excited. I've known Nancy and Eric for many, years and from afar have observed their company and their success, which has been very impressive. Heard a lot of good things, was really excited to join InOutsource and it's been everything I hoped it would be.

I wear many hats, so they'll have that title. So I'm certainly helping with the information governance consulting. I help a lot with business development, data governance, sort of building some, helping to build that practice out. We're getting into and building a practice right now around modern work. So it's been...

one of the leads on helping to do that. So learning a lot, doing a lot of different things that help as well. We have a e -learning platform called Nectar, where there's already a wealth of sort of content on risk management. And I've been helping to develop content for information governance as well. That should be released soon. Yeah, soon. I don't know exactly when, but.

So yeah, a lot of cool stuff, a lot of Did you ask an interesting thing? Fun fact, we need a fun fact. There's many Jim, there many fun facts. No, but one that probably not many people would know is I am a, I love music. I'm a huge music fan, music nerd.

Jim Merrifield (04:48.238)
And I have way too much music that I own. My wife would tell you that. So just to give you an example, think digital music, I've got over 22 terabytes. So yeah. And physical music is way more than that. you got that organized somewhere. It's all preserved and archived and know, it's got some kind of, you know, sorta.

It's all governed properly. Yeah, it's kind of a lot to govern. No doubt. Yeah, lots of different styles, genres, but I tend to gravitate towards the stranger side of music. OK, I didn't know that about you. So speaking of music, so you're a music fan. I know you're getting ready to be at ILTA in Nashville next week.

So are you excited? What are you looking forward to? What are your plans in Nashville? Yeah, definitely excited. First time going to Nashville. Hoping to have some free time to check out some of the spots downtown. I'm also speaking. I'm speaking on Tuesday. I'll be a panel part of the LFIGS group.

and a paper on information governance and artificial intelligence. So I've been fortunate the last couple of years to be one of the co -authors of the last two AI IG white papers that LFIGS has published, or we will be publishing the second one soon. So yeah, looking forward to that. As you know, InOutSource puts on a lot of stuff at ILTA

I will be part of that. We've got a demo room there. I think for most of the time I'll be in that demo room meeting with clients and prospects, talking about a variety of different things. So yeah, very much looking forward to it. That's awesome. Now looking forward to seeing you there. And I think that the session on Tuesday, right? It's at two o 'clock, right, Central? I believe so, yeah. Yeah, an AI. Now that's going to be amazing, right? There's a few.

Jim Merrifield (07:12.172)
I think InfoGov sessions peppered throughout the week. Just a few. Just a few. InfoGov and AI, right? Imagine, yeah. Yeah, now that's awesome. So speaking of your new role, I know you have a really diverse background. You've been in -house, you've been on the consultant side, advising on the software side. What's the day in the life of Colin Cahill today at InOutSource of your new role?

Yeah, no, that's a great question. I said, wearing lot of hats, which is one of the things I love about this role that I have within InOutSource A lot of opportunities to get involved with lots of things. So I'd say...

Jim Merrifield (08:05.263)
Like most organizations, There's the focus, everyone's interested in artificial intelligence and what that means. We are also one of those companies. And I would say every day I'm having probably at least two, three, maybe more conversations with different.

different law firms, CIOs, CISOs, COOs, the conversations are all about data, AI. And I'd say earlier this year, most of the conversations were, hey, know, they're telling me, we're going forward with Copilot, ChatGPT, all this stuff. We're interested. We're going to start testing the waters and doing

And people have done that, like a lot of firms have. The conversations now, I'd say, now being like the last couple of months, very different. The conversations now are, it's all about governance, right? Everyone's saying, yeah, we did this, we tested, our toes in the water. And what we quickly found out is we need governance. We need information governance, data governance now.

like it's top priority for us. This is what we need. We know we need it. We've got data sprawl everywhere. So we need help there. So that's what all these conversations now are all about. So really it's become sort of AI readiness is information governance, really. So it's a lot of fun. It's really interesting to have these conversations. People are looking to clean up, you know,

decades of unstructured data that's sort of just been sitting out there. Getting that cleaned up, identifying the gold standard data that you want to use for your AI, for training, getting the governance layers, migrating your content to governed repositories. And I think a whole shift too, just in information governance.

Jim Merrifield (10:31.074)
because for years and years, myself and others, right, we've all set, we write the policies and the policies always say, the electronic matter file, the DMS is the single source of truth, the primary repository, blah, blah. From my experience, when you actually look to see if that's happening, it's really not.

there's so much more content that's being created and saved outside of the DMS. So unmanaged, ungoverned really. But years ago we didn't have the tools to do that. We do now. So again, I sort of see this shift, sort of modern information governance. We don't want to ignore or discard the DMS, but...

we can manage all of the data where it exists today. And that's sort of where things are headed. Yeah, for sure. Managing information in place, I think there's going to be a lot of conversations around that leading up to ILTA and even at ILTA. So looking forward to those discussions. I know, Colin, we've talked about a lot on this short interview or conversation here. But is there anything else that you wanted to share with the audience before we let you go?

Just, I think, to keep emphasizing that point. I mean, I've always been sort of interested in the concepts of disruption and acceleration broadly. And I think right now we're certainly experiencing both in a major way. There's a giant shift here, huge opportunity for

there's going be tons of change happening over the next couple years or maybe a little bit more. So huge opportunity for all of us that are in this industry to really take advantage of it because it's

Jim Merrifield (12:47.438)
we're suddenly elevated, think the opportunity to be elevated even more than we already are is there, we should grab it. Yeah, it's exciting times. I couldn't agree with you more to be in this field, information governance, AI, technology in general. And thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and insights here on the hot seat with the audience. Definitely look forward to seeing you in Nashville. Yeah, it'll be a fun time.

And for our audience, if you'd like to be a guest on the InfoGov Hot Seat, just like Colin here, all you need to do is submit your information through our website, infogovhotseat .com. And thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day. Thanks. Thanks, Jim. Thanks for having me. You got it.