IGHS66 - AI and Data Hygiene: Keys to Success with Dr. Galina Datskovsky

Jim Merrifield (00:00.59)
Well, hello and welcome to the InfoGov Hot Seat! I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today is Dr. Galina Datskovsky. Welcome Galina. How are you?

Galina Datskovsky (00:08.3)
Thank you, Jim. I'm doing great and I'm delighted to be here with you. Thank you for inviting me.

Jim Merrifield (00:13.634)
Yeah, I'm so happy that you're here on the hot seat. I know you're a person that wears many hats. You have tons of experience in the industry. I know you're a past ARMA president, right? So I guess you could say I'm following in your footsteps, so to speak. And for sure. we share an interest in, of course, in legal tech. So we'll get to that in a little bit.

Galina Datskovsky (00:27.606)
Yes, I'm very proud of that.

Galina Datskovsky (00:37.356)
Absolutely.

Jim Merrifield (00:38.702)
For sure, so, but I know you, I've known you for quite a while, but let's have you introduce yourself. A brief introduction of your current role and one fun fact about yourself. I know that's a, I say current role, I might say roles.

Galina Datskovsky (00:53.386)
roles. I've been in the industry, like you said, quite a long time and I've done everything from running my own business. I'm actually particularly proud of the fact that we had a flagship information governance product in quite early on. That was DOD certified and very exciting. I'm very proud of my roles at CA and HP and autonomy in various places where

have made an impact. Now I take also great pride in guiding various companies in various stages, usually from startup to pre-public, usually. I love taking board seats, consulting with them, making sure their strategy is good and making sure they grow. So this is something I'm very passionate about, imparting my entrepreneurial skills to other people.

Obviously, I'm also very passionate about the industry. I sit on various task forces. write position papers. So I sit on the Executive Women's Forum Advisory Board, which is women in cybersecurity, but also governance and privacy. And I always mentor. I do a mentoring session every six months with various women who are up and coming in their careers. I'm very passionate about that.

and helping other women grow and take the career steps necessary. As you could imagine, that's also very exciting. And let's see, a fun fact you said, right? A fun fact that people may or may not know about me is that I am an avid scuba diver. I started diving 34 years ago. I've been diving all over the world. I also am known to volunteer in the shark tank in aquariums.

and do feeding and cleaning and all that wonderful stuff just for fun. I have great shark photography. I use them as my background usually. So if you've seen me on Zoom or Teams, you've seen my photography. That's something I also like as a hobby. So instead of skiing, which I used to do before, I took up diving. Now I dive. That's my fun fact.

Jim Merrifield (03:16.046)
Excellent, excellent. I know you were avid scuba diver. I know I've seen your, photo. If you're ever on a meeting with Galina, you'll see the photo that she actually shot of a shark, which is amazing. That's right. And volunteering. Wow. I don't know how you find the time with all of your extracurricular and career development stuff. Still find time to have some fun.

Galina Datskovsky (03:27.382)
Yeah, Bull Shark, at least. Yeah, very proud of that one.

Galina Datskovsky (03:40.896)
yes, have to do that.

Jim Merrifield (03:44.078)
You have to, for sure. So speaking of, I know you've, you mentioned companies that you've kind of helped along the way. I know you kind of paved the way in the IG records management space with MDY long time ago, right? I think I was a little baby, but.

Galina Datskovsky (03:57.153)
Yes, indeed.

Galina Datskovsky (04:01.056)
Yep. That's right. That's right. And the nice thing is that MDY is still a great family. know, former employees, we all keep in touch and we keep track of each other and we, we've worked in various capacities together. So was really something special.

Jim Merrifield (04:19.982)
That's amazing. That's amazing. And I saw, I think it was last week, it hit the news that you joined FIT as a board member. So that's exciting.

Galina Datskovsky (04:28.524)
That's right. It is very exciting. think I indeed I did I joined FIT as a board member. And to that point, I think the legal industry is an exciting industry. It's changing. It's growing. There's a great need for not only good IG practices and a great IG product, but a great product for mobility, a product that takes into account

some of the position papers that LFIGS puts out so that it actually listens to practitioners and creates what practitioners actually want. And again, in a modern way in a cloud-based software with various connectors properly architected. So I think from an industry perspective, it was just exciting to me to see this company wanting to embrace that. And that's why I joined the board.

First, I kind of took a look at the product line, the software, what needed to be changed, what needed to be improved and how. And really it's a great team. First of all, right, you want to work with great people, great team. Secondly, you want to work with a product with great potential. and those are the key ingredients I look for when I take a board position. And so therefore,

Here we are.

Jim Merrifield (05:57.462)
Yeah, thank you for sharing. I mean it stands for future in tech. Usually when you see the word fit, I initially thought of like a gym, you know, but...

Galina Datskovsky (06:06.88)
That's right. That's right. You do, right? But if you think about it, you know, if you exercise your IG properly, it will be fit. That's right. That's right. That's right. And it really does need to be exercised, right?

Jim Merrifield (06:16.95)
I like that. Maybe that's the new tagline, right? If Tony's listening to this.

Jim Merrifield (06:26.85)
That is correct. Now you mentioned some of the features, mobility and disposition and governance. What features are you most excited about with this product?

Galina Datskovsky (06:38.828)
Well, it's all of the above, but let's start with mobility because that's maybe the newest. I think it's really exciting because of the fact that when you talk about mobility, you can't be limited to just data in your, I don't want call them structured because it's unstructured data, but in your specified repositories, there's still data in the wild, there's data in Outlook and various email systems. There's data everywhere.

So, back to that old IG problem. And if you are needing to move data, whether it's client departure, attorney departure, what have you, it's all data. It's not just, gosh, this is in my document management system, here you go. And again, even with that, you have to be careful in selecting. It almost reminds me of a FOIA type system.

maybe a lit support selection system, but it's different. So similarities and differences there, and there's a lot of opportunity to really utilize modern tools that are available today to do all of that. So I think that's really exciting. And to introduce the proper workflows, because every firm, as you know, has a variety of workflows, right? Different kind of approvers, different kind of reviewers, different ways of

including or excluding things so that flexibility is absolutely key and creating it in the format that could be ingested by the receiver, right? Or flip side, ingesting information that's sent to you in a structured way with the right steps taken, the conflict taken. Again, a lot of different pieces have to come together for this to actually work and work flexibly enough but

not in a customized fashion, but in a configurable fashion so that different firms could fit it into their workflows. And I think that's the excitement. Now, by the way, IG, retention and disposition, is kind of in the same category, if you will. It's essential. Everybody does things slightly differently. There are different client requirements, right? And those need to be carried out. IG has to be flexible enough.

Galina Datskovsky (09:04.016)
What if a client says, the case is over, return everything to me? Well, it's kind of like that departure workflow, but it's a disposition workflow. So is it or isn't it? There's such an interesting overlap to me. And so if you're creating a modern product FIT for current governance, you have to take all of these things into account. That's the excitement, right?

Jim Merrifield (09:28.642)
Yeah, that is exciting. I You mean all law firms don't do things the same way.

Galina Datskovsky (09:33.566)
I don't know, do they? Cookie Cutters!

Jim Merrifield (09:37.87)
We're all a bit different.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, no, I mean, I've taken a look, as you know, at the platform, quite impressed with the flexibility and things. And one thing that stood out to me too is you don't really have to be an IT person or a technologist to use the platform. think, Was that considered with the design as well that like...

Galina Datskovsky (10:00.085)
Absolutely. That's key. you, well, again, you were a baby, but MD, that was the motto at MDY, you know? Software needs to be configurable by the practitioners. It shouldn't be configured or designed by engineers. It's key that the practitioners could take it, configure it and run it. And the code base is the same and engineers could support. And of course, as you know, cloud-based software requires that kind of rigor.

So, right? On-prem software was one thing, even though upgrades were problematic even then and so forth. But cloud software, that's a must, right? It's an absolute must. sure. And it It It has to be designed so that the user is comfortable. You can't design things for engineers to be comfortable.

Jim Merrifield (10:46.072)
Yeah, yeah it is. mean especially

Jim Merrifield (10:56.162)
No, because the first question that IT asks when you're looking at a new product, no matter what it is, well, what's the lift on IT to get this up and running? And, you know, most solution providers like, look, yeah, we're up and running in a month. It's easy, this and that. And a lot of time we know that that's not true, right? So that's usually, because usually the products are created for,

Galina Datskovsky (11:05.964)
Exactly.

Jim Merrifield (11:24.076)
with reliance on IT practitioners to kind of deal with it in the backend, but it seems like the technology around the FIT application is not, that's not the case, which is awesome, honestly.

Galina Datskovsky (11:35.853)
Absolutely. Now that's key. It's absolutely a key feature. again, you asked me why did I join? Because people embrace these ideas. You again, it's about the team. You want to work with a team that embraces the ideas. You could tell them something is right, you know, but if you're a board member and they don't want to listen to you, that's fine. If you're a board member and your voice is heard and things are done, that's a whole different ball game, right?

Jim Merrifield (12:02.798)
It is. It is. Now that's awesome. So let's switch gears a little bit. Can you elaborate on what you're seeing around AI? I know there's so many developments out there. I've read, I know you're on, we just developed a paper together, right? With LFIGS and published that on AI. Right. Exactly. Part two. Yeah. We had to, had to, you know, divvy it up in parts. was too much to say. So can you elaborate on what you're seeing with, with AI and IG in the market today?

Galina Datskovsky (12:13.264)
gosh, yes.

Galina Datskovsky (12:17.622)
That's right. Part one is published. Part two is coming.

Galina Datskovsky (12:32.894)
Wow that's such a broad question. We could talk about it for an hour, but I'll be brief because we don't want to spend an hour. But I specifically want to relate AI and IG in this particular few minutes of an answer. By the way I don't know if you know the other fun fact. I did my doctoral work in AI and particularly in language recognition and machine learning.

Jim Merrifield (12:56.065)
wow.

Jim Merrifield (13:01.358)
Interesting, know, you're the wow. Wow. So you're the you're actually so Galina you're actually the second PhD in the last I think two weeks that I met that has a PhD a doctorate in AI I Maged Helmey from NewCode.AI and he had a similar story at some point I'll have to connect the two of you

Galina Datskovsky (13:02.1)
I was just...

Galina Datskovsky (13:26.902)
that would be amazing. so, yeah, I was actually on the, I guess on the early end of that, right? Because machine learning AI early, early on, right? So anyway, you asked me the question and here is, think the key takeaway of IG is this, people think AI is just kind of the begin do it and it does everything for you. And look.

Jim Merrifield (13:36.266)
Yeah.

Galina Datskovsky (13:54.605)
I'm not going to talk about, let's say, copilot and other kinds of now agentic AI where you have agents that aid you, sure, in a particular application or set of applications or aid you in writing. I really want to focus on AI vis-a-vis an organization's data in order for the organization to really utilize AI against its data. And again, I'm not going to start talking about security

and how you do that. Read the LFIGS papers. We discuss all of those topics there quite a bit. So this is my plug for LFIGS. Go ahead, read both parts if you want to know about public models, private models, hybrid models, and so forth and so on. But what I do want to focus on is specifically the role of IG because however you decide to implement it, whatever model you decide to go with.

If your data is not clean and it doesn't make sense and it's not properly governed, you will not get good results because when data is not aligned, if data is not normalized, if data is not clean, have multiple versions, getting through all the junk and expecting an algorithm to produce results that are cohesive and coherent is not really a good expectation. So more important than ever,

for good IG hygiene. The cleaner your data, the better your training results are going to be, the better your outcomes of whatever AI you're rolling out. And that's on the unstructured side. I also want to just briefly mention the structured side of the world. Most law firms are not necessarily concerned, but you have other people who listen to your podcasts and lots of people with lot of structured data like SAP systems and

Oracle databases and so forth and on, structured data. And structured data as well, would think, okay, well, it's a database, it's all aligned. But no, the actual semantics of that data are not necessarily aligned, right? What let's say customer service calls a customer in their database may be different than what sales calls a customer, may be different than what accounting calls a customer.

Galina Datskovsky (16:16.788)
And if you don't align that and you say you just have a field called customer and here's all my data, you'll get complete nonsense. So again, back to IT best practices, aligning your data, aligning your semantic definitions. This is what we've been doing as IT practitioners forever. And so if you want your AI implementations to go smoothly, good IG is essential. Now, I'm sure I would like to say to the listeners,

Jim Merrifield (16:44.682)
Thank

Galina Datskovsky (16:46.654)
If you want to know more, Jim and I could talk more.

Jim Merrifield (16:50.542)
There's the plug, there's the plug. Well, yeah, if you want a part two when this episode's released, just let us know. Yeah, absolutely. yeah, 100%, right? The cleaner your data, the better the output. It's kind of like, you know, it goes to, there's another tagline for fit, right?

Galina Datskovsky (16:53.108)
as the plug

Galina Datskovsky (17:00.16)
That's right. But that's something I just wanted to make sure we get across.

Jim Merrifield (17:15.822)
It's like, you know, when you go to the gym, cleaner you eat, the better the results.

Galina Datskovsky (17:16.032)
That's right.

Galina Datskovsky (17:20.672)
That's right. That's right. And the more you exercise your data and create muscle instead of fat, so we could talk about this position, right? The muscle wins.

Jim Merrifield (17:28.866)
Yeah, yeah. There you go. I think we're onto a presentation or something. We'll come up with something.

Galina Datskovsky (17:33.494)
think we are. But I hope you agree with that, Jim, because you are a great practitioner yourself. So do you see the world the same way?

Jim Merrifield (17:42.582)
I do, I do. I think it's a tough, you know, we're in a tough situation right now because I think at least in, in whether you're a law firm or, or a corporation, people just want to get their hands on an AI application and start reaping the benefits. and you know, I mean, you can do that in your everyday life. You download an app, ChatGPT Gemini, whatever. It's like 20 bucks a month for the premium and you're, you're rocking and rolling.

So I think the struggle for most companies, firms and companies is kind of putting the brakes on it and making sure the rollout is proper and the data is cleansed.

Galina Datskovsky (18:10.646)
That's right.

Galina Datskovsky (18:22.412)
And by the way, one of the things that companies that actually sell these applications are concerned with is exactly that. If your rollouts are not done right, and this has already been happening, then they stall and then AI adoption stalls. And of course, then their revenue forecasts stall. So from the perspective of the vendors providing AI software and services, the cleaner the data, the better the adoption rate, the better for them.

So, I would say that if I'm a company, let's say like Microsoft, and of course I don't want to speak for Microsoft because I can't, but if I am a company providing various tools, I'm interested in two things. One, good data hygiene so that there's good successful rollouts. One. And two, good user training for adoption. Because AI, there's this upskilling of the workforce.

so that there's no fear and there's understanding of how to use it. And I think those are the two essential ingredients in AI adoption.

Jim Merrifield (19:29.314)
I agree. I think prompting is key, right? know, most people, you know, most people aren't going to know how to prompt the AI properly. So they're going to have to rely on templates and things that they create within the organization. And who knows? That's probably an opportunity for consultants, right?

Galina Datskovsky (19:47.584)
Right? Right? So again, upskilling the workforce and who better than the people who understand and know the data. And then back to that same point, the data has to be clean because it has to be clean for your prompts to work.

Jim Merrifield (19:57.166)
Mm hmm. It has to be clean.

Jim Merrifield (20:02.84)
does, it does. We're back to clean data. So, so Galina, know we talked.

Galina Datskovsky (20:05.472)
Yep. Great opportunity for IT professionals, don't you think? Yep.

Jim Merrifield (20:09.87)
It is unbelievable opportunity. So I think they're going to be all encouraged. Any IG professional listens to this podcast is going to be re-energized.

Galina Datskovsky (20:18.892)
Good, that's great.

Jim Merrifield (20:20.696)
That's the hope. So, Galina, I know we talked about a lot here. We could continue this conversation. We'll probably do a part two, I'm sure. Maybe we'll do a part two, three, four. Who knows? But is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience before we let you go?

Galina Datskovsky (20:30.292)
Who knows

Galina Datskovsky (20:36.062)
gosh. What would I like to share? Read the LFIGS papers. That's a great tool, especially if you're in legal. Attend the right conferences, listen to podcasts like this. Learn, be curious, contact people you know, like Jim, who is a great expert. you know, enjoy the fact that this profession is so...

is thriving and is flourishing and is so needed.

Jim Merrifield (21:07.95)
Yeah, 100 % right back at you. Give Galina a call, look her up. She's on LinkedIn. She's all over the place. She'll be at different conferences in the spring. We're getting into conference season, we'll all be probably in similar places. yeah, we're.

Galina Datskovsky (21:19.884)
Absolutely. And thank you, Jim. I really enjoyed our conversation. It's tremendous.

Jim Merrifield (21:24.418)
Yeah, no, So did I. Thanks so much for taking time to join me on the hot seat. And, you know, for our audience, if you'd like to be a guest on the InfoGov hot seat, all you got to do is submit your information through our website, infogovhotseat.com. And thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Galina Datskovsky (21:39.414)
Thank you.