Brian K. Lee (brian.k.lee@gartner.com) is a Managing Vice President and Dian Zhang (dian.zhang@gartner.com) is a Research Specialist at Gartner in Arlington, Virginia, USA.

In the face of increased public and regulatory scrutiny on data privacy, information governance is a top challenge for companies. In Gartner’s 2018 Information Governance Survey,^[1] more than 80% of legal, compliance, and privacy executives told us that setting firmwide guidelines to govern the collection, use, and retention of information is a mission-critical priority within the next 12 to 18 months. Only 37% had successfully put a formal governing structure in place already.