Blue skies and fluffy white clouds stimulate the imagination of both children and adults. Looking up, we see cloud formations and identify them, not by their scientific names of cirrus, cumulus, and nimbus, but more fancifully as horses, spaceships, unicorns, maps of various locations, castles, puppies, palm trees, or something equally ingenious.

Those of you with a scientific bent can check out NOAA’s explanation of “Ten types of clouds”. Those with a more whimsical turn of mind will be interested in The Cloud Appreciation Society, whose mission is to unite cloud lovers around the world. The society posts photographs of interesting and gorgeous cloud formations and will email you, daily, images of cloud formations its members have found interesting. The society is also on Twitter (@CloudAppSoc) and Facebook, should you prefer to get your cloud fix through social media.

Search is a crucial component of the modern workplace. The ability to find information quickly and efficiently contributes not only to business success but also to employees satisfaction.

It is frustrating to spend time looking for information when you could be completing a task.

Search has become ingrained as part of everyday life.

The fact is that most people will either embrace or decline information governance depending on their individual situation at a certain point in time. Information governance is closely allied with privacy and security. Knowledge as internal currency that needs to be managed wisely, which is where a governance procedure would be helpful.

It is entirely possible that someone might curse a rule as arbitrary while simultaneously recognizing the necessity of it from a security standpoint. Someone else could easily applaud relevant search results without actually realizing the role information governance played in facilitating that relevance. And there’s always “that guy” who complains regardless of whether the complaint is justified.

The modern workplace is increasingly spread out in many locations, with employees and expertise spread across multiple offices and areas. This makes it very difficult to know what information exists and where it is kept.

We can make the assumption that a majority of a company’s information is stored on hard drives, content management systems, file sharing applications and in the minds and memories of employees. This creates a few problems:

Many organizations that deployed a content management system have gone through phases of deployment, development and upgrades without leveraging common practices around information architecture and usability.

In some cases, a well-intentioned IT department holds user requirements sessions, only to implement the technical features without truly understanding core principles of usability. In other situations, a particular process will be enabled and user tested with good design principles but employing the “build it and they will come” deployment plan.