It’s a fair question. Who at the organization is accountable for the accuracy of information?

Well… to a certain extent, dear Information Management (IM) colleague, it’s us. If accuracy is as critical an attribute as we claim it is, then it needs to fall somewhere in the Information Governance (IG) framework we design and steward.

Obviously, it can’t be just us. After all, we do not control the content of the information created, captured, and maintained by the different business areas across the organization. Users generate it and systems store it—most often without our involvement at any stage along the process. Our role is traditionally framed as support rather than production, so on the face of things allocating us any responsibility at all might appear unfair.

But is it really? I wonder to what extent the responsibility for our current situation lies in our backyard. If we contributed to the problem, then shouldn’t we take some ownership around trying to resolve it?

To explain why the lens might point in our direction, it helps to look backward—to a time when the question of who stood behind the accuracy of information had a clear, almost unremarkable answer.

The Paper World

In the era of paper correspondence, organizational communications went out under someone’s signature. Far from being ornamental; the signature was a formal indication of accountability. The named individual stood behind the content of the letter and accepted responsibility for its accuracy and implications. Even when a secretary signed on their behalf—as was often the case—the accountability did not shift. The act of signing could be delegated; accountability for the content could not.

Yes, life was simpler then. The correspondence reached the records manager only after the work was done and accountability established. What remained was the straightforward filing process —tedious as it was.

The same accountability rules applied even when a document had multiple authors.

Consider the recording of patient information at a hospital nursing station. Someone places a clipboard at the end of a bed. At regular intervals, different nurses attend the patient, recording the time of the visit and the relevant vital statistics. Each entry is made contemporaneously with the observation and is signed or initialled by the nurse who recorded it. When the page is full, someone files the chart.

From a legal perspective, this kind of business record is accepted as an exception to the hearsay rule precisely because accountability for accuracy is still clear. Despite the number of contributors, each entry is made contemporaneously with the events it describes and is attested to by the individual named on each line.

What I’m nostalgic for here is not paper as a medium, but clarity about roles—specifically about the responsibilities attached to the role of “author.”

Cracks Begin to Form

Fast forward to the mid-1990s and the introduction of electronic document and records management systems (EDRMS). Suddenly, “author” takes on a different meaning.

An EDRMS cares more about supplying the clipboard and filing the result than about the content itself. It typically records who created or uploaded a document, its file classification, and possibly who declared it a record, along with a number of other factors captured as metadata. What has been lost is any record of who is taking responsibility for the accuracy of the content. The system captures custody and workflow, but is largely silent on attestation.

From a recordkeeping perspective, this is not a minor omission. It represents a shift away from the very mechanism that made records trustworthy in the first place. To make matters worse, the IM world not only supported this shift, but in many cases we campaigned for it! And we enabled the transition to it without compensating for the loss of this critical piece of the puzzle.

And now it’s about to get worse, thanks to the newest tool in our arsenal: artificial intelligence (AI).

The Effect of AI

As AI systems summarize, transform, classify, and recombine information, content passes through additional layers of processing. Each layer increases the distance between the original observation and the final output. With each step, it becomes

harder to answer a basic governance question: who, in this organization, is prepared to stand behind the accuracy of this information?

The issue is not that AI introduces error—human systems have always done that. The issue is that AI further obscures accountability and diffuses responsibility, leaving both effectively unclaimed.

As a result, we have a serious problem: when the organization asks “Who is responsible for the accuracy of the information?” no one is prepared to raise their hands.

Bringing Value to the Organization

In both paper-world examples, there was an Information Management function operating, even if it was not explicitly described as such.

The organization had documented procedures on how correspondence was to be prepared and sent. The nurses followed documented procedures on how to record the patients information. In addition, the supply of the clipboard and the filing of the finished record also governed by formally documented procedures, with responsibility assigned to one or more named positions.

The reliability of the recordkeeping—and the accuracy of the information captured—were a direct outcome of those procedures.

This process is where IG professionals have a critical role to play. Someone in the organization needs to ensure that the procedures governing the capture and handling of information include elements that address the issue of information accuracy.

While we may not control what information is created, we do control the framework within which it is captured, managed, relied upon, and reused. Now that accountability for accuracy is no longer determined by authorship, what remains are the rules, structures, and systems that determine how information enters the organization, how it is preserved, and whether it can be trusted.

Conclusion

We will never be in a position to guarantee that information is true. But we don’t need to be.

This situation offers IG professionals yet another way to claim a meaningful seat at the table. By taking responsibility for promoting systems that validate accuracy at key

points in the information lifecycle and make accountability explicit, we can use our professional skill and knowledge to help the organization navigate these stormy waters.