048 Redefining Information with the UGIM and Dr. Moya Hill

"Information is your foundation. Everything flows to it and from it."

Today, Jacqueline Stockwell is joined by Dr. Moya Hill, a leading voice in US Information Governance. Dr. Hill explains why the "checkbox" mindset is killing organizational growth and how her Unified Information Governance Model breaks down the walls between Privacy, FOIA, and Records Management.

If you’ve ever felt like your expertise is being ignored by senior leadership, this episode provides a masterclass in shifting your mindset from "technician" to "enterprise influencer."

Key Moments:

• [01:36] The biggest mental hurdle: Moving from "Checkbox" to "Asset."

• [03:02] What is the Unified Information Governance Model?

• [06:28] Lessons from Harvard: Thinking "Enterprise" instead of "Field."

• [10:36] The ROI of Integration: How silos waste money and increase litigation risk.

• [14:19] The Courage to Leap: Why Dr. Hill stepped into Records Management and why you should too.

• [16:32] AI and Records: Why machines can’t fix a chaotic information foundation.

Guest Bio:Dr. Moya Hill is a US Veteran, Harvard-trained strategist, and Chief FOIA/Privacy Officer. She is the creator of the Unified Information Governance Model and a passionate advocate for treating information as a strategic asset.

Connect with the Host:Follow Jacqueline Stockwell on LinkedIn for more reflections on information leadership.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hello and welcome to today's show. I'm Jacqueline Stockwell, CEO and founder at Leadership Through Data. I inspire and motivate information leaders across the world. Hello, I'm really excited today to have Dr. Moya Hill. Now she is a US veterinarian, Harvard-trained strategist, and an award-winning thought leader who's views information not as a burden but as a strategic asset. As the creator of the unified information governance model, she has pioneered a way to weave records management, Freedom of Information Act, FOIA, and privacy into a single high-impact framework. Now her mission is simple but profound to transform complex policies into actionable systems that build public trust and fuel innovation. She isn't just part of the conversation on information governance, she is the one advancing it. And hello and welcome, Moya.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Thank you so much for having me, Jacqueline. I'm happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

You're absolutely welcome. So it was so nice that we've kind of connected via LinkedIn. I'm a huge fan of LinkedIn and how the world is so much smaller. So you're based in the United States and I'm here in the UK. And I've reached out to you because I think some of the models, the unified information governance framework that we're going to talk about slightly later on, and the impact that you have been having with that. Now, tell me, you often say that information should be treated as an asset rather than a burden. What is the biggest mental hurdle organizations face when trying to make that shift?

SPEAKER_00 1:43

That's a very good question. So I strongly believe that information should be treated as an asset rather than as a burden. And I think the biggest hurdle that organizations face is mindset. The thing is, you know, often organizations look at information as always a checklist, checkbox, check it, you know. But it's bigger than that. If you transform your information within your organization, I guarantee you your whole organization will be affected and your organization will become successful. So again, the real shift happens in mindset. Um organizations right now are living in this siloed world where they don't really understand information. So they group it into different boxes. And so once they connect all the boxes, they'll realize that information is your foundation. Information is where everything flows from, flows to and flows from. And so if you really zoom in on that, your whole organization will become more successful.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah, and it's information is gold, really, isn't it? And it's such a shame that information leaders such as ourselves don't get the sort of the right exposure to organizations to actually say this is fundamental. This is helps with growth, reputation, privacy, um, and return of investment as well. Now, I want you to talk to me a bit more about the unified information governance model that you've created. First of all, if you could just explain what it is for the listeners.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

First of all, the unified information governance model, well, first of all, it's a model. So what it does is we all know organizations work in silo, privacy over there, FOIA over here in America, we say FOIA, Freedom of Information App, which is access to information. You have privacy over one corner, cybersecurity, risk management. They're all working in silos, doing their own thing. But the problem that organizations are having right now is when you work in silos, you have blind spots. You don't know what's going on. And so your whole organization faces issues. You have, like FOIA, for example, you have backlog issues, problems because FOIA officers don't know where the records are. They're not communicating with workers' officers. Then you have privacy officers, for example. They're not communicating with workers' officers to understand or know where uh records that contain personally identifiable information lives, right? And so you have these silos that occur. So what my model really is, is it breaks down all these silos. That's number one. Number two, it allows these organizations and these disciplines to collaborate. So from each stage of the life cycle, the basis of my model is the life cycle, the information life cycle. So from the creation of an information all the way through every single stage to disposition or destruction of that information, these disciplines collaborate. And again, it's very customizable because every organization is different, correct? So it's it's all based on your organizations, but disciplines within side, the information disciplines inside your organizations must collaborate in each and every stage of the information lifecycle so that the information within your organization is properly governed from creation to disposition. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

So you've talked about silos and you've talked about broken things. What part of the traditional system was broken that pushed you to build a new one from scratch?

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Such a good question. And again, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go back to silos. I realized that working in FOIA, privacy, and records management, all three organizations. So I am the chief FOIA privacy officer for uh the OLC, which is an organization within the Department of Veterans Affairs. So what I realized was while overseeing and managing these three separate programs, I found these gaps. And I realized that they don't communicate, they don't understand what each other does. And because of that, there are problems, severe problems. FOIA backlog increase because we have in the United States, we only have 20 working days to respond to a FOIA request. And so FOIA officers are scrambling, where do I get these records? They're asking me, where do I find these records? And so the records office is over, they're just chilling. They don't know how to assist a FOIA officer, they're just relaxing. So I realized, wow, these silos really cause problems. And the more if if you go over 20 working days in the United States, you can get sued. And so, right? And so there's litigation problems and there's all these different problems that occur, and even privacy risks because they don't know where the privacy, with it, with the privacy documents are. And so I realize that these silos cause so many issues that the government doesn't realize. And so we break down these silos, allow them to collaborate and integrate and you know, share uh knowledge, each process becomes streamlined. That's where I realize. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

I love that. Um, so previously, before you started um in your job, you spent some time at Harvard Business School. Now, how did that shape your approach in translating the dry, complex policies into actionable systems from senior leaders, stakeholders?

SPEAKER_00 6:22

That's a great uh that's a great question. My time at Already Business School allowed me to broaden my knowledge, allowed me to stretch my mind. Because oftentimes before I went to Harvard Business School, my mindset was like this, you know? And so after going there, allow me to take the ideas that are in my head and put it into practice. They allow me to think beyond the scope, think beyond the box, because I think what differentiates a leader from an average person, right, is the fact that you can lead. It's the fact that you can not just think beyond the box, think beyond the scope. Don't just do what you're normally doing in your everyday job, but realize, huh, let me broaden my knowledge, let me go outside and see what's out there and bring it back to my field to enhance my field. And so we have to be innovative, right? We have to be transformative. And so that's something that our school taught me, taking the knowledge that they have given me and put it into practice, put it into policy to transform my um my discipline.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

I love that. And I think it's so good the way you've described a sort of education. You've been given education and you're very forward-thinking and very innovative in yourself. One of the things that I find right now within our profession is our influence and our personal branding. So a lot of us are sort of still kind of holding back and not coming forward in the organization to say, like, I'm an information leader, information is gold, as the things you've described, and influencing those and leading, you know, whether it's a team or you've got to lead the organization through these um innovations and these projects that you're describing, but also through your strategies and the things that you need to deliver. Did Harvard Business School give you any tips and techniques around influence and personal branding, which is the more softer skills that I feel that information leaders should have?

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Oh man, that's a great question. And I agree with you. I think one of the things that before I go to Harvard Business School that I realize is leaders, they don't know everything, and that's okay. And so you have to convince them, you have to find out what is important to them, what is the most important thing to them. Zoom in on that. How can you help their job succeed? Because when someone doesn't know about you and what you do, it's like, let's be honest. I mean, they're just not gonna care. How do you make them care, right? You make them care by saying what I do is gonna help you. That's the first thing you do. And so I started there. What Harvard Business School, going back to Harvard Business School, what that has allowed me to do is say, hey, again, think beyond the scope. How can you benefit the enterprise on a bigger scope? Don't just think, okay, how can I move FOIA needle? How can I move privacy needle? How can I move working management needle? Think beyond your field, think enterprise-wise. How can I benefit the organization? How does what I do bring an influence or bring a benefit to the organization on a whole? That's how you're gonna understand, that's how you're gonna get to leaders because they don't think about your field. They're not thinking about you and IG, they're not thinking about that, they're thinking about the whole organization. So go on their level, think with them, think alongside with them, and they'll pay attention to you because at the end of the day, they have their mission. Your mission should be in alignment with their mission.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Yeah, agreed. And it's kind of those questions of what's keeping them up at night. And it's like if you can understand those types of things, you can wrap a story around it and you can sell the benefits to them. And I think it's such a good point because and it's so underestimated that people say this is the benefit to us and the organ to me as an information leader and the organization, but actually it's the benefit to that person and certainly information asset owners, and how do you get that sort of benefit fed back through the organization? Now, I kind of want to talk about ROI, so return of investment. So you've just talked about that. So, in terms of integrating records management, FOIA, and privacy, how does bringing these three silo departments together actually save an organization money?

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Such a great question. Once again, working in silos is it's it costs organizations a lot of money. I mean, first of all, let's start with three separate systems. Organizations spend money on privacy systems, FOIA systems, records management systems, and it's a lot of money, in my opinion, gets wasted because they don't, the bigger problem here doesn't get solved. They just keep working in silos and nothing gets solved. That's number one. Number two, their risk that they're not addressing. When you separate and silo these programs, for example, in FOIA, like I mentioned before, FOIA officers spend so many times trying to locate records. They have no idea where these records are. While a records officer over there, their job is to organize and manage these same records. That's their job. So if you're spending all this time tracking these records down, your 20 working days that you're allowed legally, right, to respond to requesters, it's dwindling and dwindling. That increased the cost of litigation, right, for the organization. You're losing money that way. Privacy breaches, you know, and your privacy officers do not know where these records are, these sensitive records are, these records with personal identified information are. And so if you don't know where these records are, the list, the chances of breaches skyrocket. And so, you know, combining these, combining these three entities together and allowing them to share data, share information, when you're cutting down all these problems that you're having, you're allowing them to say, hey, let me zoom in on the main guy, which I believe is records management. Let's work with records management. They know everything, they have the records in the organization that we need. Talk to them. And each process is going to be streamlined. When you streamline each process, you're going to eventually cut costs because all the blind spots are not going to be missed anymore. They're going to be open and some knowledge going to be shared. And so that's how our leaders should look at it.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

And there's also the element of time management in there. So how much time are they spending on these things? Because you're having to pay, organizations are having to pay a salary. Um, and from that salary, that cut that's a factor cost that needs to go in as well. So, how does information governance directly impact the trust of the public, customers, or citizens in an in the institution that they're actually in?

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Yeah, well, if you think about it, um, let's just break it down for a little bit. FOIA, again, is access to government information. You know, the public wants to know that they can trust their government, right? They want to know, they want to know that their records are being delivered on time. They want to know that your your your your records are being organized properly. Their information is being safeguarded. They want to know these things. And so if your organization is scattered, disorganized, dysfunctional, how are they gonna trust you? So I think leaders should think like that. You know, information is everything. Information is gold. You know, you can tell so much based on information. That's really what information is. So if they feel like they can't trust you because you're not protecting their information properly, you're not giving them transparency, which you're not giving them access to their information, and you're not even like holding yourself accountable by making sure that your your information is managed properly and organized properly. And they're gonna they're gonna feel like they can't trust you. But when you combine all of these three three fields that I was talking about, then people, the public will feel like they can trust you because they're like, wow, the government is organized, or wow, that organization is well organized. I can get my requests like this. I know my personal information is protected, like they feel safe, they feel like they can trust you. And if you're disorganized and it's functional, they won't feel like they can trust you. That's a human nature. Yeah, great.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

So, how has your background influenced your current role and approach to information management?

SPEAKER_00 13:46

My background as in uh being a veteran or yeah, being a veteran, the job that you do, yeah. So that's a great question. So I started my career in FOIA and privacy. That's where I started and as a FOIA and privacy analyst, and I'm so happy I did. So later on down the line, I took on records management. Wasn't sure records management is, I had no idea what it is, but what I realized that stepping outside my comfort zone and learning something new, my mind was able to be open. And that's why I want to tell you guys right here, all IG professionals, do not be afraid to step outside the comfort zone. Don't just look into one little area and that's it, because you won't really understand the full scope of your job. So step outside, learn something new, learn FOIA, learn privacy, learn work subject active request, whatever you need to learn, learn something new and bring it back to your field to enhance your field. And so my foundation was FOIA and privacy. For a long time, I decided to take on records management. Once I took on records management, I realized, oh my goodness, ding, ding, ding, all the dots connect because records management is gold. It is the foundation of an organization. Everything goes through records management. If you don't record, if you don't organize your records properly, everything falls apart. And that's a really good point. Even one thing I want to say, even with AI right now, AI is a big thing that's going on right now, right? If your records are not organized properly in your organization, AI will fail. Because what does AI work off of? You think about it? It works off of records. It works off of the information you give it. And so if your information is chaotic and crazy, even AI is gonna fail. So this is one example I'm showing. Um, so broaden your knowledge, you know, records is key. I'll always say records is key.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Nice, nice. So let's talk a bit more about AI. So I'm glad you kind of brought it up because it's always a hot topic of conversations. So information is being generated at an absorbent rate. How does your unified information governance model framework adapt to a world where records are now being created by machines?

SPEAKER_00 15:49

That's a really great question. So the UI, the UIGM, the model, it can absolutely work with AI. Well, it was built to work with AI. So if let's just imagine for one second, real quick, if you have a system, right? And within that system, you have you have a way to ensure that information is properly governed from creation all the way to disposition. Let's be clear. No privacy officer, records officer, all these disciplines, they cannot govern every single information. That's impossible, right? So this is an automated system. What this automated system does is it gets the information, it flows it, it keeps it from creation disposition, it keeps it going, right? And so what will happen is these officers, FOIA privacy records officers, all these officers within the organization, what they will do is if there's an issue like a privacy issue within a record or something like that, it will trigger a privacy officer review. Or if a record, for example, is past disposition date or something like that, it will trigger a records officer review, right? Or risk within these stage, within the automated phase of this uh this AI system, it will trigger these individuals to take a look at this record. So they all work together. And they in the system, they all see what's going on. They all see all the records from creation to disposition, to status, everything about it. So that's the beautiful thing about AI. AI can is a tool. A lot of people are scared that AI is going to take their job. AI will never take your job because AI does not have that human capability that we do. It's just a tool to assist us. And in especially in automation, amazing. Where records are just so vast, so big, AI can just scale everything through for you. Scale it through. And then when something is of um a significance or when the AI feels like, hey, this needs to be some attention, what the AI does is triggers the experts to come in to say, hey, okay, handle this, tackle this. And that's how I view the UIGM in the future, as a huge automated system that combines all the disciplines together and they all work together.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Yeah, and I think it's a really important point what you said about AI, um, because actually uh the benefits of it, as you articulated, so well explained, but AI doesn't influence, AI doesn't explain things to senior leaders. I mean, it doesn't documentation, but you need a peop a person to present that. AA kind of doesn't lead organisations to manage their information effectively, and I I think that is some of the things that people are missing. So it does make us more effective, but those are the the key soft skills that I'm very, very passionate about, certainly in our industry, that we will still be there to do these things. And that's very much personal influence, innovation, and also our mindsets and personal branding as well. Yeah. So if listeners who are leaders want to implement your model today, what does their organization look like 10 years from now compared to one stuck in a status quo? Now it's a magic question.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

So tell me, tell me. I'm excited. So right now, most organizations are, whether you're in the private sector, whether you're government, whether you're in uh a private organization, you know, they struggle with information governance. They struggle with just basically governing your information. Sometimes some some some private organizations they hire different experts, they either privacy expert to figure it out, or an IG expert, or even like they have the different experts. Right now, what in the future UIGM can offer is overview. It can offer a world where you have access to everything, where you can see it all. You don't have to work in fragmentations anymore. You don't have to work in silos anymore. You have one system where everything lives. All disciplines work together. They work together, they collaborate. From the moment information hits your organization, all of them to the moment it's disposed of, everybody knows everything. You know everything. But sometimes you have to act with different experts for everything. It's like, hey, they all can see in one system. They all collaborate, they all know exactly what's going on. So there's no blind spots. All your processes get streamlined. And so, and then your public, your customers or the public, they have better understanding of your whole system, of how it runs in your system because everybody is in the loop. When no one is working in silos, I guarantee you, everybody is in accordance, everybody understands everything, everything is streamlined. You have better reports. You can tell one report to the public, this is how we govern your information on a full scope. This is not how the privacy works, this is not how the the FOIA work or whatever the areas are where our cybersecurity work. No, everybody knows what's going on, all threats are minimized, everything is works well in one loop, in one unified manner. That's why it's called unified information governance uh model because you're unifying your information governance structure and everybody knows everything. So, for the listeners, what's the one key takeaway that you'd ask them to take away from this podcast today? One thing I want to take away, if you don't learn anything else, broaden your mind, broaden your knowledge. That's what happened to me. Years ago, I was in FOIA and privacy, just that. I decided to take on records management. That's the it's the best decision I could have ever made because I brought my lawn, my knowledge, and I was able to understand the full scope of my job. It wasn't just about privacy. It wasn't just about FOIA. It wasn't just that. There's a bigger picture here. And this is how we govern our information. And I dig deeper and deeper and realize all these fields connect. Cybersecurity connect. Where do you think these information live? They live in information systems, right? Who guards those information systems? The security expert. I'm telling you, I could go on and on and on if I had time, but they all intersect, they all connect, and you'll understand the bigger picture if you broaden your knowledge and go outside your field.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Amazing. Dr. Moyer, you've been absolutely sensational. How can listeners reach out to you if they want to know more?

SPEAKER_00 21:28

The number one way you can reach out to me is through linking. I'm very active on Linkin. I post very regularly, and you will thoroughly enjoy and you will learn something.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Thank you for listening to the journals of the information entrepreneur with me, Jacqueline Stockwell. I hope you found this episode inspiring and helpful and have some takeaway tips that can be useful to you. If you liked this episode, please like, review, and share it with your friends. Your support helps us reach more information leaders to stay inspired and listen to great content. I want to test out your Strengths and weaknesses and measure it against our Empower framework. Please complete the scorecard. It's a great way to improve and evaluate your skills. You can find the scorecard at the end of the description of this podcast. Stay tuned for new podcasts every Thursday and remember to be bold, be brave, and be beautiful.