Records Management vs. Information Governance: Cutting Through the Data Noise – E135

About this episode

This episode explores the differences between records management and information governance, emphasizing the importance of governance in business strategy.

What's the difference between records management and information governance — and why should anyone running a business care? In this episode of What Counts, Lee Karas and Maura Dunn step back from the weeds of counterparty data to answer a deceptively simple question: what is information governance, and why is it the natural next step? Maura traces the journey from a world where creating a record was hard and expensive — clay tablets, hand-copied scrolls, the Federal Records Act — to today, where producing information takes ten seconds and most of it is noise. Along the way they untangle the vocabulary (governance is strategy and the "why"; management is execution), revisit the records-management principles that still hold true, and show how information governance helps you surface the small slice of information that actually runs your business. They close with practical moves you can make now: stop making copies, send a link instead of an attachment, and standardize and automate your contracts so your best people spend their time where the value and the risk actually live. This episode builds on Episode 134, where Lee and Maura broke down how to keep counterparty and vendor data…

People in this episode

Host: Lee Karas

Guest: Maura Dunn

Topics covered

• records management
• information governance
• data strategy
• business management
• information noise

Keywords

• records management
• information governance
• data noise
• business strategy
• contract automation

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: TrailBlazer Consulting, LLC

Books & works: Federal Records Act

More episodes of What Counts?

• Stop Counterparty Data Sprawl: Centralize & Control Vendor Information Before Contracts Begin – E134 · May 18, 2026 · 13 min
• Counterparty Data Reconciliation at Scale: A 350,000-Record Case Study – E133 · May 4, 2026 · 21 min
• Your Data Is Lying To You: Why Reconciliation Has To Come Before AI – E132 · April 21, 2026 · 27 min
• Your Data Is Messy – Can AI Actually Handle It? – E131 · April 6, 2026 · 19 min
• Contract Data Governance: Why AI Alone Won’t Fix Conflicting Terms – E130 · March 23, 2026 · 17 min
• Solving the Growth-Governance Tension: How to Accelerate Without Losing Control – E129 · March 9, 2026 · 13 min