ARMA InfoCon 2025 marked a major milestone: 70 years of advancing the practice and profession of information governance. LexShift was honored to participate in this year’s conference with a full slate of workshops, panels, and roundtable conversations alongside industry peers and clients who continue to shape the future of IG.
Throughout the week, several themes consistently emerged. While the challenges facing IG professionals remain, the way organizations are approaching them is clearly evolving. Below are five key takeaways from our sessions, client conversations, and our annual Client & Friends Breakfast Roundtable, which brought together professionals from both public and private sectors for a candid exchange of ideas.
1. Organizations Still Struggle to Define IG
Across industries, many organizations continue to grapple with a fundamental question: what does information governance really mean? Too often, IG is viewed as a renamed version of records management.
But there is an important distinction. Records management focuses on execution—maintaining compliance, applying retention, and managing the lifecycle of records. Information governance is strategic. It defines who is accountable, what policies apply, and how decisions align with business risk, regulatory frameworks, and enterprise value.
At LexShift, we help organizations clarify this distinction and build governance models that align stakeholders around a shared understanding of purpose and accountability.
2. Executive Buy-In Remains a Challenge
IG professionals continue to report difficulty securing meaningful and sustained executive support. While many business leaders support IG in principle, the value proposition is often unclear or misaligned with enterprise priorities.
The takeaway is not that executives need to be educated, but that IG needs to be reframed in business terms. Governance enables operational efficiency, supports regulatory readiness, and reduces long-term legal and financial risk.
LexShift’s advisory work focuses on helping IG teams position their work in ways that resonate with the C-suite and connect directly to organizational outcomes.
3. Retention Schedules Are Still a Sticking Point
Retention schedules continue to present challenges. Many are outdated, siloed, or difficult to maintain. This was a recurring topic at both our conference sessions and our client breakfast discussion.
Participants noted that while policy ownership is often well-defined, responsibility for updates and enforcement is less clear. Public sector teams cited staffing constraints as a major hurdle. In contrast, some private sector organizations reported success by empowering departments to take ownership of compliance, with the IG team serving as a policy steward rather than an enforcer.
LexShift’s Orchestrate solution supports this model. It streamlines the development and maintenance of legally sound, business-aligned retention schedules that can be maintained in a collaborative, scalable way.
4. Operationalizing Retention Remains a Major Hurdle
Even with up-to-date policies and retention schedules, applying them across diverse and fragmented data environments remains a significant challenge.
Our roundtable participants shared varying experiences with electronic recordkeeping enforcement. Public sector teams reported gaps tied to staffing, while some private organizations have adopted a decentralized approach. One regional bank, for example, empowers departments to implement policy locally. The IG function simply provides the authoritative source and guidance.
LexShift’s Illuminate helps address these issues by enabling organizations to identify, classify, and manage data in alignment with governance frameworks, improving both visibility and compliance across repositories.
5. The Role of IG Professionals Is Shifting
One of the most thought-provoking conversations from our Client & Friends Breakfast focused on how the role of the IG professional is evolving.
There was consensus that IG teams are responsible for managing records, regardless of format. But when it comes to digital records, public and private sector approaches vary significantly. In the public sector, lack of resources often limits enforcement capacity. In the private sector, some professionals see themselves as policy publishers, not policy enforcers.
This shift reflects a broader trend. IG professionals are increasingly being asked to lead through influence, not control. As governance grows more distributed and embedded within business functions, success depends on clarity, accountability, and practical support—not central enforcement alone.
Looking Ahead
ARMA’s 70th anniversary is a reminder that while the terminology and tools have changed, the core goals of IG remain constant: clarity, defensibility, and accountability.
What has changed is the environment. The complexity of modern data ecosystems requires a different approach—one that connects governance frameworks with operational realities and delivers real-world execution.
At LexShift, we are committed to supporting that shift through practical consulting, flexible solutions like Orchestrate and Illuminate, and an ongoing dialogue with the IG community.
To learn more about how we work or to connect with our team, visit lexshift.com.
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