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A Glossary of Key Roles and Responsibilities in Information Governance
In today’s data-driven world, effective information governance is not just a best practice—it’s a necessity, especially for HR and recruiting professionals handling vast amounts of sensitive personal data. Understanding the key roles and responsibilities involved is crucial for ensuring compliance, mitigating risks, and streamlining operations. This glossary defines essential terms, providing clarity on who does what in maintaining data integrity, security, and ethical standards within your organization.
Information Governance (IG)
Information Governance (IG) is a strategic framework for managing an organization’s information assets, encompassing policies, procedures, and controls. For HR and recruiting, IG ensures that candidate data, employee records, and sensitive organizational information are handled ethically, legally, and efficiently from creation to disposal. It’s critical for compliance with regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and various industry-specific data protection laws. Effective IG prevents data breaches, ensures data quality for analytics, and supports defensible data retention practices, ultimately safeguarding the company’s reputation and avoiding costly fines. In an automated context, IG defines the rules for how automated systems should process, store, and secure data, providing the foundational guardrails for every piece of information flow.
Data Steward
A Data Steward is an individual or role responsible for the quality, integrity, and usability of an organization’s data assets. In HR and recruiting, a Data Steward might oversee specific datasets such as applicant tracking system (ATS) data, employee demographics, or performance review information. Their responsibilities include ensuring data accuracy, consistency, and compliance with established policies and regulations. They act as a liaison between data users and IT, resolving data-related issues and promoting data literacy within their domain. For automated HR processes, a Data Steward is crucial for verifying that data inputs are clean and outputs are reliable, ensuring that automated workflows operate with trustworthy information, minimizing errors in reporting, and supporting fair and unbiased recruiting practices.
Data Owner
A Data Owner is typically a senior business leader who holds ultimate accountability for specific data sets within an organization. Unlike Data Stewards who manage data operationally, Data Owners are responsible for making high-level decisions regarding data classification, access rights, and overall data strategy. In an HR context, a VP of HR might be the Data Owner for all employee master data, while a Chief Recruiting Officer might own all candidate data. Their role is to ensure the data aligns with business objectives, regulatory requirements, and risk management strategies. They authorize data usage, retention periods, and ensure that data stewardship practices are effectively implemented. Their decisions directly impact how automated systems can access, process, and retain sensitive HR and candidate information.
Information Security Officer (ISO)
An Information Security Officer (ISO) is responsible for developing, implementing, and managing an organization’s information security program. This includes identifying and mitigating security risks, ensuring compliance with security standards, and responding to security incidents. For HR and recruiting, the ISO’s role is paramount in protecting highly sensitive personal data, such as Social Security numbers, bank details, and health information, against unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction. They work to secure applicant tracking systems, HRIS platforms, and communication channels. In the realm of automation, the ISO ensures that all automated workflows involving data transfer or storage adhere to stringent security protocols, preventing vulnerabilities that could expose sensitive employee or candidate information during automated onboarding or background checks.
Chief Information Officer (CIO) / Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
While distinct, the CIO and CTO often share overlapping responsibilities in information governance. The CIO typically focuses on the strategic use of information technology to meet business goals, overseeing IT infrastructure, systems, and data management. The CTO, on the hand, often focuses on the technology itself, including the development and implementation of new technologies. In the context of HR and recruiting, these roles are crucial for selecting and integrating secure HRIS, ATS, and other HR tech platforms. They ensure that the underlying technological infrastructure supports data privacy, security, and accessibility requirements. For automation initiatives, the CIO/CTO leadership ensures that automation platforms are robust, scalable, and compliant with enterprise architecture and security policies, enabling efficient and secure automated HR and recruiting workflows.
Legal Counsel
Legal Counsel plays a critical role in information governance by advising the organization on all legal matters related to data handling, privacy, and compliance. This includes interpreting complex data protection laws (e.g., GDPR, CCPA, PIPL), reviewing data retention policies, and guiding the company on legal holds and e-discovery processes. For HR and recruiting professionals, Legal Counsel ensures that hiring practices, background checks, employee data management, and termination procedures adhere to labor laws, anti-discrimination regulations, and data privacy statutes. Their input is essential in crafting compliant consent forms for data collection and in managing data in the event of litigation or regulatory inquiry. They are integral to designing automated processes that are legally defensible and mitigate regulatory risks.
Records Manager
A Records Manager is responsible for the systematic control of an organization’s records throughout their lifecycle, from creation and receipt to maintenance, use, and disposal. In HR and recruiting, this role is vital for managing employment applications, offer letters, personnel files, performance reviews, and termination documents. They ensure that records are properly classified, stored, and accessible when needed, while also adhering to retention schedules and legal requirements for deletion. Effective records management is foundational to information governance, ensuring compliance and providing accurate historical data for audits or legal proceedings. In an automated environment, the Records Manager works to integrate digital record-keeping systems with automation tools, ensuring that automated document generation and filing comply with record retention policies.
Privacy Officer (CPO)
A Privacy Officer, often designated as a Chief Privacy Officer (CPO) or Data Protection Officer (DPO), is responsible for overseeing an organization’s data privacy strategy and ensuring compliance with privacy laws and regulations. Their role is to establish and enforce privacy policies, conduct privacy impact assessments, and manage responses to data subject access requests (DSARs). In HR and recruiting, the CPO is particularly crucial due to the highly sensitive nature of personal data collected from candidates and employees. They ensure that data collection, processing, and storage practices respect individual privacy rights and align with regulations like GDPR and CCPA. The CPO guides the implementation of privacy-by-design principles in automated HR and recruiting systems, ensuring privacy considerations are embedded from the outset.
Compliance Officer
A Compliance Officer ensures that an organization adheres to external laws, regulations, and internal policies, as well as ethical standards. While overlapping with Legal Counsel and the Privacy Officer, the Compliance Officer’s focus is broader, often covering industry-specific regulations and internal codes of conduct. In HR and recruiting, they ensure that hiring, employment, and termination practices comply with labor laws, equal opportunity regulations, and any specific industry certifications required. They monitor internal controls, conduct audits, and provide training to staff on compliance matters. Their role is to minimize legal risks and protect the organization’s reputation. In an automated context, the Compliance Officer validates that automated HR workflows, such as background checks or payroll processing, are compliant with all relevant statutes and internal controls.
HR Information Systems (HRIS) Manager
The HRIS Manager oversees the selection, implementation, maintenance, and optimization of the organization’s Human Resources Information Systems. This vital role ensures that HR data is accurately stored, managed, and accessible, facilitating various HR functions from payroll and benefits to talent management and reporting. In the context of information governance, the HRIS Manager is responsible for configuring system security, managing user access roles, and ensuring data integrity within the HRIS platform. They work closely with IT, Data Stewards, and Compliance Officers to align HRIS functionalities with data retention policies, privacy regulations, and reporting requirements. For automated HR, the HRIS Manager is central to integrating the HRIS with other systems via automation tools, ensuring seamless data flow and process automation while maintaining data governance standards.
Recruiting Operations Manager
The Recruiting Operations Manager is responsible for optimizing the efficiency, effectiveness, and scalability of the recruiting function. This includes designing and improving recruitment processes, managing applicant tracking systems (ATS), and implementing recruiting technologies. In terms of information governance, this role is critical for ensuring that candidate data is collected, processed, and stored in a compliant manner within the ATS and related platforms. They work to establish clear data entry standards, manage data cleanup initiatives, and ensure that candidate privacy rights are respected throughout the recruitment lifecycle. For automation, the Recruiting Operations Manager spearheads initiatives to automate repetitive tasks like candidate sourcing, scheduling, and onboarding, ensuring these automated workflows adhere to data retention, privacy, and ethical guidelines.
Data Retention Policy
A Data Retention Policy is a formal document outlining how long specific types of data should be kept and how they should be disposed of. For HR and recruiting, this policy dictates the lifecycle of employee records, applicant resumes, interview notes, and other sensitive information. Its purpose is twofold: to ensure compliance with legal and regulatory requirements (e.g., tax laws, anti-discrimination statutes, privacy regulations) and to minimize risks associated with holding unnecessary data. An effective policy prevents over-retention, which can lead to increased storage costs and greater exposure in the event of a data breach or legal discovery. Automation can play a key role in enforcing these policies by automatically archiving or deleting data past its retention period, ensuring systematic compliance.
Legal Hold
A Legal Hold (also known as a preservation order or litigation hold) is a process initiated when an organization is notified of impending or ongoing litigation, audit, or investigation. It suspends the normal data retention and destruction policies for specific data that may be relevant to the case. For HR and recruiting, this means preserving all potentially relevant employee or candidate records, communications, and other digital assets, even if they would normally be scheduled for deletion. Failure to implement a legal hold effectively can lead to severe legal penalties, including sanctions or adverse inferences in court. Automation can assist in identifying and preserving relevant data across various HR and recruiting systems, though human oversight is crucial to ensure all scope parameters of the hold are met.
Data Minimization
Data Minimization is a core principle of privacy by design, advocating that organizations should only collect, process, and retain the minimum amount of personal data necessary to achieve a specified purpose. In HR and recruiting, this means questioning why certain candidate or employee data points are collected and ensuring that only essential information is gathered. For example, not collecting sensitive demographic data unless legally required or directly relevant to the hiring process. This principle reduces the potential impact of data breaches, lowers storage costs, and simplifies compliance with privacy regulations. Implementing data minimization often involves reviewing application forms, onboarding processes, and HRIS fields, and can be supported by automation that prompts for only necessary information or flags excessive data collection.
Access Control
Access Control refers to the security measures that regulate who can view, use, or modify information within an organization’s systems. In the context of HR and recruiting, robust access control is crucial for protecting sensitive employee and candidate data. This involves implementing role-based access (e.g., recruiters only see candidate profiles, HR managers see employee master data, payroll specialists access financial details), strong authentication methods (e.g., multi-factor authentication), and regular audits of access logs. Effective access control prevents unauthorized disclosure of confidential information, reduces the risk of internal data breaches, and ensures compliance with privacy regulations. Automation tools can be configured to manage access permissions dynamically based on job roles or project assignments, enhancing security and operational efficiency.
If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: HR & Recruiting’s Guide to Defensible Data: Retention, Legal Holds, and CRM-Backup
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