Getting rid of all the stuff.. is that reality?
I just spent the last week attending the Managing Electronic Records (MER) conference and listening to some fabulous sessions. I was pleasantly surprised the see the focus of many sessions on addressing the challenges that organizations are facing today. Yes, some speakers focused on topics that organizations will not get to for a while, but overall, the quality and content of the sessions was relevant and excellent. In addition, I spent many, many hours (actually days) speaking with prospects and customers about their Information Governance programs. One theme, or topic of discussion, kept emerging–dispositioning content; or should I say, “How do we get people to destroy content?”! As you all know, our inherent behavior is to hoard all our information because, you know, we will need it someday… right? Not!
The fact is, keeping everything forever poses way too much risk and, not to mention, costs way too much. Yes, you may keep hearing storage is cheap but it’s really not so cheap once you add in all the costs associated to reviewing content in response to an eDiscovery request. So how can organizations move forward and get rid of the information they don’t need? They need to start by understanding the value of an Information Governance Program and how Records Management is just a component of it. Yes, an important one, but nevertheless, just a part of it.
Records and Information Management (RIM) is the field of management responsible for the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use, and disposition of records, including processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of and information about business activities and transactions in the form of records. Why can’t we leverage what we know from a RIM perspective and apply it to all information? That way, all the key stakeholders in your organization that care about the costs, risks, and value of information will benefit. IT will have less information to store, Legal will have less content to sift through, the End Users will be able to leverage up-to-date information that is pertinent to their role and business, and RIM will extend their role to more than just records by owning the policies that will dictate when all information can be deleted! A win-win for all, don’t you think?
I do realize it will take time, money and lots of education, but it can happen with a realizable ROI.
So where do you start and how do you begin to make this happen? It was clear from many of my conversations at MER that RIM, Legal, IT and End Users are starting to make this happen within their organizations – an example is the movement towards a broader classification model (also referred to as the big bucket approach). This in itself helps simplify the management of all the information out there. Second, I suggest reading Barclay Blair’s latest Executive Brief: Information Governance & Records Management: Understanding the Difference. It will provide some specific steps to start to make this happen.
So, is getting rid of all the stuff a reality? Absolutely!
