Digital Landfill

Thanks to my colleague for this contribution...

The Problem

There is something very wrong with how organizations manage information of business or legal value. Most ECM or ERM systems are not deployed across an enterprise --  they are usually implemented in large and regulated industries to improve the control of information in a specific department or process.

Why do so few business executives care about records management? The answer is complex, but here are a few thoughts...

Market trends

• Content of business or legal value is created by knowledge workers 24-7
• This content is created on a variety of corporate and personal laptops and smart phones
• This content is often stored on external servers and social media managed by 3^rd parties
• Volume is increasing exponentially, and records are increasingly created in conversations in instant messages, tweets, chat rooms, discussion forums, etc.
• It is now cheaper to store electronic content than to get rid of it -- or at least that is the conventional wisdom -- which is why many organizations decide to keep most of it
• New communication channels and devices are introduced by knowledge workers leveraging consumer IT since enterprise IT is considered slow and tedious 

Consequences

The above trends are a paradigm shift for records management. Principles from “paper-based” records management where all staff are accountable for identifying, capturing and classifying electronic information of “administrative, operational, fiscal, legal or evidential value” (according to ISO15489-1) does not work. Volume kills the manual processes, and organization can’t specify how information is stored or managed on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The Result is a Digital Landfill (& a good name for a blog!)

• Most shared drives and SharePoint sites look like a digital landfill with little or no control
• 47% rate Office docs “Somewhat unmanaged or very unmanaged”
• 52% rate Emails “Somewhat unmanaged or very unmanaged”
• 72% rate Blogs and wikis “Somewhat unmanaged or very unmanaged”
• 74% rate Instant messages “Somewhat unmanaged or very unmanaged”

And if we look at email in more detail...

• 45% of organizations do not have a policy on Outlook “Archive settings,” so most users will likely create .pst archive files on local drives.
• 34% of organizations never delete emails, 31% have no policy, 8% delete when running out of storage space, 27% delete after 1- 24 months
• 33% of organizations have no policy to deal with legal discovery, 40% would likely have to search back-up tapes, and 23% feel they would have gaps from deleted emails.

And if the electronic information has legal value;

• 38% often print newly generated office documents and file them as paper records since they DO NOT have a good solution to manage electronic records.
• 43% often print important emails and file them as paper records
• 33% often print anything that may need to be accessed for audit

What do we need to do to move forward?

Does this increasingly feel like we are ? (The link is a presentation I gave on the topic...)

How do we move beyond the paper paradigm for records management?

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Check out...

AIIM Records Management Community

AIIM Records Management Microsite

AIIM Records Management Training

AIIM State of the ECM Industry survey (with a large dose of ERM stats)