Electronic Records Management (ERM)
Continuing to extend what we did with paper into the world of electronic information is like having a blacksmith work on your Lexus. At some point, we're all going to need to think through the implications of what we're doing right now. Like in Family Man, a favorite movie of mine, we get "glimpses" into something different, but we can't quite get our arms around it.
You listen to presentations by Google on using gmail in a corporate environment and the words "retention schedule" scarcely enter even the speaker's notes.
The Economist last year in the widely distributed Data Deluge special issue gave another glimpse -- "Now the information flows in an era of abundant data are changing the relationship between technology and the role of the state once again. Many of today’s rules look increasingly archaic. Privacy laws were not designed for networks. Rules for document retention presume paper records. And since all the information is interconnected, it needs global rules."
Do a Google search on "social media" and "retention schedule" and let me know what you get.
After my keynote last week, many people came up afterwards to report stories of retention schizophrenia ("a mental disorder that makes it difficult to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences, to think logically, to have normal emotional responses, and to behave normally in social situations...") within their organizations.
On the one hand, the social advocates and the knowledge management immigrants into the social space push their organizations to retain and to organize and to mine as much information as possible in order to improve the collective intelligence of the organization. On the other hand, the records and legal and compliance police are urging them to get rid of as much of it as they can.
The problem is that our legal, regulatory, and policy frameworks for managing electronic information are all constructed upon paper. We got away with this for a while. But the time is coming when we are no longer going to be able to manage electronic information based on a paradigm that is 500 years old. It's like asking a blacksmith to work on your Lexus. Or in my personal case, a PSION.
