Electronic Records Management (ERM)
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 in Records Management
- 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 smartphones
- This content is often stored on external servers and social media managed by 3rd 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
- 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
Applying paper-based records management principles to electronic records feels like we are asking a blacksmith to fix our sports car. So, what do we need to do to move forward? How do we move beyond the paper paradigm for records management?
