Every business is in the business of the business. In other words, every organization - public sector or private, small or gigantic, and regardless of structure or geographic location, has a mission and organizational goals and objectives upon which it focuses.
Similarly, every organization and every department, office, and function within an organization creates or captures records that document the business of the business. These records are maintained in a formal way to ensure their evidentiary value as well as support ongoing operational needs.
Records are to be safeguarded for as long as they have business value, and then they should be sent to the archives or destroyed. And records should be managed according to that value, not dependent on their physical or logical format.
The problem is that while the principles remain applicable, too many organizations focus on records management as a necessary evil or a compliance checkbox.
In his recent book Infonomics, Gartner's Doug Laney argues for managing information as a valuable asset and uses the term "information asset management" to describe his approach to doing so. He's not alone - a number of authors and analysts have argued for similar approaches. If information is your most valuable asset - as AIIM, and many vendors, analysts, and consultants argue it is - why would you leave that information hidden away in databases, left to stagnate until it can be discarded?
Instead, organizations should seek to leverage the value of their information, and especially their records, to support and enable the business. This means the focus for records and information management has to shift from managing static repositories to managing information in motion.
It means that organizations need to get away from moving at the speed of paper to digitizing everything that moves.
And it means that records managers need to gain a certain amount of comfort with uncertainty and recognize that, while principles of effective records management still apply, modern records management techniques will need to become more flexible and more automated. "Streamline and automate" must become the records management rallying cry.