It's All About Preservation

Since the beginning of time, humankind has attempted to preserve and share information. From the early cave drawings to electronically created information of today, the challenge and desire is to preserve the knowledge we have gained through experience and share it with others so that they may learn from us and improve.

In the world of content management, conceptually, there is no difference other than applying structure to the process. We now decide what we will save, how it will be saved, how long we need to keep it and who can access it. Preservation of information is vital to our existence and to our businesses for growth and improvement. The fact that we now add structure through classification and consistent taxonomic assignment across the enterprise allows us to find this information and share this knowledge in a more expedient manner.

ECM allows us to provide the right information to the right people when they need it and prohibit access by those who are not authorized to see it. It allows us to preserve information of all types and with proper techniques and practices, make it available for many years ahead for use by future generations. What we have to do is look at all of the options available to us in establishing consistent practices to evolve our information retention formats and technology for this purpose. It is no small task but if we look at emerging standards like PDF/A as an example, we have a good chance to accomplish this daunting task.

It is all about preservation. Preservation of information that will be useful in the future. Preservation of information that enables knowledge transfer among the human resources within our businesses. Preservation that is consistent in nature and compliant with the stringent regulations imposed by government, industry and corporate governance.

The question you must now ask is whether you have a preservation strategy in place and if you do, is it enough?

Bob Larrivee - AIIM