Do you manage electronic records as well as you do paper?

In a recent AIIM Industry Watch Report based on Electronic Records Management (ERM) titled Electronic Records Management - still playing catch-up with paper, we found that electronic records are still taken less seriously than physical records. We also found that it appears organizations are placing the responsibility for applying good records management practices to electronic records is being placed on IT rather than the records manager. Several other key findings from this report include:

· Electronic records are more than twice as likely to be described as “Unmanaged” than paper records

· 71% of organizations have a procedure for legal hold of paper records in the event of litigation, but only 57% have one for electronic records

· For 25% of organizations, legal discovery of paper records would take at least a month, whereas for electronic records this is 17%

· There is a reliance on IT staff to carry out legal discovery on electronic records in the majority of companies, whereas records management staff or line-of-business staff deals with paper records.

The report continues to cite that:

· Of those organizations with no ECM/ERM system, 60% would not be confident, if challenged, that their electronic records have not been changed, deleted or inappropriately accessed

· 38% of those polled admit that there is little or no enforcement of their records management policies and 55% set no guidance on dealing with important emails as records

· 31% of organizations have 20 or more content repositories that could usefully be linked, with email as the highest priority content

· Over 70% of organizations have made no plans or provision for long-term archiving of electronic records, with no policies for migrating to new media, translating formats, or virtualization of applications

 

In my view, this is somewhat disturbing as the only thing different between a physical record and an electronic record is the format in which it is contained. The idea that IT should be responsible for applying good records management practices to electronic records is placing the organization at risk that the right information is not being kept and there would be a lack of compliance with records retention policies. The good news is an encouraging number of organizations are homogenising their electronic and physical policies and practices, and many are moving to an all-electronic model, linking their repositories together in order to improve the legal discovery process and enhance operational efficiency.

 

Organization need to recognize that records management practices should embrace and include electronic records as part of the overall records management program. Just like the physical, records retention, security and disposition policies apply and there is no reason or excuse in today’s business world that this should be different. In my view of an ideal world, Records management is responsible to set policy and manage the activities for all records with IT in place establish and maintain the technology infrastructure that supports those policies and activities. While I do not feel the exclusion of electronic records as part of an overall records management program is intentional, I do feel that the underlying problem is one of being overwhelmed and not knowing how to begin. The first step in all of this it the make the first step be a realization that records are records regardless of format and they need to be addressed as part of the “total” records management program.

 

What say you? How are you managing your electronic records? Do you have a story to tell? I want to hear from you and learn what you and your organization are doing.

 

Looking to increase your level of knowledge? Join us for the ECM Certificate course in:

• Toronto 10/27/09 - 10/30/09
• San Francisco 11/10/09 - 11/13/09
• Houston 11/17/09 - 11/20/09
• San Diego 12/01/09 - 12/04/09
• Philadelphia 12/08/09 – 12/11/09

 

Join us for the ERM Certificate course in:

 

• San Diego 11/10/09 - 11/13/09
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We look forward to seeing you there.

 

Are you going to DocuBusiness ‘09 in Milan Italy? If so, be sure to attend a great session by Doug Miles, Research Director for AIIM. Doug is also conducting a new survey on BPM and you can participate by simply going to www.aiimhost.com/survey and answer the series of questions presented.

 

Bob Larrivee – AIIM

blarrivee@aiim.org

Follow me on twitter – BobLarrivee and remember to visit www.aiim.org/training and www.informationzen.org, AIIM’s free social network created just for you.

Comments

[Dan Longo]

Bob: We've seen paper systems go on-line, get printed for awhile, then just stored electronically as IT added ever more cheap memory. As records managers, a lot of us were still managing the voluminous paper records, while IT was supporting the on-line systems - systems with data that didn't look like records - information maybe not on a retention schedule. Years pass, now the RM is faced with some challenging questions. How do I manage relational databases, 3-D engineering output, SAP content? Well, not alone, but with the collaboration of IT. But, the RM has to take the pro-active role. IT folks are not and don't want to be RMs. RMs don't want to be programmers. Your last sentence is the starting point - a total RM program, regardless of format, written into policy. With executive support and RM at the table with IT, we can move those percentages from disturbing towards comforting.