Info Governance
New Challenges and Tools for Records Managers
Records management (RM) is not generally perceived to be sexy work—records managers are usually not high-profile heroes in their organizations. And yet, the importance of a records manager’s job continues to grow as information governance becomes critical to many organizations. In the past, records managers generally had responsibility for paper records, organizing and maintaining a file plan. Even though the RM system may not match the way that users organized their documents, the records manager knew how to store and retrieve the records as required and eventually to run disposition as required by the organization’s policies.
The advent of electronically stored information (ESI) has changed the way records are created, stored and maintained, and while many organizations continue to maintain physical records, they must also now contend with a growing array of electronic records. The challenges of electronic records are twofold—there is a proliferation of formats that contain information that organizations consider as records; and there is the challenge of knowing how to track all of that potential content. Remember, a record is anything that a company considers to be relevant to their business, so that can range from traditional sources such as forms, official documents and spreadsheets to newer content types such as blogs, wikis, tweets or even Facebook entries.
In heavily regulated industries such as financial services or pharmaceuticals, records management has usually already been implemented, and many records managers in these organizations report to the legal arm of their organization. Although systems are in place, they must now respond to the challenge of incorporating new types of content. For these companies, new content types challenge the systems built upon strict rules.
Many organizations in other industries are just starting to think about records and retention, and records managers frequently report to the IT organization in a nod to the complex challenges involved in tracking content that resides in multiple locations. For these organizations, both challenges are apparent—proliferation of content and tracking, and controlling it. Keeping records managers close to IT implies that information governance is as much a tactical concern of finding information and controlling it from a logistics perspective as the more strategic and business-focused challenge of maintaining and using it as a record.
The Challenge of the Unstructured
Finding information or content and knowing how to control it is certainly one of the key stages of information governance. One such content type is unstructured file servers or file shares. Organizations need tools to discover and classify unmanaged files before they can archive them. And they need full-text indexing to identify files based on content so that, for example, they can sort information that contains confidential data such as Social Security numbers or credit card information. Once that information has been located and identified, one of several steps may need to be taken, including migrating content to lower cost tiered storage, archiving inactive business content for retention and deletion or moving valuable content to secure records repositories like an ECM system. Another capability that IT managers need is the ability to move files onto tiered archiving storage that provides lower-cost and compliant storage. Finally if the identified content no longer has business value, then they should be able to safely delete it and know that all copies have indeed been expunged from the information infrastructure.
The preceding paragraph really addresses the tactical side of information governance, and the steps needed to identify and move the information. The other, strategic half of the challenge, of course, is to identify new types of content that may be a record and decide how to handle those. Ideally this should be planned before new content types are in common use. Records managers approach electronic records differently than physical ones. Electronic repositories generally work best when you save information in big buckets—meaning having fewer policies that address the broadest organizational needs. An example of this: if finance, HR and legal all require that various document types be saved for three years, then it’s best to have one three-year policy and apply that to all relevant content, rather than to create multiple versions of what is in effect the same policy.
A similar big bucket approach can also be taken with new content types. As each new social media or Web 2.0 technology emerges and becomes mainstream, the tendency is to approach that technology individually regarding its value and how to handle it. A better approach is to ask what types of content are being created in a medium and whether or not that content counts as a business record. A Facebook page entry inviting people to download a white paper may not count as a business record as the original content is already maintained, but a discussion on Facebook about new products and best practices may indeed be a record. The individual technology is only important insofar as you have a method for capturing the content and a repository for maintaining it and applying retention and/or holds to it.
Records managers generally do not manage the IT systems that make information governance possible, and they usually look to the legal department to determine what policies should be and which content is covered. But day-to-day, they are the custodians of those policies and the users of the IT systems. Without them, information governance is much harder to achieve and maintain. With the right tools and approaches to emerging content, records managers can help organizations rise to the challenge of identifying and controlling new content in multiple repositories.
For more information, visit EMC.com/RM or email either emc.com/sourcecity or goodgovernance@emc.com.