Hungry for "IT Staffers"? Hire RIMs to get the job done!

Once again, there seems to be massive confusion (on the part of IT) as to whose responsibility records management is. Every time this issue comes up, someone deposits an opinion that RIM is as simple as pie, and now that it's becoming an issue of interest to organizations around the globe, others are attempting to hijack what they cast off as "administrative work" for years.

And while this was happening, those of us deeply involved in this work for decades have been writing the standards and technical reports, guidelines, and articles to provide others guidance on how to implement the best prtactices associated with effective records and information management. We didn't wait for an invitation, we didn't wait for the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to change, we just did it as a part of our normal course of business. And did I mention ARMA is a non-profit professional association fueled by the power of unpaid volunteer members? Well, it is.

Evaluating information management practices and establishing solid procedures to eliminate the duplication of unnecessary data, bad policies for retention of backups beyond required periods, failure to ensure the right information is kept for the right lengths of time, control access to content, etc. are the types of compliance concerns RIMs have been helping organizations eliminate for decades. The processes and practices used for effective management of information assets generated and received in paper form are adaptable to electronic/digital forms of information as well. The object to to provide proper access to and control of information assets, regardless of form, format or medium. While this definition may apply specifically to records generated in the Federal sector, the laws and regulations that apply to the management of information assets typically come from that arena as well.

There is much IT can learn from RIM about the practices, but there is also a fine line between who should be doing what. Much of the trouble business is in presently, the massive amounts of data and e-mail being stored without any indexing, control, or order, is the responsibility of the IT staff that long held that "Storage is cheap and getting cheaper, just buy more storage... there's no need to manage your information". Now that it's been found that information can be both an asset and a curse, IT wants to provide "tools" to attempt to repair the problem.

Most organizations will be better served having IT manage the tools and establish the networks that provide access to the content and allow RIM to work with legal and others involved in the business processes to establish the path forward for dealing with the volumes of information, including developing the criteria to determine what can be eliminated and what needs to be retained, and for how long.