7 Steps for Records Managers to Become More Relevant

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This is an outline of seven steps records managers can take to meet the challenges of electronic information-and help others realize the importance of their function. How? Simply, they must transform their function by expanding the definition and scope of their remit to the organization and pushing for better management of information stored in electronic formats. The nature of electronic records has transformed records management into an indispensable element of modern organizations. There is an opportunity within the challenges presented by electronic information for records managers to expand their scope beyond what it has ever been.

1. Expand the Role of Records Management to Include Documents
Update the old limits that defined business records. Often the first discussion around preserving email revolves around whether a particular email constitutes a business record. Is this distinction important? You may not consider a business document such as an email to be something that needs to be managed, stored, and discovered, but the courts and the regulators do. They also care about instant messages, SMS, database records, and many other types of electronically stored information. Therefore, the role of record management must flexibly grow to include an ever-expanding array of electronic document types.

This change alone will easily triple the number of record types with which records managers have to contend, and certainly does not settle the debate about what constitutes a record (which by the way is recorded information, regardless of form, made or received by an organization and may have fiscal, legal, evidential, or historical value). But there is no longer any reason to exclude them from the discussion. And if records managers do exclude some record types, you can bet someone either in IT or Legal will wind up with responsibility for their management.

This is not to say that all data constitutes a corporate record, however. Modern information systems often have many redundant copies of each piece of data, so a large volume of stored data can be eliminated from the discussion immediately. This includes copies for backup, test and development, disaster recovery, and "caches" for performance. Much electronic information can be considered a transitory record and thus, disposable information. Although computers often store records of works in progress in the form of automatic saves and temporary files, it is not clear at what point these become records. At the end of the day, management of electronic records becomes less an issue of retention, but rather one of control.

2. Sell the Other Stakeholder's on the Wins for Them
Teaching others about the benefits of record management can seem Quixotic, but this approach works! Good records and document management should bring windfalls for everyone and windmills for the Quixotic few among us. Better control and management gives end users more access to their information. More legally defensible records management and e-discovery programs make Legal happy. What IT wants most are clear requirements for managing and expiring data. Ongoing deletion of older, unneeded data drives down costs and makes the business units happy. Rather than trying to communicate the entirety of records management, focus on the benefits it provides to each stakeholder. Consider their pain points and the risks inherent in their daily work and propose individual benefits provided by better management of records. If you find your records project stalled, take a step back. "Sell" them on the benefits, not the process. Inform and engage instead of directing. Often something interesting happens. Projects start rolling forward, and gaining momentum. Companies are more likely to fund initiatives. It gets easier. Finally, stakeholders are selling you on records management.

3. Focus on Real-world Approaches That Can Be Executed
Good records management processes need not be overly complex. In fact, a simple retention schedule or classification policy that is more broadly applicable will normally be more effective than a minutely detailed one that cannot or will not be implemented with the time and technology at hand. Most retention policies are developed in response to regulations or legal considerations. Although the thicket of retention times can be difficult to navigate, most require retention of data for at least a certain amount of time. Rather than trying to classify every record type against every single compliance requirement from the start, recognize the ubiquitous nature of electronic records-define broader retention buckets that enable simpler retention categories. Good record retention schedules and processes for electronic documents and records are simpler and hence easier to execute. This not only satisfies the requirements of each record but is also simple to implement given the technology available for classification and data protection. This one retention target might encompass a higher percentage of a given organization's records, allowing greater focus on the outliers.

For example, records that must be retained for at least twelve months, or eighteen months, and two years could all be lumped together in the "two year" retention schedule. In this example, saving some of the records either six or twelve months longer than "required" may bug some people. It's admittedly an emotional issue. However, a records policy and schedule that is not followed is worse and puts the organization at greater risk than having no policy whatsoever. It may be required to make some compromises in the interest of actually doing what your policy says you will do.

4. Take an Active Role in E-discovery
It is a fact of today's business environment that most companies are going to get sued, and electronic records are increasingly the focus of discovery in these lawsuits. The courts have recognized that electronic data is a form of business record, which requires special handling. As a result of this recognition, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have been amended to include electronically stored information (ESI). Since these new FRCP amendments require companies to produce information in a very timely manner, records managers must take an active role in preparing for e-discovery. We believe that preservation, identification, classification, and management of documents relevant to litigation are fundamentally record management tasks. So why not have these done by a record manager?

Companies and public entities in general, and records managers in particular, must take a more active role in preparing for e-discovery, Implement modern data archives for frequently-sought records like email and office files with capabilities for search, legal hold, and continuous recording of information without gaps. Classification is also critical-records must be identified, classified, and retained according to organizational policies to avoid adverse judgments and potential sanctions. Sounds a lot like a records management function.

5. Limit Manual Processes for Electronic Documents
Gone are the days when manual processes could handle the comparatively small number of paper records created on a daily basis. Today, the average employee spends nearly eighty hours per month reading and creating email, and office workers spend much of the rest of their days creating other forms of electronic records such as presentations, documents, and spreadsheets. No manual process could keep up with this volume of records, and even the best is bound to lapse or fail on occasion, as in the example of the systems administrator mentioned above. Therefore, records managers must push for automated processes to the greatest extent possible to classify, retain, and defensibly dispose of information.

The addition of automated retention and data classification systems will lead to increased consideration of both the rules that can be used to classify records and the underlying policies that are used in their creation. Thus, the process of applying automated record retention systems to electronic records will naturally bring the records manager into contact with a wide variety of people and situations, enabling better records management overall.

6. Embrace Technology
Opportunities for advancing records management lie at the forefront of the high technology world, with massive development effort being poured into ever-better systems to digitize, categorize, search, and store electronic data. It remains to be seen exactly which of these technologies will win the day, but records managers must keep their eyes ahead as the picture unfolds. Don't let organizations pigeonhole the records manager as a paper-centric function.

As mentioned above, manual processes are ripe for error and negligence. Technological systems, however imperfect, are far more consistent. The addition of technology to the records management equation presents an opportunity to finally implement the best concepts of the field, including complete categorization and automatic reorganization as needs change. As the field of data storage becomes more focused on content management, ever more fine-grained management of records will become possible.

7. Don't Let Perfect Be the Enemy of Good
Often record retention programs-particularly those for electronic documents-get stuck. To the greatest extent possible, they want to create the perfect policy, the perfect schedule, the perfect process, etc. And they hold off executing record management programs until they achieve the perfect policy. Record retention, litigation holds, and e-discovery are all inherently imperfect processes. Furthermore, the courts and the regulators do not expect perfection. Instead, they expect reasonable efforts. Specifically, they expect:

• Do you have a policy and schedule
• Are you following it?
• Do you have a legal hold process?
• Is it reasonably complete and defensible?
• Do you audit compliance with your program?