RSD

The Record of the Year Goes to…

While driving to work today, I was enjoying the light traffic patterns and listening to a popular New York radio station listing the top ten records of 2009.  I thought this was ironic since most people today do not purchase records.  As the two disc jockeys were arguing over which record was better, I couldn’t help myself thinking about records in the corporate world.    

No Line on the Horizon…

Before you continue, please note I am not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV.  I have been in the information management and regulatory affairs industry for 13+ years and had countless conversations with companies regarding the exact definition of a record.  This term is often misused, misinterpreted, or sometimes over-hyped.  In simple terms, a record is evidence of an event related to an organization or business transaction: financial statement, accounting report, employee appraisal, copy of a signed mortgage application, medical x-ray, e-mail, Microsoft Office document, transaction history stored in the database, blogs, instant messages, and even audio and video files.

Unsurprisingly, it’s estimated that more than 90% of the records being created today are electronic – and the amount and formats of information being generated keeps growing.  The management of electronic records is an important and legitimate business issue.  How that information is controlled presents severe legal, technical, and business implications.  I recently heard a legal team say if the item is accessible, it’s admissible.  So, exactly how does the compliance officer of an organization ensure the proper maintenance of corporate records from the time they are created to their disposal in a cost-effective manner?  At the end of the day, it’s about controlling risk and balancing cost.

21^st Century Breakdown…

Over the last decade, companies spent an absurd amount of money deploying islands of records management solutions for their Electronic Content Management (ECM) repositories, data warehouses, file shares, physical paper records, and e-mail applications.  It turns out these remedies complicated matters even more and acted purely as band-aids to the underlying issue – the challenge of centrally controlling the creation, retention, access, and destruction of information as well as easily adopting to new rules and regulations.  These systems also resulted in redundant technologies with limited scalability and isolated functionality.

The E.N.D. (Energy Never Dies)…

As we move into 2010, the attitude and methodology to support the growing amount of information and manage the associated risk will change.  Most of the surveys in 2009 proved companies are already hard at work evaluating their information management strategies, global retention policies, and ability to meet ongoing eDiscovery obligations.  Information governance is a platform that enables the enforcement of corporate-based retention policies and processes across the entire IT infrastructure.  The framework provides authorized users simple access to content scattered across the organization – regardless of repository, platform, or format.  Now that’s what I call “Boom Boom Pow”.

It’s 10pm, Do You Know Where your e-mail is?

The Bush White House e-mail controversy which surfaced in 2007 has been stealing the news these past few days.  In case you didn’t hear, the Executive Office of the President agreed to restore 94 days of missing e-mails from 2003-2005.  The previous administration failed to recover over 20 million missing e-mails which will now be transferred to the National Archives for preservation and eventual release.

Regardless of your political views, I think this recent change of events is newsworthy, timely, and all too familiar.  It seems every time we turn the page in the Wall Street Journal, we hear about vicious lawsuits with astonishing facts and supporting documentation.   Most of the evidence focuses around e-mail and associated attachments – and no wonder – according to a recent survey from IDG Research, 62% percent of executives rate eDiscovery a top driver for email management strategies.

However, there is a lot more to litigation readiness than emails and attachments – but that’s a different story for a different day.

So when I hear the White House knowingly continued to use a broken system for preserving electronic records, I often wonder how many companies out there are in the same boat.  Companies who know they have a problem but are either ignoring it, wishing it will all go away, or struggling to deploy the proper controls and archiving services.  It’s not an easy problem to fix but certainly one that needs to be acknowledged and addressed.  If you type “Email archiving” into Google, you will get over 2 million hits with vendor promises to solve your e-mail management issues.  So how come it’s not universally resolved?

The fact is – it’s not that simple to fix.  In addition to having a robust effective archiving platform, companies need to manage the policies and ensure they are properly enforced.  The retention policies must be clearly defined (and agreed upon by management with approval from legal), communicated to everyone in the organization, and then accurately enforced across all e-mail servers and applications.  And then how do you handle the proliferation of Blackberries, iPhones, Instant Messaging applications, personal email accounts, and those handy SMS messages?

This is where Information Governance comes in.  Information Governance is a solution framework to manage risk (and pain) related to compliance with laws and regulations regarding the retention and disposition of business records.  The framework enables proactive and central information management with a systematic process across business functions and isolated silos of information.  This is precisely the reason Information Governance is becoming a top priority for all C-level corporate executives and including now the President of the United States.

Records manager, archiviste, une fonction clef de l'Enterprise Information Management

Tant au niveau des analystes, des dirigeants, des responsables métiers que des services informatiques, tout le monde s'accorde au moins sur deux choses à propos de la mise en place des outils nécessaires à la bonne gouvernance de l'information :

•  elle ne sera pas l'occasion d'un "big bang" au niveau organisation et IT
•  elle ne peut se faire sans une volonté et un investissement fort des sphères dirigeantes

Dans ce contexte, les fonctions d'archiviste et de record manager prennent une nouvelle dimension au sein de l'organisation. Elles deviennent les fonctions clefs, indispensables à la mise en œuvre d'une vraie politique de gouvernance de l'information.

Il en effet intéressant de lire comment certains d'entre-eux définissent leur place dans l'organisation. Ainsi sur archiviste.org (site web de l'association des Archivistes de France), Marina Dal Soglio (SNECMA) précise :"Nous sommes avant tout des médiateurs, qui doivent « maîtriser le passé pour préparer l’avenir » : nous devons avoir une bonne connaissance du passé mais aussi nous projeter dans l’avenir et imaginer ce qu’on pourra nous demander dans vingt ans, ou trente ans...
Nous devons être perçus comme des professionnels de l’information au sens large, comme des « référents » incontournables concernant l’information dans l’entreprise."

Quelques soient les impacts sur l'IT (cf. notre dernier wébinaire à ce sujet), l'archiviste travaille au-delà de l'élaboration des outils du records management (plans de classement des archives courantes et intermédiaires, système de cotation...) et doit faire preuve d'un bon sens de l'analyse, d'excellentes capacités de communication et d'une bonne connaissance de la production des contenus et des documents.

L'"Entreprise Information Management" n'est pas une technologie ni une solution, mais bien une stratégie dont les dirigeants sont les instigateurs mais dont le principal maitre d'œuvre est l'archiviste.

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Source documentaire : Association des Archivistes de France
- La profession d’archiviste ou les métiers des archives

- Comprendre et pratiquer le records management

Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Enterprise Information Management (EIM)...

Corporate governance, information governance and 'cost governance', what are they?

First, a real Enterprise Information Management (EIM) policy helps solve a crucial business equation: how to balance costs, risks and the value of information throughout the organization. With the expected increase in financial regulations in the world but particularly in North America and Europe, it has become urgent to ensure that issues of risk management, compliance and regulatory governance are handled in a well coordinated fashion.

Indeed, the amount of electronic business information is growing from year to year -- and its management becomes increasingly complex. According to IDC, the volume of data now growing at an annual rate of almost 60% over the last five years, the volume managed has increased tenfold!

The implementation of an information governance (IG) program is obviously a response to growing compliance pressure.  But IG also allows better control of costs and operations, and provides visibility into the flow of information circulating throughout the business.

And that is why this program should be considered a priority. Governance is also a source of opportunity for businesses. Implementation should be gradual -- like for ILM, e-discovery or litigation readiness, or meta data management.

A program of governance is an orchestration of several logical disciplines:

• data classification
• definition of policies and criteria for retention
• mapping of meta data (compliance and business)
• application of rules and policies

When coordinated, these initiatives reduce the costs associated with any litigation, reduce storage costs and ensure proper retention of sensitive business information.

Indeed, at many levels within the organization, the risks and impacts of inadequate information governance are not well understood.

Therefore it is top management's responsibility to decide what level of confidence and control is required over the company's information assets.

Information governance impact all departments and business leaders must organize the internal stakeholders of the company around a comprehensive, compliant approach.

Enterprise Content Management, Enterprise Information Management,...

La gouvernance d’entreprise, la gouvernance de l’information et le "cost governance", qu'en est-il ?

Tout d'abord une vraie politique d'EIM (Enterprise Information Management) aide à résoudre une équation cruciale: comment équilibrer les coûts, les risques et la valeur des informations à travers toute l’organisation.

Avec l'augmentation prévisible des règlementations financières dans le monde mais tout  particulièrement en Amérique du Nord et en Europe, il est devenu urgent de s'assurer que les questions de gestion des risques, de conformité règlementaire et de gouvernance sont traitées en coordination.
 En effet, la quantité d'informations électroniques des entreprises ne cesse de croitre, d'année en année, leur gestion devenant toujours plus complexe.
Selon IDC, le volume de données croît désormais au rythme annuel de quasiment 60%; au cours des cinq dernières années, le volume géré a été multiplié par dix!
La mise en œuvre d'un programme de gouvernance de l'information est bien évidemment une réponse aux exigence de conformité mais elle permet également un meilleur contrôle des coûts et des opérations, des gains de visibilité sur les flux d’informations circulant dans l’entreprise.
Et c'est pourquoi ce programme doit être considéré comme une priorité.

La gouvernance est également une source d'opportunités pour les entreprises.
Sa mise en œuvre doit être progressive à l'instar de projets du type ILM ou Litigation ou encore Gestion des méta données.
Un programme de gouvernance est une orchestration de "chantiers" logiques :

• classification des données.
• définition des politiques et des critères de rétention
• schématisation des méta données (conformité et métier)
• application des règles

et ce afin de permettre de limiter les frais inhérents à d’éventuels litiges mais également de réduire les coûts de stockage et de protection des informations.

Si la progressivité est nécessaire à la réussite d'un tel projet, elle n'est pas suffisante.

En effet, à certains niveaux de l'entreprise, on n’a pas une idée précise des risques encourus et c'est pourquoi le top management a la responsabilité de décider du niveau de confiance et de connaissance qu'il souhaite sur les actifs informationnels de l'entreprise !

Il s'agit de projets et de réalisations politiques et économiques qui impactent tous les départements et autour desquels les dirigeants peuvent réconcilier les acteurs internes de l'entreprise dans une démarche responsable.