Making the Transition

From managing hard-copy information to emails, instant messages and social media, those individuals responsible for an organization’s information assets must evolve with technology. Today, that responsibility spans the enterprise, involving not only the records and information management (RIM) staff, but also legal, IT and business unit leaders as well as individual employees.

With every technological development, organizations have to understand how information is being created, stored, retained, retrieved and disposed of and must implement policies, procedures and training to ensure those activities are done in compliance with their organizations’ business, legal, regulatory and historical needs.

Collaboration between records and information managers and other business units is paramount, especially when it comes to securing storage and destruction options.

That is why, as organizations adopt new technologies, it is important to understand the their impact on retention and destruction. Fortunately, several organizations are developing models to assist in governing data.

The electronic discovery reference model (EDRM) recognizes that an organization’s discovery actions will be handicapped if the information created and used in the course of business is not effectively managed prior to litigation. The ARMA International-developed Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles® (the Principles) provide best practice guidance for doing just that.

Further work between ARMA International and EDRM expanded on the collaboration for information governance success in the information governance reference model (IGRM). The IGRM identifies the cross-functional groups of key information governance stakeholders and depicts their intersecting objectives for the organization. Cooperation among these stakeholders is necessary to achieve information governance maturity.

Together, the Principles® and the IGRM provide a scalable, broadly applicable set of tools to address the complex issues surrounding the creation, management, destruction and governance of electronic information.

To read more, download the free white paper “How the Information Governance Reference Model (IGRM) Complements ARMA International’s Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles®” at http://tinyurl.com/9e9s45x.

Overland Park, Kan.-based ARMA International (www.arma.org) is a nonprofit professional association and an authority on information management and governance.