In Review:

Emerging Trends of Electronic Recordkeeping: A Public Policy Perspective

Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age
Author: Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication Date: 2009
Length: 237 pages
Price: $24.95 in hardcover
ISBN-13: 978-0-691-13861-9
Source: http://press.princeton.edu/

David B. Gaynon, CRM

What do emerging patterns of recordkeeping mean for our future? Suppose all of our documents – business and personal – were captured, preserved indefinitely, and indexed by a third-party service provider for quick and efficient retrieval. What will the loss of our ability to forget mean to us as a society?

In Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, author Viktor Mayer-Schönberger suggests that emerging patterns of recordkeeping creates risks to our democratic values and rational decision making.

Pinpointing Four Immediate Risks

Mayer-Schönberger identifies four risks and assesses possible public policy responses.

1. Power and influence shifts to those individuals using technology to collect and/or purchase detailed information about daily activities. Insurance firms access applicants’ pharmacy records to determine if any pre-existing conditions have been omitted from their paperwork. Employers sometimes require job applicants to provide their passwords to social media sites. Parents warn college students that information they post to social media sites will be subject to review by third parties. Dissatisfied customers may fear to criticize their business partners. An awareness of being observed intimidates the information “have-nots” from criticizing those individuals in position of authority. Even records managers know that messages sent to the records management listserv may be used to undermine their credibility in a legal proceeding.
2. The ability to forget serves as a filtering tool to put information in perspective. Human beings do not remember everything. Their recall ability is driven by their need for information, so unused information fades over time. Natural selection produced this information-filtering tool, and the use of technology to undermine it presents grave risks to rational decision making.
3. An individual’s ability to decide may be overwhelmed by too much data with too little context. For example, a search engine query produces long lists of documents. But without the context in which they were created, important information is lost – even with 100% retrieval. The large volume of available data without the filter, or forgetting, may impede decision making.
4. An individual whose memory conflicts with the digital record may begin to doubt that recollection and instead rely upon information taken out of context. In illustration, suppose an individual could access information on all of his or her interactions with a long-time business partner. This would include information that had been filtered from memory as “not-that-important” given the context of various situations. Without the filtering mechanism of forgetting, that individual may question his or her understanding of this relationship and come to false conclusions and unsupported decisions.

Establishing an Information Ecology

In reviewing the challenges posed by emerging recordkeeping ecology, Mayer-Schönberger identifies three possible solutions: social adjustment, regulation, or hybrid approach.

Society may simply adjust to the new recordkeeping reality. People will gradually understand how their data is being collected and will exercise greater care in providing personal information. Over time, people will develop coping mechanisms that are not currently available or apparent. It may even be possible at some point to create an information ecology that provides perfect contextualization so the loss of forgetting will be less of a burden and more of an advantage.

Through legal structures, governments may create an intellectual property right in an individual’s own personal information. Unauthorized access, use, or retention of such information would be treated as theft. Digital rights management tools currently in use to protect copyright could be leveraged to protect this type of information. Alternatively, or in combination with the intellectual property model, government could mandate a maximum retention period for specific types of personal data.

In assessing the strengths and weaknesses of these two strategies, the author recommends a hybrid approach that would allow the creators of information to set expiration dates on any document or information they create. Software for documents could easily be developed to auto purge based on expiration dates, while allowing users to change their minds and modify the retention periods. He suggests regulatory policy to mandate similar controls on any third party that is in the business of collecting information. Mayer-Schönberger’s proposal offers interesting possibilities for records managers searching for a compliance model applicable to electronic recordkeeping.

A Compelling Resource Emerges

This monograph contains extensive and useful references, especially in the fields of psychology of memory, privacy, and information technology. Mayer-Schönberger provides the perspective of those individuals who are likely to drive and regulate electronic recordkeeping within the next few years. He writes for an audience that includes managers, regulators, and the educated public.

The book is provocative and also would be a useful resource to records managers, who need to understand these emerging recordkeeping issues so they can more effectively join the public policy debate rather than simply react to their rapidly changing landscape.

For, just as the recordkeeping world is shifting, so is the records managers’ world. Records managers are increasingly expected to function first as managers – with a portfolio that includes recordkeeping. This book will help them expand their horizons to see how recordkeeping looks from a broader management and public policy perspective.

Download the PDF version here.

David B. Gaynon, CRM, can be contacted at david.gaynon@yahoo.com.

From May - June 2010