In Focus

Keeping a Watchful Eye on Your Information

McKinsey Global Institute reports that 15 out of 17 U.S. economic sectors have more data stored per company than the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC) – and that’s a massive amount of information. As of September 2011, the LOC had collected 254 terabytes of data – that’s about 254,000 gigabytes or 254 million megabytes.

Amy Lanter, Managing Editor

Knowing what all that information is and where it resides is vital to an organization successfully doing business – and especially to responding to e-discovery. It allows an organization to routinely dispose of information that has met its retention requirements, thereby reducing the volume it has to manage, hold for litigation, and produce for discovery.

Taking this one step further, it is vital to ensuring effective information governance and, specifically, to complying with the Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles® (GARP®) of Availability, Retention, and Disposition, which, together, state that an organization must maintain information in a way that ensures it can be retrieved quickly and accurately, kept as long as needed to meet legal, regulatory, fiscal, operational, and historical requirements, and disposed of it when it is no longer required to be maintained. Learn more at www.arma.com/garp.

Many organizations create data maps to help them do this. But, in this issue, Wayne Wong explains how creating a data atlas provides a “total information systems overview” that could be an even more valuable tool. Wong describes how to create, implement, and maintain a data atlas, beginning with building a strong collaborative team with RIM, legal, IT, and line-of-business leaders.

The RIM Fundamentals Series kicks off 2012 with spring cleaning advice from Brian Tuemmler. Cleaning up shared drives – which is desperately needed in many organizations – is another key to understanding what information exists and where it lives. Like Wong, Tuemmler also stresses the need for collaboration among the key stakeholders. In his article, he describes what each of those groups should contribute to the process and tells how index and classification management tools can help.

As mentioned above, keeping information for only as long as required is a key tenet of good recordkeeping. Lorrie Luellig, J.D., offers practical advice for developing and implementing a modern, executable retention schedule that applies to all information – not just records – regardless of its location.

Audits are essential to measuring compliance with records and information management program components – and while that sounds ominous to some, it doesn’t have to be negative, write Nancy Dupre Barnes, Ph.D., CRM, CA, and Nicholas R. Barnes, CPA. Their article focuses attention on an audit’s positive, evaluative potential for an organization and how it can identify areas for change and development.

The GARP® Series also carries on in 2012. John Isaza, Esq., FAI, explains how complying withGARP® can help ensure compliance with rules guiding legal professionals.

Also check out in this issue reviews for The Future of Archives and Recordkeeping and No Excuses: A Business Process Approach to Managing Operational Risk.

We plan to bring you plenty of resources and information throughout 2012. If you have any suggestions, e-mail editor@armaintl.org. We are here to serve you!