Digital Landfill

20 Years Ago Today in Content Management/#ECM

From the AIIM Strategic Plan, 1993.

A few more predictions of interest HERE.

Interested in the future rather than the past?  Don't miss #AIIM14, April 1-3 in Orlando.  Sign up before it sells out.

 

Eating More Fiber and Getting to the WHY? of Information Governance

It’s time to have an executive “conversation.”  You know which one.  The one that is tied to personal and organizational health.  Here’s a typical checklist:

1. Watch my cholesterol.
2. Get out of the office and manage more by walking around.
3. Get my blood pressure checked.
4. Focus on outcomes, not on dictating everything that must be done.
5. Get more exercise.
6. Travel less and spend more time at home.
7. Eat more fiber.
8. Get my oil changed every 3,000 miles.
9. Get serious about information governance.

OK, OK, OK.  I’ll do 1 through 8.  I promise.  I’ll be serious this time.  I’ll do them ALL if you’ll just lay off number 9.  Just please, please, please, don’t talk to me about information governance.  Ever.

When I talk to executives, I often explain the importance of effective information management in terms something like this:

“You have financial systems in place to manage your organization’s financial assets.  You have ERP systems in place to manage its physical assets.  You have HR systems to manage your people assets.  In the Information Age, you need a system and a process to manage your information assets.”

Usually I get a lot of executive head nods when I say things like this.  Yet when push comes to shove, there’s a lot more good intention going on relative to information governance than concrete action. 

According to AIIM’s Information Governance - records, risks and retention in the litigation age in only 15% of organization’s is Information Governance “in place, important and communicated and enforced.”  15%.

There are a lot of reasons for this gap between intentions and reality:

1. An assumption that “somebody” will handle this.
2. A lack of executive buy-in.
3. A lack of buy-in from key stakeholders.
4. Projects with ill-defined scope and objectives.
5. The business has more important things to do.

All of the above are true, but I feel the real reason for inaction is that the WHY? of information governance is not fully understood – at a gut level – by executives.  It’s the same with the other items on the above Executive Check List.  NO ONE eats more fiber or goes to the gym every day just because it’s good for you, at least once the glow of New Year’s Resolutions fades.  The habit will not be sustained unless the underlying rationale is fully internalized.

Some of the ways we have traditionally spoken about Information Governance don’t really help it meet this gut test.  According to Gartner, “Information governance is the specification of decision rights and an accountability framework to encourage desirable behavior in the valuation, creation, storage, use, archival, and deletion of information.  It includes the processes, roles, standards and metrics that ensure the effective and efficient use of information in enabling an organization to achieve its goals.” 

Yikes.  I guess this is true, but not really what will get executive blood flowing.  The Economist Intelligence Unit found that the single biggest worldwide challenge to successful adoption of information governance is the difficulty in identifying its benefits and costs.

Executives typically care about results and accountability for the following:

1 – Increasing revenues.

2 – Reducing costs.

3 – Reducing risk.

That’s it.  And if that’s the case, it is through this triad that the WHY? of information governance must be understood if we’re going to make any progress in this area at all.  Let’s take them in reverse order.

Reducing risk.  This is perhaps the best understood WHY? of information governance.  If you are in an industry in which there are either compliance or litigation concerns and costs (uhhh…let’s see…is there one in which these are not a concern?) then the only way to reduce this risk is to have defensible information management policies.

However, this is where the argument for information governance usually stops.  Usually this leaves governance in the hands of people with “Information,” “Legal,” or “Records” in their title.  In a tight economy in which competitive pressures are constantly rising, I fear that risk alone is a necessary but not sufficient reason to take information governance seriously.  Forrester’s Alan Weintraub notes, “Good information governance isn’t just about risk, it’s about making the business more agile.”

Reduce costs. Left to their own devices, the “business” will view litigation, compliance, storage costs related to ever-increasing volumes of information as externalities.  They will assume that “someone else” will pay for it, and continue to engage in a content and information consumption binge that will inevitably result in what IBM’s George Parapadakis calls “content obesity.”  Per the Compliance, Governance, and Oversight Council, “90% of the data in the world was created in the last two years. We have reached a tipping point: the growth rate of information now far exceeds IT budgets and the processes for governing that information.”

The ONLY way to reduce these costs is by reducing the scale of information being saved.  And the ONLY way to do this effectively is through information governance.  And the ONLY way to scale information governance is by automating as much of it as possible. 

Increasing revenues.  Talk to any executive long enough and inevitably something like the following will come up:  “We need to increase customer engagement as a pathway to capturing share and growing revenues.”  

For many years, the content management industry has talked about “getting the right information to the right person at the right time to make the right decision.” Even though this rationale was overstated in the early era of content management systems, it is now at the heart of the business problem of customer engagement. Information overload and content chaos threaten to overwhelm our ability to understand and act on customer needs.   It is through this prism that we need to consider information governance. 

Content and information is the currency that flows through all of our core processes. Absent a strategy and framework for making its management an organizational priority, no one will be accountable for its success or failure.  Per Gartner’s Deb Logan – “the root of all of our problems with information…is the fact that there is no accountability for information as such.” 

So the time has come for the executive suite to take action.  Get out of the office and manage more by walking around.  Get more exercise.  And get serious about information governance.

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Have you checked out AIIM's new Information Governance course?

 

 

8 New #AIIM Reports on #Content - And All Free - #ECM #SharePoint

Please enjoy these recent reports and new infographics from AIIM Market Intelligence which are free to download:

The Elephant in the Room is Compliance. Secure collaboration for financial services content via mobile and cloud

Research has shown that 33% of organizations expect to see “half or more” of their employees using iPads, tablets or digital clipboards for filling in forms in 5 years. Is your business ready to handle this shift in a responsible and secure way? Download here.

Mobile Content Security and Productivity

Organizations want their employees to have access to corporate information from mobile devices, but security and compliance are major areas of concern. This white paper measures the concerns over BYOD security, the issues with directly accessing on-premise content, and the collaboration functionality users expect on their mobile devices. Download here.

Jump-start your paper-free journey

The business case for kicking paper out of the organization is overwhelming – it takes up space, slows things down, creates costs and limits flexibility. This white paper looks at why organizations hold back from taking the paper-free step, and discuss the pros and cons of outsourcing document-oriented processes. Download here.

AIIM Trendscape: Content and the Cloud

Recently, AIIM convened a select group of content and information management professionals in London and Chicago, to deliberate the central question of the role that cloud-based technologies will play in the future. We are pleased to present the findings from those deliberations in this executive report. Download here.

SharePoint 2013 – clouding the issues

SharePoint 2013 brings new capabilities but also a number of new challenges. In this report, we look at the ongoing issues of user adoption as an ECM/DM system. We study the impact of the new 2013 features, particularly on third party add-on products. We look at the issues that cloud presents for SharePoint users. Finally, we measure spending plans for licenses, services and add-on products. Download here.

Intelligent Information Management - improving the customer experience

Improving the customer experience is critical to business success and competitive status. This white paper reviews the issues for improving customer experience across multiple input channels and the potential to automate response processes based on capturing and analyzing content. Download here.

AIIM Infographics

A picture is worth a thousand words. These Infographics illustrate the challenges and solutions faced by today's Information Professional. From Social Collaboration to Enterprise Content Management (ECM), everything you need to convey key Information Management concepts is below. Download here.

ECM Maturity: is your ECM system maximized for business value?

Are you new to enterprise content management (ECM) or have you been developing your system for a number of years? Are you making progress fast enough to get the benefits of universal content access across the enterprise and between your core systems - or are you still struggling to get over that initial hurdle of user acceptance? Take this questionnaire.

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Other AIIM research is available at aiim.org/research

If you want the Exec Suite to care about #Information #Governance, you need to clearly answer WHY?

Executives typically care about results and accountability for the following:

1 – Increasing revenues.

2 – Reducing costs.

3 – Reducing risk.

That’s it.  And if that’s the case, it is through this triad that the WHY? of information governance must be understood if we’re going to make any progress in this area at all.  Let’s take them in reverse order.

Reducing risk.  This is perhaps the best understood WHY? of information governance.  If you are in an industry in which there are either compliance or litigation concerns and costs (uhhh…let’s see…is there one in which these are not a concern?) then the only way to reduce this risk is to have defensible information management policies.

However, this is where the argument for information governance usually stops.  Usually this leaves governance in the hands of people with “Information,” “Legal,” or “Records” in their title.  In a tight economy in which competitive pressures are constantly rising, I fear that risk alone is a necessary but not sufficient reason to take information governance seriously.  Forrester’s Alan Weintraub notes, “Good information governance isn’t just about risk, it’s about making the business more agile.”

Reduce costs. Left to their own devices, the “business” will view litigation, compliance, storage costs related to ever-increasing volumes of information as externalities.  They will assume that “someone else” will pay for it, and continue to engage in a content and information consumption binge that will inevitably result in what IBM’s George Parapadakis calls “content obesity.”  Per the Compliance, Governance, and Oversight Council, “90% of the data in the world was created in the last two years. We have reached a tipping point: the growth rate of information now far exceeds IT budgets and the processes for governing that information.”

The ONLY way to reduce these costs is by reducing the scale of information being saved.  And the ONLY way to do this effectively is through information governance.  And the ONLY way to scale information governance is by automating as much of it as possible. 

Increasing revenues.  Talk to any executive long enough and inevitably something like the following will come up:  “We need to increase customer engagement as a pathway to capturing share and growing revenues.”  

For many years, the content management industry has talked about “getting the right information to the right person at the right time to make the right decision.” Even though this rationale was overstated in the early era of content management systems, it is now at the heart of the business problem of customer engagement. Information overload and content chaos threaten to overwhelm our ability to understand and act on customer needs.   It is through this prism that we need to consider information governance. 

Content and information is the currency that flows through all of our core processes. Absent a strategy and framework for making its management an organizational priority, no one will be accountable for its success or failure.  Per Gartner’s Deb Logan – “the root of all of our problems with information…is the fact that there is no accountability for information as such.” 

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Convinced you need Information Governance and want to get started?  Get this free guide, Waste Disposal -- All Content Isn't Equal.  

Defining the Future of Content Management – Part 2 – Emergence of the Extreme Buyer

In our first post on the future of content management -- Defining the Future of Content Management – Part 1 – Evolution of an Industry we talked about the changes that have swept through the content "space" (going all the way back to microfilm), the acceleration of those changes over the past few years, and voiced the opinion that the "ECM" term is started to feel a bit tired.

In this second post, we'll talk abut how the buyer has changed.  Driven both by the mainstreaming of content technologies and the entry of consumer technologies into the enterprise, there has been a dramatic evolution in who buys content management and how they approach the content management buy decision.

If you think about the typical buyer profile of the past, he/she usually would fall somewhere into this hierarchy (click on the diagram to enlarge it):

In this world, much of the following was/is true...

• The focus of IT was on cost reduction.
• Senior executives were largely technology oblivious (one CEO recently told me, "I viewed IT as a big hairball I just hoped would go away.")
• Job security was found in system complexity.
• As mobile and social entered the world of systems of record, initially just their sheer existence was a source of competitive differentiation.
• System implementations were long and paid for by capital expenditures (CAPEX).
• Technical skills in and of themselves had value.

As a result of the consumerization of IT in the enterprise, there is now a buyer migration in progress, largely reflected in the "other" side of the above pyramid (again, click to enlarge the image):

In this new world, much of the following is/will be true:

• The central mission of IT is value creation.
• Senior executives are now technology aware.  (Note this is different from technologically-competent, but that's another story.)
• The coin of the realm is now simplicity rather than complexity.
• We have quickly moved into an environment in which mobile and social are becoming table stakes rather than differentiators in an enterprise IT strategy.
• The desired purchase mode is by the drink rather than by the gallon -- OPEX instead of CAPEX. Oh, and also don't talk to me about implementation cycles longer than a quarter.
• The really desireable technology players are those with domain/technical skills, but in a business context.  Technology staff who can think more like engineers ("How can I fit the pieces together for systems that we didn't necessarily invent here?") have increasing value.

Often I talk about the above migration in this chart:

Now the challenge is that when I talk to people -- both on the buy side AND the sell side -- and ask them where the world is headed, they inevitably point to some version of the right side of the above chart. But when I ask them where all the action and money and effort is NOW, they point to the left side. When I ask them how they will make this migration and how long it will take and what they need to get there, the answer is almost always uncertainty.

And therein lies the central challenge of the next 2-3 years.  Our mission at AIIM is to help organizations understand how they build content and governance strategies to navigate the transition. How can we help?

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You might also be interested in...

How is Big Content Different From Big Data? from John Mancini

Is IT Really the Villain? - Future of Technology in the Enterprise from John Mancini

Suppose you could take the #AIIM ERM and ECM Master classes without leaving your desk?

The ERM Virtual Master program provides you with a detailed understanding of ERM including the main elements from all of the training programs, in addition to case study exercises.  The course provides complete coverage of records management in the electronic environment for professionals working in both the public and private sector.

Previously, the only way to take this class was by travelling somewhere to take it in person.  Now you can take it, with a live instructor (Carl Weise, CRM), right from your desk.  (Like one of those on-line university courses.)

The class runs March 12-14.  The number of students is limited, so sign up now by going to THIS LINK.

Participants will use their newly gained knowledge to plan, design, and implement an ERM project based on case study exercises and expertise learned from the Strategic, Practitioner, and Specialist Course programs.

LINK FOR REGISTRATION AND INFORMATION.

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We are also making the ECM Master Class available virtually.  Learn how to use plan, implement and maintain an ECM environment.

The ECM Master Training Program comprises the main elements from the Practitioner and Specialist programs in addition to a case study exercise. The course provides complete coverage of enterprise content management for professionals working in both the public and private sector.

This class runs May 26-28.  Details HERE.

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AIIM ECM Virtual Master Class

AIIM ERM Virtual Master Class

 

The #Obama Administration's RM Initiative - What Does It Mean to You?

I recently did a webinar with Sue Trombley from Iron Mountain on the impact of the Obama Administration's records management initiative -- not just on the federal government, but on records management in general.  The archived webinar is HERE.

The webinar was so much fun I thought I would follow it up with a short series of questions with Sue. Here's the interview.

JM: One of the themes that we explored on the webinar was the notion that the implications of this directive stretch beyond the federal government.  Tell me a little bit about how you see those implications and what the directive tells us about sound records management practice.

ST: I think that the Directive brings to light some of the very basic best practices that we have been espousing for RIM for years.  First is the acknowledgement that electronic records are the way we conduct the majority of our business and as a result, we must have a strategy to enable the people, process and technology required to manage information in a distributed data environment.  Next is the recognition that successful and sustained RIM programs must be led from the highest levels in the organization, hence the Senior Agency Official role that is at the assistant Secretary level.  The Directive mentions formal training, certification of Records Officers and the establishment of an occupation classification for RIM employees – all of which are sound records and information management practices for public and private organizations.

JM:  One of the themes at the core of the directive is the necessity for regular and sustaining records management training within an organization.  Tell me a little bit about the importance of training, and how well organizations have done in providing this training in the past.

ST:  Training has been hit or miss – it all depends on the organization’s culture, seriousness of attitude about RIM, and, of course, available resources.  I like the use of eLearning courses that can be taken on-line anytime regardless of the physical location of the employee.  Employees hear the exact same message and can be tested to determine if they understand the concepts as well as their role and responsibilities.  These courses can be supplemented by department-specific training by records officers, or others.  I’ve found the “lunch and learn” approach to be very successful.  Without proper training and reinforcement, there is no chance that a RIM program can achieve maximum success.  It would be great if Records Management can partner with internal Communications or HR departments to ensure on-going communication about the Program through emails, posters, website entries, or special events.

JM:  I like your concept of thinking in big buckets rather than micro buckets when it comes to setting up classification and taxonomy schemes.  At the core of our conversation was the idea of getting something right and moving on rather than biting off too much and not being able to actually implement.  Tell me about your concept of big buckets and how they ultimately play into our ability to use technology to automatically classify records.

ST: Dr. Susan Cisco spearheaded the call for big buckets a couple of years ago.  What’s interesting is that in her research some of the early adopters of big buckets were the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2003 and the U.S. Patent Office in 2004.  We know from research the fewer series or classes of records with more distinction between them are easier for humans and machines to classify records – whether that is through auto-assisted classification or auto-classification.  I like to think of “right-sizing” schedule series to create those greater distinctions while not increasing any element of risk.

JM:  The concept of designating a senior agency official or SAO with ultimate responsibility for the creation and enforcement of records management practices and procedures within an agency is a significant new departure.  Do you have any insights as to how effective the agencies have been so far in designating these SAOs?

ST: I don’t have much insight at this point.  I do know that the SAOs were supposed to be named by 11/15/12.  From what we have seen, the lists seems to be a combination of C-Level (CIO, CFO), Chiefs of Staff and records officers.

JM:  Do you see “defensible disposition” – getting rid of information that is no longer needed – as a complement to becoming more prudent and strategic with regards to what you actually keep? 

ST:  Absolutely.  If we are managing our records according to a RIM policy – that must include the entire lifecycle of the record from its creation through to its movement to an archive if deemed a permanent record or its destruction if not.  When it comes to Discovery, Courts support the destruction of data providing it is 1) not on a legal hold 2) destruction is informed by retention rules in an approved Schedule, and 3) that destruction happens in a systematic and consistent fashion – it cannot be ad hoc.  As organizations remove records no longer required for business purposes they have easier access to active records, reduce their storage costs, and reduce the cost/risk of litigation.

JM:  Do you have any thoughts about the formats in which electronic records must be retained?  I’m thinking specifically, for example, about PDF/A.  Did the directive say anything about specific electronic formats?

ST: The directive does not give any specifics about formats for permanent electronic records.  It does say that NARA will provide guidance by 12/31/13 regarding the transfer of records to NARA – including “sustainable formats commonly used to meet agency business needs.”    It would seem as though since states and other countries have adopted the PDF/A as the format of choice, that it will factor into NARA’s guidance.

JM:  if someone wants to be kept informed about the directive on an ongoing basis are there particular resources that you recommend?

ST: NARA is a primary source, including their blog, Records Express.  Webinars such as the AIIM/Iron Mountain event, Federal News Radio, and records management blogs and listservs are just a few other resource options. 

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Those interested in this topic might also find our upcoming (Feb 7) webinar on The Dark Side of Big Data - Beyond Defensible Disposition and Legacy Info Cleanup towards profitable Information Governance of Interest.

You might also be interested in our Electronic Records Management training.

 

Top 20 AIIM Expert Blog Posts for 2012

And the tallies are in.  Here they are -- the top Expert Blog posts for 2012.

Top Ten 2012 Expert Blog Posts -- Everything But SharePoint

1. Building a Collaborative Culture
2. SharePoint Alternative?
3. Excuse Me -- I am Serious About ECM
4. After Flash, Why PDF Must Die
5. The Need for Change Management
6. Which is better: TIFF or PDF? - Revised
7. Hard Disk Not Exist! What Happens Next?
8. Industry Predictions for 2012
9. BitCasa & The Future Of The Cloud
10. ECM Vendors Go to War

Top Ten 2012 Expert Blog Posts -- SharePoint Related

1. SharePoint Consulting Best Practices for a SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Deployment
2. SharePoint 2013 Preview Summary - Managing Your Current SharePoint 2010 Initiative with 2013 in Mind
3. 5 Myths About SharePoint Records Management
4. My Site Implementation in SharePoint 2010 – A Best Practices Strategy
5. User Profile List in SharePoint 2010
6. SharePoint 2010 - A Learning Management System (LMS) for Government\DoD, Private Sector\Fortune 1000, and Educational Institutions | (SP vs. Blackboard)
7. The Role of the Business Analyst in SharePoint
8. High Level Best Practices: SharePoint Source Code Management and the Related Deployment Process
9. Best Practices for SharePoint Cultural Change Management - From the SharePoint Consulting Trenches
10. Is Your Search Database Bloated?

And don't forget my post on 100 technology predictions (plus 10 of my own) for 2013

[Image from http://ethicalchamp.com/increasing-website-traffic.]

 

2013 Predictions -- Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement -- What Comes Next?

[Note:  We will be doing a webinar on this topic, primarily for NA and SA audiences given the time of day, on Wednesday, December 12 at 2 pm Eastern time.  We'll be doing a second webinar, at a time more convenient for European audiences at 2 pm British time on Thursday the 13th.]

As many readers know, about two years ago a Task Force of AIIM members worked with Geoffrey Moore (author of Crossing the Chasm, among many titles) to build out a "future history" of the content industry.  The intention was to think about how enterprise information technology was changing in the wake of the influx of consumer technologies.  (See Systems of Engagement and the Future of Enterprise IT: A Sea Change in Enterprise IT.)

The core "story" went something like this...

Organizations spent much of the past 3 decades building out "Systems of Record."

Technologies evolved a great deal during this first phase -- from mainframes to minis to PCs to the internet -- as did the core objects being managed -- from financials to department processes to documents to web pages.  However, at the core of this migration was a continuing focus on building Systems of Record to document who did what to whom, when, and in what context. The transitions looked something like this:

In this world, IT was at the center of deploying enterprise systems, and innovation tended to flow down from large organizations, eventually reaching consumers.

Using another Geoff Moore diagram from Escape Velocity, during this period the Content Management business was very much a "complex systems business," operating on the left "hump" of the diagram below, focused on relatively few customers, dealing with complicated and mission-critical business processes.

Enter Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS) in 2007, and the industry began to change.  The left "hump" started to shift to the right.  Price points began to change as "content management" became an increasing part of the core infrastructure of the organization.  Large vendors from the world of complex content management systems initially dismissed SharePoint as "not really ECM" and then struggled to find their role relative to SharePoint as the SharePoint wave intensified. In addition, a host of new enterprise players emerged, built upon a pay-as-you-go SaaS model, led most notably by Salesforce.com.  

Meanwhile, back in the bigger IT market, another revolution was brewing.  

Over the past 5 years, consumer technologies have taken center stage relative to innovation and migrated into the enterprise, with far-reaching implications for how organizations use and deploy technology. These new technologies focus on interactions and conversations rather documents and records and on Systems of Engagement rather than Systems of Record. 

So after a long period in which there really was no "consumer" play in the document/content space (the right volume operations "hump" in Geoff's business architecture model), suddenly one appeared. The focus was not traditional transactionally focused content management, but rather the provision of previously unavailable information management tools for the individual, built upon social and mobile technologies and optimized for the cloud. These were companies with freemium to premium models like Box, Google, Evernote, DropBox, FilesAnywhere, and Yammer.  

These new volume operations players had a very different financial model than those from the complex systems world.  Per Michael Moon from gistics.com, complex systems players focus on making their money on capital expenditures and professional services, with most of the money captured in the early stages of a project -- it is not unusual for 70% of the total revenues for a project to the captured before implementation even occurs.  On the flip side, Systems of Engagement (and the mobile devices that go with them) are brought into the enterprise by the business rather than IT, and with far simpler pricing and deployment models.  The models typically focus on operating expenditures and capturing the majority of revenues after implementation via an annuity stream.

Initially, IT organizations responded to this dichtonomy by either: 1) denying the problem existed (kind of an IT policy re the Dropboxes of the world of "Don't ask, Don't tell); 2) mounting massive resistance and opposition to these tools; 3) allowing adoption, but assuming they would someday get around to the question of integration with existing Systems of Record; and/or 4) some combination of the above.

So the question for this blog post is:  What comes next? What are the next chapters in the story of Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement.

We spent some time at the AIIM Board meeting last week exploring this topic, and I'd like to offer some initial thoughts.  

The complete story of the next phase in our future isn't written yet, but I would offer that it will center around the "controlled collision" between Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement and will include some version of the following 10 elements:

1. CIOs are beginning to adopt mobile-first and cloud-first strategies for new applications, especially for customer-facing applications, changing the traditional development process.
2. The key to understanding the future role of social technologies in the enterprise is that they will increasingly: 1) be a feature of Systems of Record, not a separate system; 2) either become integrated into core business processes (i.e., the honeymoon period of "social for social's sake" is over) or decline in importance; and 3) ultimately converge with email into a single system.
3. Via migrations from the "right hump," core document and collaboration technologies are now becoming available via the cloud to a host of organizations that heretofore relied on a chaotic mess of file shares.  The trick will be to avoid simply taking c drive and file share digital landfills and moving them to the cloud.
4. True document collaboration (vs. either the poor Word "Track Changes" approach or the chaotic, little editorial control Google Docs approach) will become increasingly important.
5. Effective adoption of social technologies is not just a function of turning them on. Defining use cases, outlining expected behaviors within these use cases, and effectively managing change have just as much to do with success as the technology (check Social in the Flow for details).
6. The "we will never put important information in the cloud" and "we must choose between the cloud and on-prem" militancy is evolving into an awareness that the future lies in a hybrid environment in which information is managed across a continuum of platforms and devices.
7. The concept of synching from the early days of email (remember when we needed to actively manage what we did in email when "connected" and when we were not?) will become increasingly important in thinking about the cloud.  As organizations think about strategies that integrate Systems of Record with Systems of Engagement, that link Saas enterprise applications like Salesforce.com to behind the firewall information repositories, and that allow for responsible deployment of social and BYOD technologies, the cloud will increasingly become the "place" in which synching occurs, with ultimate control by the System of Record.
8. In our desire to reassert control, we need to remember than the needs of the business to get things done will always trump our corporate need for control.
9. The Chief Marketing Officer will own more and more elements of the "controlled collision" and will be increasingly important in the intersection between Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement.
10. The SoR and SoE "collision" places an increasing premium on those who have skills to help manage this collision and understand the full picture, namely Information Professionals.

What do you think?  What comes next in the "story?" Post a comment and let me know.

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Might be of interest...

1. How to Achieve Best Practices: Records Management
2. How to Conduct a Social Business Assessment
3. How to Unclog Your Business by Automating Content-Intensive Process
4. How to Assess Scanning and Capture Requirements
5. Automating ERM with SharePoint
6. How to Develop Taxonomies to Support Navigation, Information Discovery, and Findability
7. Enterprise Content Management: Impact on Collaboration and Social Business
8. How to Use SharePoint as a Self-Help Knowledge Center

 [Note:  We will be doing a webinar on this topic, primarily for NA and SA audiences given the time of day, on Wednesday, December 12 at 2 pm Eastern time.  We'll be doing a second webinar, at a time more convenient for European audiences at 2 pm British time on Thursday the 13th.] 

7 Pieces of Advice for Those Implementing the #Obama #Records Directive

 Many may have noticed the coverage of the Directive outlining new records management requirements in the federal government. The directive is NARA's and OMB's response to a memo issued by President Obama in late 2011.  Among the requirements outlined in the directive:

 By 11/15/2012, each agency must appoint a Senior Agency Official (SAO)

 By 12/31/2013…

• Each SAO must ensure that permanent records 30 years and older are transferred and reported to NARA
• Each SAO must identify all unscheduled records.
• All federal agencies must have a plan to manage all permanent electronic records in an electronic format by Dec. 31, 2019.
• NARA will issue guidance on managing, disposing of and transferring email.
• A formal career path for records management officials must be laid out.

 By 12/31/2014…

• All agencies must have records management training in place for appropriate staff.

 By 12/31/2016…

• Each SAO, with the agency records officer, must ensure that NARA has received records schedules for all existing non-electronic records.
• All agencies must manage permanent and temporary email records in an accessible electronic format.

In the realm of gratuitous advice, here is my advice to those up and coming SAOs out there (talk about a thankless job!):

[Note: I did an interview with WTOP radio this morning on some of these topics -- a replay can be found HERE.]

1-- Acknowledge that the problem is getting worse.  When (NARA) estimates that 95 percent of agencies are out of compliance with current electronic records requirements, clearly there is a problem that must be addressed.  Add to this the often quoted Digital Universe statistic that the volume of digital information is growing by a factor of 44 during the course of this decade, and you have a recipe for losing a key part of our digital heritage -- institutional Alzheimer's, if you will -- that we will never be able to recover.  And if that was not bad enough, even though the rate of growth of paper records is slowing relative to electronic records, in absolute terms it is still growing.

2 -- Understand and educate about the impact of poor information management on agency effectiveness.  According to our surveys, almost 40% of government officials surveyed have little or no confidence in the accuracy, accessibility and trustworthiness of their electronic information. The percentage rises to 60% for e-mail. 32% of government officials describe the accessibility of records to employees across their organization as "poor" or "very poor."  

3 -- Embrace the concept of T-shaped individuals.  The call in the directive for a career path for e-records management is welcome and overdue.  Everywhere I go, I hear the same refrain, "Most RM staff know paper, not systems," and "Our IT people know storage, not retention." We need to help individuals place their deep-dive competency in a broader information management context if they are going to be effective in the future. Gartner predicts the need for these types of cross-function information professionals will grow by 50% by 2015.  That's what the Certified Information Professional program is all about.  (Assess your skills HERE!)

4 -- Put the focus on getting more data about data.  We will not solve the problem of managing exploding volumes of electronic information by simply putting more "effort" on it or by goading individuals to be more "responsible" in complying with records management requirements.  No one ever woke up in the morning and stretched and proclaimed, "I can't wait to classify my information according to the taxonomy and records retention requirements established by my organization." Auto-classification has come a long way.  The use of semantic technologies to infer metadata where none exists has come a long way.  It's time to step on the accelerator with these technologies.

5 -- Get out of the paper paradigm.  NARA's annual self-assessment by agencies show that printing and filing remains the most common archiving method for email records, with 81 percent of respondents stating they utilize it. The second most common is back up tapes, with 49 percent stating that constitutes an archiving method (agencies could chose more than one method). A large majority of agencies are at high to moderate risk of bad records management. One unnamed agency in the report says they have "no electronic records." Yikes. 

6 -- Think "digital preservation."  The continuing confusion about backup and archiving says to me that we need more education that is centered around the concept of preservation.  I was once many years ago a history major, so I have an appreciation for this concept of preservation, and think it is vastly under-utilized in explain why we care about all of this. The point of all of this is create an accountable history of what we did and how and why we did it. Preservation has 3 dimensions -- 1) people (training is key), 2) technology (PDF/A important here), and 3) commitment (investment in systems). Doing just 1 or 2 of the 3 wont suffice.

7 -- Be realistic. These are challenging times. The mission of your agency is NOT records management. Records are a byproduct or an artifact of the work of your agency, not the actual product.  Sometimes the more zealous of records managers forget that. One recent AIIM survey commenter said, "It is difficult to justify an ERM system when bridges are falling down and people go hungry."  An emotional response, but a real factor in tight times, not just in the federal government, but in any organization. You have to be able to make the argument that effective information management will help make your agency more efficient and product and not just that you "must" to do it.

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 Budding SAOs out there, AIIM can help!  Here are a few places to start.

 AIIM is the leading provider of skills development training on electronic records management.  Thousands of people have taken our ERM courses online, in person, and in private courses.  Sign up for a course today or Contact Thedra White at twhite [at] aiim.org and find out how.

Get our research on best practices. The price is right (hint, they're free).

Check out our Records Management Expert Bloggers.  The content is great.