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Records Management: Organizations Stumble in Extending Policies to Electronic Documents
Records Management is hard. While the principles seem straight forward enough, and while most organizations are fully aware of what needs to be done, many companies have stumbled in updating their old paper-based policies to new ones that involve electronic documents.
80 percent of companies say that they have a good “command of the basics” when it comes to managing paper records, but less than a quarter of them have set up any policies around electronic records, based on a survey conducted by Iron Mountain. This is a serious problem because while paper records don’t seem to be going away, most companies are seeing huge increases in the amount of electronic data that should be treated as records, like email and office documents.
Companies do realize that they need to improve. 64 percent say that they are working to improve their records management program. Many companies only have very basic records management programs in place. Areas that companies seek to improve include management of electronic records, developing a strategy for addressing compliance auditing, and better education and training of employees for managing records.
A records management program is best managed at the enterprise level. Companies that set up multi-disciplinary teams throughout the organization have been shown to have better success in achieving company-wide compliance with policies. Records management training of the records management team is very important to the success of the program, yet only 37 percent of companies conduct any kind of records management training.
RM policies should also include a strategy for addressing e-Discovery. While you would think that electronic documents could be searched more easily and quickly than paper ones, because companies have long-standing well-understood processes around paper records, many companies can actually comply with paper eDiscovery requests much more quickly than to electronic ones. To shore this deficiency up, processes for electronic records are clearly needed.
