Records Management: Poor Information Governance Leads can be Costly
Poor record keeping is causing businesses problems — problems with
regulators, auditors and courts. 31 percent of businesses have reported
governance issues with their records and documents. That’s according to a new
white paper by AIIM on information governance with a special
focus on Records Management and eDiscovery.
The report found a correlation between poor information governance and increased costs relative to litigation and damages. For those companies that have put good information governance policies in place, in addition to a smaller chance of facing litigation problems, those businesses also typically saw reduction in their storage costs, had better methods for sharing of ‘knowledge resources’, and managed to be able to more quickly respond to events.
Another area the report identified as a problem area with many businesses is email archiving. About a third have a problem enforcing the storing of duplicate copies of emails, with copies potentially on desktops, laptops and mobile devices. 12 percent of businesses report not even establishing an email archiving policy, much less enforcing it. Further, most email policies rely on the manual selection, tagging and classifying of emails. Gradually more automated techniques for identifying important emails are being adopted, but that is happening slowly. Automated email archiving techniques are expected to improve the results from search and discovery, and also allow retention schedules to be automatically assigned to documents and records so that they can be later identified for destruction when they are no longer needed.
Another set of data included in the report concerned the use of paper. The report concludes that the demise of paper isn’t here yet, but one interesting statistic uncovered is that there is a ‘checkered picture’ phenomenon relative to companies adopting electronic documents versus those who still stick with primarily paper documents. The report found that many businesses have embraced electronic documents while another group still clings to the use of paper. 42 percent of organizations say that the amount of paper which they need to manage continues to grow. But 34 percent now say that the amount of paper they manage is decreasing. Larger companies are more inclined to be reducing their reliance on paper documents.
The report found a correlation between poor information governance and increased costs relative to litigation and damages. For those companies that have put good information governance policies in place, in addition to a smaller chance of facing litigation problems, those businesses also typically saw reduction in their storage costs, had better methods for sharing of ‘knowledge resources’, and managed to be able to more quickly respond to events.
Another area the report identified as a problem area with many businesses is email archiving. About a third have a problem enforcing the storing of duplicate copies of emails, with copies potentially on desktops, laptops and mobile devices. 12 percent of businesses report not even establishing an email archiving policy, much less enforcing it. Further, most email policies rely on the manual selection, tagging and classifying of emails. Gradually more automated techniques for identifying important emails are being adopted, but that is happening slowly. Automated email archiving techniques are expected to improve the results from search and discovery, and also allow retention schedules to be automatically assigned to documents and records so that they can be later identified for destruction when they are no longer needed.
Another set of data included in the report concerned the use of paper. The report concludes that the demise of paper isn’t here yet, but one interesting statistic uncovered is that there is a ‘checkered picture’ phenomenon relative to companies adopting electronic documents versus those who still stick with primarily paper documents. The report found that many businesses have embraced electronic documents while another group still clings to the use of paper. 42 percent of organizations say that the amount of paper which they need to manage continues to grow. But 34 percent now say that the amount of paper they manage is decreasing. Larger companies are more inclined to be reducing their reliance on paper documents.
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