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From the President- December 2011

February 02, 2012

I will be addressing some specific tips regarding the GARP® Principles of Retention and Disposition. The new presidential memorandum of November 28 will also be discussed; and I will connect the GARP® principles directly to the language in the memorandum.

A great test of your organization’s roadmap is whether other organizations are going in the same direction. What better confirmation of our direction then the memorandum that President Barack Obama recently issued to federal agencies. The memorandum not only talks about electronic information and records as inseparable aspects of the program, but closely parallels our principles in its language.

The memorandum states: “When records are well-managed, agencies can use them to assess the impact of programs, to reduce redundant efforts, to save money, and to share knowledge within and across their organizations. In these ways, proper records management is the backbone of open Government.”

This is pretty powerful language. If you substitute “organization” for “open government,” you realize that information is the backbone of any well, run organization. And, how do you know if your information is well managed? Compliance with the GARP® Principles is a pretty good indicator of that!

The memorandum then continues: “Greater reliance on electronic communication and systems has radically increased the volume and diversity of information that agencies must manage. With proper planning, technology can make these records less burdensome to manage and easier to use and share. But if records management policies and practices are not updated for a digital age, the surge in information could overwhelm agency systems, leading to higher costs and lost records.”

This implies that it is important to keep the electronic records, but not necessarily the overwhelming volume of all information, bringing the GARP® Principles of Retention and Disposition front and center.

Retention
Granted, retention is a traditional records management term, but, again, think broader. How do you apply retention policies to the “rest of content?" Why does that content live forever, increasing storage and IT costs, creating migration nightmares, and increasing risk during a discovery? The role of the information governance professional is to look at every piece of content holistically and apply retention principles to all information assets. Retention also means having the right records during a Freedom of Information Act or discovery request. The presidential memorandum clearly talks about these issues, as well.

Disposition
Unfortunately, disposition is often confused with destruction, but disposition can mean other things, too. For example, if an organization is selling off a business unit, the information of that organization should be transferred to the buyer, thus initiating a permanent disposition by the seller. This is part of proper governance. When destroying official records, do you consider the job done when convenience copies of these records exist everywhere, such as on hard drives and back up media? Again, a holistic approach is essential.

In the case of the presidential memorandum, accessioning records to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is a disposition process for the agencies. NARA, in turn, needs to ensure that these records are available for posterity.

Galina Datskovsky, Ph.D., CRM
President, ARMA International

Galina Datskovsky, Ph.D., CRM