Has anyone seen this new paper issued last week by Forrester Research?

Abysmal: The State Of Retention Management
Organizations Woefully Unprepared To Meet Today's Legal Requirements
by Barry Murphy, July 17, 2007 

There was also a recent webinar on the topic. Here's the point of
discussion for me. Forrester is using the term "retention management" to
discuss managing all types of records & information in the organization.
The premise is that not everything is an official "record" that is
declared and put into a repository such as an ECM system. This new
definition isn't sitting all that well with me and here's why:
	+ Traditionally, "records retention" is a SUBSET of Records &
Information Management, thus to me, retention management is just a
subset
	+ Doesn't the term "federated records management" (i.e. applying
retention to all electronic records regardless of whether they're
located in an ECM, on a file share, in a database, etc.) cover a lot of
that anyway?
	+ Isn't the inclusion of "information" in RIM supposed to be
including all information regardless of format or where it's at or if
it's "declared"?
	+ Are we really going backwards by accepting the term "retention
management"?
I heard a recent webinar by an ECM vendor that discussed "retention
management" as a method of applying retention to the files in the ECM
that weren't declared official records. How many others are on this
bandwagon? I am of the opinion, that an ECM system should be able to
apply retention to its contents wherever they are at and I have been
involved in several implementations that have taken this tactic and have
been successful. If stuff's not in an ECM system the tools are either
here or coming to apply retention wherever things are at and they are
still records & information whether declared or not declared. 

Anyway, I wanted to get comments from the list about this new term. Are
you on board? Do you want to stop the train?

Laurie Carpenter, CRM 
Compliance Manager 
Koch Industries, Inc. 
[log in to unmask] 




List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance
To unsubscribe from this list, click the below link. If not already present, place UNSUBSCRIBE RECMGMT-L or UNSUB RECMGMT-L in the body of the message.
mailto:[log in to unmask]