> From: "Zengel, Rikki" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: March 17, 2009 9:39:27 AM EDT
> Subject: Cost of lost records
>
>
> Hi, Group.
>
> I am looking for information on the cost of a lost record  . . . not a
> data breach but a good old fashioned accidental records loss where
> someone shreds something they shouldn't or FedEx loses a box in
> shipping.  Can you point me in the right direction?  Thanks
>
> Rikki Zengel

> This is an unanswerable question in the abstract.

I have to agree with Mr Creamer on this.

Your approach Rikki of citing different articles can help management  
develop an appreciation of how valuable the records are.  For example  
if losing records was $181 or $300 or $1 million per each unit how is  
management planning to react.  I often find the request for a cost  
estimation to be in effect a stalling technique.

Gary provided you an excellent list of items to use to calculate what  
your records loss would cost the company.

One question you can ask your Risk Management person is at what point  
due we bring our insurance company in to indemnify a loss. ( e.g. A  
real pharmaceutical company calculates the loss of one page of a  
document as zero but a box of records lost is $50 million.  That is  
their official valuation.  They do it this way because they know they  
cannot trigger heir insurance coverage for every lost document but if  
they lose a hole box of records, the calculate a $50 million dollar  
exposure due to lost content, FDA fines and what ever negative effect  
that lost set of records triggers.)

A simple exercise to place a value on a class of records is: Take a  
document your CEO or the person asking for a valuation really needs,  
remove it, then see what happens?  How hard is it to replace. What was  
spent in time to search and then regenerate the record. Add this cost  
to the cost of what would have happened if that document was not able  
to be regenerated. {did I mention, tell the CEO or the person asking  
for the value what you are doing so they can witness the lost time,  
the situation of things grinding to a halt and so on} At the end of  
this exercise, you will know what that type of document loss costs.

> Next someone will ask how many angels can fit on the head of a pin -  
> and I
> suppose someone will answer that too.

Are they those fat angels like on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel  
because they are pretty big.  Now the ones that appear in the  
Victoria's Secret ads as angels are pretty small.  So again it is  
really hard to say.

But speaking of lost records, the Apple Leopard software has a cool  
feature called "Time Travel" and if you lose a record you can go back  
a day and it is there, or a week or a month. It displays the different  
back ups as "Cover Flow" so you see the days flip past until you find  
the day where the document still exists.

I am surprised records managers don't think that it is the neatest  
thing since sliced bread. I am still trying to figure Leopard out but  
its smart rules for email folders where you can automatically group by  
day or subject and find lost documents seems to be a records managers  
dream. Plus its features for hosting meetings would be a great feature  
for managers with multiple offices for organizational meetings.


Hugh Smith
FIRELOCK Fireproof Modular Vaults
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(610)  756-4440    Fax (610)  756-4134
WWW.FIRELOCK.COM




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