Like you and others I have been critical of the IG movement and at
times have been skewered for it.  I have decided not to attend ARMA in
part because of the continued emphasis of IG over records management.
San Antonio is my home town (GO SPURS) and the location of the
conference is great!  But I decided to attend something that is more
related to my current position.

I understand that ARMA is losing membership in part because of the
changing demographics.  But I think some of this may be as a result of
the mixed messages over the years. Who does ARMA really represent
today?  At one time it was the records management community but for
all intents and purposes no longer.  Trying to find anything remotely
related to records management on the website can be chore.  ARMA
Chapters are still promoting records management but I wonder how much
longer they will.

Appears, from my perspective, the only group that has fully embraced
IG bandwagon are vendors and consultants.  I just received the latest
version of "Information Management."  On the front page is an ad from
Recall for a tool with the tag line "Information Governance.
Simplified."  When I went to their website and looked at the
background appeared to be what I considered a records management tool
with a couple of new bells and whistles.  This morning I saw a posting
on one of the LinkedIn forums from an individual who claims to be a
"Data Ninja and IG Realist at BeyondRecognition" whatever that means.

I subscribe to job alerts for both records management and information
governance positions from a couple of employment sites.  I do this in
part to see what the current market is for both. (Note that I love my
job and have no intent on leaving - my wife would kill me if I did.)
I typically see one to two RM positions posted daily, sometimes more.
Of the Information Governance positions many are IT focused and
require IT related qualification and credentials.  The few that aren't
typically seek someone with records management qualifications with CRM
preferred.  I have seen a couple requesting the IGP but they seem to
be few and far between.

Hopefully someone from ARMA HQ is checking out the listserve and
passing this on to the Board.  I would suggest (recommended to me)
contacting Bob Baird, the CEO, and let him know your thought and
concerns.  He is a tough position and dealing with issues that are for
the most part not of his own making.  But he does appear to be a
reasonable person.

Bruce White, CRM, PMP
Radnor, PA
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bblanco


On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 3:09 PM, Stephen Smith <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Thank you for sharing this wonderful open letter from Don.  I should just copy Don's entire letter and say, "Yeah, what he said!"  I called out a few quotes from Don's letter above.  The only reason I attend the ARMA conference is for the opportunity to network face-to-face with the peers in my industry.  The meeting we have as part of the roundtables at the beginning of each conference are by far the best meetings I have every year at the conference.
>
> I plan to attend ARMA this year but it might be my last, especially if I am force fed anymore stuff on Information Governance.  As anyone who has read my posts about IG before on this forum knows, I am not a fan of the IG push by ARMA and I think ARMA does so to the detriment of the Records Management profession and the many thousands of records management professionals.  I certainly understand the need to bring all of the many functions of a company together to the same table including RM, Internal Audit, Compliance, Data Analytics, Legal, E-Discovery, IT, etc.  I also understand that the focus of today's business world is not paper and should be on electronic data and information.  But, why can't this person just be the Records Manager?  Why does it have to be an Information Governance Professional?  To Don's quote above, I think ARMA should declare IG as something that Records Managers do and have been doing for the last few decades.

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