In talking to some records managers, I get the feeling that the directions out of this conference are not as clear cut as in the conferences of years ago. 

Records management is fractured.  In the past it was about classification, retention and protection.

The concept of getting rid of old records was not as big of an influence.  Now Shredding records is more important than storage of records. 

Shredding of records is now considered as Protection from Identity Theft and Industrial Sabotage.  Destruction as Protection!!  Time travel back 30-40  years and RM’s would be amazed.

Offsite storage does not play the same role.  Before you disagree, storage is done on the Cloud!  So the file in the box is not so important. You can find it on your computer, or you can find it on the server or on the Cloud.

Think about the logistics of records management now compared with 20 years ago.  The records stayed in file cabinets for a while; … while active.  The searching references were made to the file cabinet.  Nobody went to the IT department looking for a file.

(The young ones on this List probably don’t even know this.)

The boxes stayed on the storage shelves inactive for an average of sixteen years according to PRISM statistics.

Ask your records storage vendor how often they deliver boxes back to you to find a file.  Not nearly as often as “back in the day.”

The offsite storage industry is shrinking and that is why there is such dramatic consolidation.

The electronic record is real.  Machine readable files are records.  Back up tapes are no longer just a disaster recovery tool but they contain electronic records or just records. What is in the Cloud is also a record.  The Courts value them as real and even Best Evidence.  Remember when it came off the typewriter or word processor ( we don’t even have those anymore.) it was considered the best evidence because it was the real original.  

Now we need forensics to prove if something is the original and the best evidence version.

Records Management, IT and information governance are so whipped together inside a big fruit cake that no one can grasp the essence.  And this is still in transition.  

Who really controls records management now?  Who will control it in five years?  ARMA had such clear direction at a time.  (Or am I romanticizing a time period? )

But I do not feel people returned home from ARMA’s conference with as clear a sense of direction as they did in the earlier times.

I also think that “Records Protection” and “Vital Records Protection” are not controlled by the records manager as back in the days of paper records. Information Management and Information Governance was an attempt to gain a handle on this but records management is much more etherial now.  So the Cloud was an intuitive choice by Big Data.

But like religion, I think that “records management: still has a 10 Commandments.  But I think they need to be redefined in light of the current information assets.  What are the 10 Commandments of Records Management in 2016?


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