Very interesting perspective. I liked the emphasis on human factors and
culture as drivers that may be more important than technology. Some say
that IT applications will soon do all RM, and the job of RM is on the
way out. I say "the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." 

I want to plug the generic position of expert - at RM or whatever. The
author says"... but the tools themselves don't actually make you
compliant. To do that would require a culture of compliance, a deep
understanding of your obligations to relevant regulations, and clear and
clearly followed procedures. The only way you can buy compliance is to
bribe the auditor." 

Can we commodify everything, or will we need experts? There is an effort
to write such complete SOP (including RM procedures) for everything that
any idiot can do it. This is doomed to failure because the effort is too
large and the target is always on the move. Too much specific knowledge
is required. Look at the effort required to create and sustain MS
Office, which is the closest thing to such an "any idiot..." system.
However, look at the learning it takes to fully use "Office"; hence the
"MS Office for Dummies" books. There are procedures explaining
procedures which describe still more SOP about a job. Even then, when
the mountains and gigabytes of SOP are written, the job and its
environment have changed, rendering the SOP mountain obsolete. 

Conclusion: one can't avoid the expert if one wants success. 



-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of David Gillespie
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2006 6:18 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [RM] The future of Records Management

For those amongst us who prefer to occassionally delve into the
theoretical,
there is an interesting piece on CMSWatch today which considers the
future
of Enterprise Content Management and along with it the future of Records
Management.  

The article is called "ECM is dead - Long live ECM!"  and it can be
found
here: http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/140-Whither-ECM

Some of the comments about Records Management include:

"In theory, the Records Management community should have all the answers
to
enterprise compliance challenges. But the sheer volume of content now
being
generated and circulated challenges traditional RM methodologies to the
core." ... And ...

"Frankly, few firms want to spend money on Records Management at all,
and
the idea of ramping up their spending tenfold or more to address the
volumes
of content sloshing through the enterprise is unlikely to materialize. A
watered down, simplified approach typified by basic but relatively
effective
retention structures is more likely to gain hold, particularly as firms
come
to realize that paper isn't going away, e-mail and IM also present a big
problem, and one way or another everything needs to be managed for its
legally defined lifecycle. It's not pro forma RM, but it's better than
the
typical, "create->use->forget about" model currently practiced."

I'd be really interested in what this community thinks about those
issues in
particular the advent of 'watered down' records management.  

Cheers
David.

David Gillespie | CTO | 80-20 Software

Tel: +61 7 3217 9603 | Mobile:  +61 419 357 178 |
www.80-20.com/retentionserver 

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