An overemphasis on "risk mitigation" is as bad as an overemphasis on ROI of
an RM Program.

As you stated, it's more about showing cost effectiveness and value of
services provided.  RM is an overhead cost, an expense of doing business...
it's easy to demonstrate cost avoidance by doing things more effectively and
efficiently, but it's not nearly as easy to demonstrate a 'return' relative
to properly managing an organizations information assets.

On the flip side though, you CAN enumerate cost associated with failing to
manage those same assets if there are extra efforts required to search for
properly indexed or mismanaged records, or an inability to produce records
in response to a discovery request or other legal action, or costs
associated with searching backup tapes to find things that should have been
discarded in the course of normal business when their retention was
satisfied but they weren't.   So could you say (the next year) that
following proper practices your ROI was NOT having to address those other
costs?  I wouldn't, but I guess one could.

In my opinion, you can mitigate risk by implementing and following practices
designed to support policy, assessing compliance with those practices, and
ensuring the right information assets are retained for the right periods of
time and are accessible when needed to meet business requirements.

Whatever the business of your business is... and as Dwight and Fred both
said, it's different in public and private settings.  Even within those
spheres- it's different.  We just discussed this a week ago with email and
what the rules are in various States when it comes to "public records",
depending on how the statutes are authored.  And in private industry it runs
the gamut depending partly on how heavily regulated an industry is
(pharmaceutical, finance, utilities) or where you operate (single state,
multiple states, international), or the legal climate you are in.

Larry

-- 
*Lawrence J. Medina
Danville, CA
RIM Professional since 1972*

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