The Legal Dept rescues Records Managers?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe at 17-Feb-2009 | Twitter: @eiwatch |

You really can't envy the task of records managers in the public or private sector. Many are still tasked with archiving hard copies of the meetings of the board of directors, purchase orders, and files from the legal department. Yet they look over their shoulder at the increasing volume of e-mail that is going unmanaged. They know full well that the real record in many cases sit there in the wild west of messages and attachments that constitute e-mail in the typical messaging environment.

Likewise for those who want to avoid, or who have no time for record managers or general compliance issues: life was never easier. If you want to avoid the system, you simply use email as your document management repository. Keep all juicy tips and tid-bits to your personal e-mail or IM and generally circumvent the so called "regulated" environment.

Interestingly, (in my opinion) those that do these kinds of avoidance activities are not "bad guys," they are not aspiring fraudsters, what they are in fact are, the hardest working and most loyal of the organization. They do these kind of things as they see any oversight of their work as an encumbrance and as something "others should need to worry about." While they of course have more important things to do with their time.

In the parallel universe of software vendors, it's not much fun selling technology to meet compliance needs. It all sounds good at the sales and marketing level, but when you get in there at the trench level you normally find one of (or a combination of) three things:

• First, that there is no unified approach to compliance
• Second, that records management professionals do not have the authority or purview to actually manage all the firms 'records'
• Third, that the problem looks set worsen due to an explosion of mail, IM, voice mail, mobile data and SharePoint

So, be you IBM, CA or a more specialist vendor like Symantec or Autonomy -- selling the vision is an uphill struggle since:

• First, you have to coral many stakeholders together to get any hope of forward traction
• Second, the people who want you to help have little budget or authority
• Third, that you can realistically only solve a small fraction of their problems - yet they want a "silver bullet"

There is no easy resolution to these situations, and all we know for sure is:

• That e-discovery requests will likely increase in both volume and complexity.
• That globally, records archives are woefully inadequate and a great number of key records and knowledge are being lost daily
• That today's workforce needs more oversight and supervision than ever before
• That one day it will all implode

It's tough to work in information compliance and records management -- be you a vendor, consultant, or end user. Nobody wants to know till its almost too late, and then....they want the moon.

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? It's difficult to say, but I think that the loss of corporate knowledge and the inability to meet basic regulatory and legal requirements will sink some companies through impending and implied scandal.

I think that others are starting to "get it," and are re-architecting their approach to information compliance.

I also think that some vendors are starting to realize that promising a "compliant solution" simply doesn't ring true, and that being more honest about the limitations and the reality that the buyer is facing is starting to get a hearing.

Where the real light at the end of the tunnel comes from is the legal department. For a long time they have had surprisingly little to do with an organization's information. They've taken a very hands-off approach.

But now e-discovery requests due to impending litigation have become the order of the day, and those requests can be hell to deliver on. At the same time, the legal department is becoming increasingly involved in the aftermath of allowing users the freedom to use e-mail, the Internet, and IM tools without sufficient controls. Whereas just a few years back any memo that left a company's office had been thoroughly viewed, fact checked, and all the T's crossed and I's dotted. Today they go on general distribution without even a read through. Similarly conversations that people kept to the smoking room or the bar after work - are now conducted in company time on the company's communication systems.

It's been a very long time coming but I see early signs that legal departments will prove to be the knight on the white horse, the one that comes to the rescue of both record managers and information management in general.  We can but hope that I am right.

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Categories: Alan Pelz-Sharpe, , E-mail Archiving and Management, Enterprise Content Management, Search and Information Access, Building Business Case, Implementation, Marketplace at Large, Selecting Technology, CA Message Manager, Enterprise Vault, IBM FileNet Email Manager, IDOL Server