SHOCKING FIGURES!! AND FIGURES DON’T LIE

 

E-RECORDS: A RUNAWAY CHAOS!!! WHAT IS YOUR ORGANIZATION DOING ABOUT IT?
I BET…… NOTHING

With ‪#‎Internet‬ ‪#‎connections‬ getting cheaper and ‪#‎APPETITE‬ for more ‪#‎data‬/ ‪#‎information‬ ever Getting insatiable, ‪#‎Businesses‬ are facing a BIG PROBLEM: their data isn’t

Which technology are you using? Is it official? Is it audited as other information Resources?

growing, it’s ‪#‎EXPLODING‬—exponentially. In fact, 90% of all electronically stored information was created in the last two years. And that data isn’t neatly organized in rows and columns. 80% of it is unstructured—‪#‎spreadsheets‬, ‪#‎presentations‬, ‪#‎photos‬, ‪#‎videos‬—that are sprawled across a variety of storage silos.
It’s a mess.
And instead of dealing with this ‪#‎mess‬, many businesses have relied on KEF (Keep Everything Forever), the consequences of which have become unbearable: soaring ‪#‎storage‬ and ‪#‎management‬ costs, and serious legal and ‪#‎compliance‬ risks.
So if Keeping Everything Forever isn’t working, what will? NOT Keeping Everything Forever.

At Kenvision Techniks, we help organisations to restructure their records systems. We always keep it simple in our dealings. One of the areas we always recommend organisations is that of self discovery. This is about knowing what they have in the first place and then moving from their. Very few organisations can accurately tell what information they have in terms of quantity, the categories/subject, relevance, currency, their source, etc. This state is made worse by the fact that quite a number of them do not even have any policy governing information management leave alone Records Management Policy. Even where such a policy exists, very little is done to ensure compliance.

For organizations that are still in their infancy or have not started off in as far as records management is concerned, they should not panic. The hardest part in initiating any new program/ project/ business/ work pattern / etc is actually to start. It is the same as taking baby steps. It requires resolve and determination as it leads to giving away your past ways which one is very comfortable with. For businesses, it requires a complete re-look into their systems and a calculated moved to shift to the new ways of doing things. Truth be told on this matter, an organization cannot entirely outsource the domain of records management i.e, creation, #Capture, maintenance and use, storage, preservation and disposal. (some of the functions may be outsourced though).

In all my corporate Records Management Training events that I have had over the last seven years, one of the issue that I have always raised with the attendees is their involvement in the use of social network technologies, mainly Twitter and Facebook. Nearly each attendee points out that these technologies are in use by almost everyone in their organisations and it is very possible that a lot of corporate business may be transacted online. However, when asked as to whether the organisations have policies governing the use of these technologies, majority of them 99.9%) admitted that their organisations had not come up with policies on the use of such technologies. It thus goes without saying that the time spent on these technologies (online) and information received and sent out is not in any way tracked. If this seems to be surprising you, then here is the shocker!! Over 85% of the organisations did not have any Information Management Policy and that none of the trainees had heard of Records Management Policy. It is, therefore, not surprising that issues of systematic disposal of records was alien to the organisations.

DATA LANDFILLS

The danger of the above scenario is that when so much unstructured and overly unmerited data is hoarded by an organisation, establishing order gets more difficult. The organisation ends up with useful data mashed up with useless data. There is no defined boundaries between bodies of data thus complicating searching and discovery of the useful content. The organisation is challenged by the enormity of data especially where it has to dig through to get information required to make necessary decisions. The accuracy of the data is questionable,holding of multiple copies of the same data is rampant and up-to-dateless is not certain. In addition to this, it costs the organisation more in terms of time as it has to engage more staff time to search the data or deploy expensive search tools to search the data they require.

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