Valuable Content or ROT, Who Decides? You Can Be a Change Agent! by Sue Trombley

In a recently published AIIM report researched and written for Iron Mountain's Thought Leadership Program, the stats and facts tell us what we already knew intuitively: the lack of information governance for electronic content increases the risk of data breaches and reputation damage.

Just this past week, the Associated Press cited the Identity Theft Resource Center's report that 85 million records were exposed in 2014. I have to wonder how many of those records were eligible for destruction before the breach occurred. Given that over 90% of organizations have a Records and Information Management (RIM) Program that includes a disposition policy, yet a whopping 74% of organizations have a keep everything culture, there's little doubt in my mind that some amount of personal information was unnecessarily exposed.

For nearly the past 10 years (essentially since 2006 and the amended U.S. Rules of Civil Procedure), the focus of the RIM professional's reasoning to get rid of what we don't need was litigation exposure mitigation, at least for anyone who would listen. While that remains a valid and compelling reason to practice consistent defensible disposition, data breaches have grabbed the attention of organizations' senior leadership and their shareholders (if they are publically held).

In the spirit of a manifesto, I say now is the time for us to take advantage of this increased attention in information management to bust through cultural inhibitions for destroying content whether it is redundant, transitory, or obsolete - and I agree with Dr. Susan Cisco, CRM, FAI that obsolete includes those records that have met or exceeded their retention requirement as specified in our organization's records retention schedule.

It should come as no surprise to the readers of this blog that respondents to the AIIM research identified anywhere from 10 - 50% of their content as being useful , depending on their industry and specific function; the rest is considered ROT. A lot of that ROT lives in file shares which are left unmanaged in a third of organizations (which seems a bit optimistic to me based on my own experience consulting with hundreds of customers).

So who decides what stays and what goes? In an ideal world - one that is justifiably championed by the Information Governance Initiative (IGI) - an Information Governance Council comprised of key stakeholders (legal, compliance, business units, IT, RIM, etc.) should be the final arbiter of disposition decision-making. Things are a bit more complicated today due to big data and the very attractive proposition that at least some portion of the information we create and receive has varying degrees of value after it has served its original purpose. As such, we have to give the data officer, or his/her equivalent, a seat at the table, too.

As the AIIM paper says, Most everyone agrees that we simply cannot go on keeping it all - despite the superficial attraction of the keep everything and rely on search idea, in part fuelled by Cloud services. The amount of money spent by IT keeping the infrastructure running considerably outweighs that available for new projects and investments.

So let's rally around the report and use it to your best advantage. Pull out the pertinent insights for your organization and start the conversation with those most impacted by data breaches. Use the paper's facts and stats, in conjunction with daily news reports about breaches, to help you make a compelling case for taking action in the disposition of ROT for the benefit of your organization's future.

Access a complimentary copy of the Valuable Content or ROT, Who Decides? Report - and much more - at www.ironmountain.com/thoughtleadership.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2015/uncategorized/valuable-content-rot-...
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