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ECM involves capturing or creating, storing, using, preserving, and distributing content using people, process, and technology.

Three steps to establishing effective electronic content management.

1. Establish governance controls on email
2. Consolidate legacy systems by connecting or migrating existing information
3. Involve users through change management

Establish governance controls on email

• Establish governance policies describing what content to keep, where to keep it and for how long.
• Establish procedures for users.

Consolidate legacy systems

• Purge repositories based upon current governance. Remove ROT (Redundant, Outdated, and Trivial materials).
• Provide guidance for users on how to select content and how to move it to the appropriate place.
• Provide access to content through an effective and standard user interface.
• Include access to legacy content.

Involve users

• Involve and support users with automated solutions wherever possible and training on manual procedures.

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So what is information governance, and why should I care about it?

The short answer is to avoid spoliation.

Two definitions:

Spoliation of evidence occurs when an individual or entity violates its duty to preserve relevant evidence. In the case of a document, for example, destroying, altering or hiding it would all be considered spoliation if the document were relevant to current litigation.

Information Governance is the set of multi-disciplinary structures, policies, procedures, processes and controls implemented to manage information at an enterprise level, supporting an organization’s immediate and future regulatory, legal, risk, environmental and operational requirements.

Any business enterprise that has value, and therefore can be sued, needs to know these definitions and the consequences of not taking them into account. A rule of thumb is: “If you get sued, it is too late to start thinking about information governance.”

Preservation of information and records, and all other evidence, during legal action is a critical requirement for all organizations. In litigation and government investigations, there is the requirement on the part of those involved to retain all relevant information and records, and all other evidence. Failure to carry out this responsibility can lead to criminal charges of obstruction of justice and spoliation. It also can lead to court-imposed sanctions against the parties. Case law has made it clear that organizations cannot wait until they get formal notification of legal action. The action of preserving evidence must begin when the organization can reasonably anticipate litigation or government investigation. Clearly, this is an area that is often in dispute in legal matters.

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Change is a dynamic and unyielding force impacting modern business process. Rather than ignoring change, in today’s business climate we are tasked with developing improvement strategies that will embrace progress. There are a number of methodologies for facilitating improvement, each with a different focus, but all of which utilize an arrangement of principles and procedures applied as a means for continuous improvement.

AIIM has identified four of the leading improvement methodologies as Total Quality Management, Business Process Reengineering, Six Sigma, and Lean.

The Lean methodology is particularly interesting because of its focus on eliminating waste through making procedures more efficient. As you’ll recall from our post, Why Should I Outsource Backfile Scanning? too many companies underestimate the opportunity cost associated with a project until they’ve wasted untold resources. The Lean process identifies the following seven forms of waste.

Change is constant, ubiquitous and omnipresent in our world of late 2014. A shared vision expressed with honesty and mutual respect are key in aligning motivational factors for change. Is your organization ready? A change is gonna come…

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Have you ever tried to repair your own car? Paint your own house? Do your own wiring or plumbing? If you are like me, you have done all of these things. I don’t do them anymore. Here is why: By the time I buy the equipment I need, learn how to make the repair and then finish the job, I find that the cost of the repair when I do it far exceeds the cost of hiring someone who offers these services professionally. So, unless I consider one of these jobs as recreation, and I want to save money, I should outsource these types of jobs.

The same can be said for scanning back files of business information. Few people count document scanning as recreation, so the only reason for doing it yourself is cost savings.

Anybody can scan a piece of paper into an image file. It involves putting the paper in right side up and punching a button. The same can be said of painting, car repair, wiring or plumbing. The problem comes when there is a lot of it to do. You lose opportunity cost to do a higher value task and it will take you much longer to do it than it does someone who has the right equipment and knows how to use it.

And who hasn’t tried to repair a leak in the plumbing only to find that they had made it worse? A lot can go wrong when you convert a paper image into an electronic one. Image quality can be poor. Indexing and metadata tags can be inappropriate so the image, once scanned, is lost to retrieval. Having the ability to scan paper into digital form is a necessity for modern business offices. However, if you have a use case or a compliance need for back file scanning, it is almost always preferable to outsource the scanning of back files for both quality and cost savings reasons.

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USPTO Big Buckets Records Scheduling Initiative
Wednesday, October 8, 2014, 11:30 AM – 1:30 PM Eastern Time (US & Canada)

Register Today!

Agencies and organizations experience diverse business environments generating massive amounts of data, documents, content and records in many formats contained within various platforms.  Gaining effective governance and records management control of these diverse and proliferating data sources is an ongoing challenge – and a prime directive of all organizations. Developing a framework for organizing effective, media neutral comprehensive records retention schedule “Buckets” has been a key ingredient to helping US Patent and Trademark Office provide all-important value and context to their information management needs – thereby simplifying and streamlining the agency’s information governance process.

USPTO’s experience in inventorying, updating and bucketizing the USPTO Program Records Schedules provides some key lessons of experience for organizations seeking better information governance in a decentralized multi-system information architecture – not only for records management but also for electronically stored information and future “big data” initiatives.  John and Neale will relate their lessons of experience in navigating, negotiating, and balancing the various information governance needs of USPTO’s IT, Legal, and the Business Areas (The 3 Bears) in order to develop and implement the USPTO Big Buckets Schedules.  They will also discuss use of some common office business tools/programs in helping them organizing and facilitating their Big Buckets efforts.

Speakers: John Milligan of Millican and Associates and Neale Faunt of Chartis Consulting

 

John Milligan is a Senior Records Management Specialist for Millican and Associates.  John has 36 years experience with government information systems specializing in data/document/records/content/knowledge management.  John’s experience includes project management, planning, information systems life cycle management, quality control, records management system implementation and training, records and content file plan/taxonomy development, information governance, and customer communication for various government clients such as the USPTO, NRC, US Mint, and FBI.  John has worked extensively over the years with National Archives including NARA’s Big Buckets initiative and implementing records management requirements related to the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) Records Management Profile/Business Reference Models, DOD 5015.2, and ISO 15489 electronic records management standards.  John has been active in the last 18 years as a leader locally in ARMA’s Metro Maryland Chapter (Director-At-Large, Program Director) and other information management professional associations.

Neale Faunt is a Principal Analyst with Chartis Consulting with more than 16 years of experience in the Information Technology field.  He has a rare combination of technical and client management skills that have led to his successful experience working under the USPTO IDEAI contract.  For the past 11 years, he has been directly involved with the USPTO Office of Records Management.  He has provided expert leadership for developing and maintaining the Records Management System (RMS) and Comprehensive Records Schedule (CRS) databases, which contain the records schedules for more than 150 USPTO offices.  Neale has applied project management methodologies to his tasks, authored several design documents and user manuals and developed records management content for the USPTO intranet.  Since 2004, he has also managed, developed and maintained two data repositories for the USPTO Trademark Office which automate and simplify the means by which Trilateral partners from the U.S., Japan and Europe collaborate and agree on Trademark identifications.

Register Today!

Location
Embassy Suites
2925 Emerywood Parkway
Richmond , VA 23294

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Let’s assume you’ll begin by reaching out to some of the companies from your search results. In addition to a bevy of toll free 800 numbers, you’ll notice a handful of area codes directed outside of the Richmond, VA region. While reserving commentary as to the quality of these services, there is one near certainty they all share; your documents will be leaving your building. The inherent security compromise of this method cannot be considered lightly.

To be sure, there are a handful of local companies based out of Richmond, VA that provide document scanning services. But did you know that Select Documents is the only locally owned, commercial document scanner in the West End of Henrico County? We are a small business that understands the value of your information assets and that’s why we provide on-site document scanning and records management solutions.

So, the next time you’re looking for document scanning in Richmond, VA remember to stay local, stay secure, and call Select Documents.

CRM, Jonathan Hawes on-site during a mobile scanning project at the Virginia State Bar in downtown Richmond, VA.

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