digital records Archives - Zasio

RIMpocalypse: Reflections by a RIM Rookie

Zasio — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 17:27:50 +0000

The Beginning of the End…

As a new business school graduate in December 2019, I eagerly began my first job as a compensation specialist at a premier tourist attraction on the island of Oahu. My excitement was palpable; it felt like everything was falling into place—starting a promising job, living in paradise, and enjoying hiking and surfing in my free time. These early aspirations, however, proved short-lived.

The start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 caused an immediate halt in operations and significant layoffs at my company. Fortunately, I’d been spared, but our HR team of nearly 20 had been reduced to seven employees. Consequently, I was thrust into a critical role—assisting the VP of HR. This involved managing volumes of records and information in some pretty outdated systems, all during a period of chaotic office transitions. This was a high-pressure situation, but looking back, also a profound learning experience—one that shaped my understanding of how crucial records and information management practices are to maintaining operational efficiency and ensuring business continuity.

Right away, I saw areas to improve our records and information management practices. I learned how critical it is for businesses to have a comprehensive digital documentation system and a dedicated RIM professional serving as a strategic business partner. These factors may be easily overlooked in times of stability but can prove crucial in a crisis.

Tech-ing Up the Tropics: Modernizing Our Village Record-Keeping

The first challenge we faced was most records were still physical documents, a practice fraught with inadequacies. I encountered files buried in stacks of paperwork or disorganized filing cabinets. Retrieving crucial records for stakeholders was cumbersome and time intensive. Our VP led the way in advocating that we eliminate physical records by scanning documents and storing them in the cloud. This transition not only made files more accessible but also streamlined document disposal.

Our transition from paper to digital did wonders for productivity. In addition to being more accessible—particularly by a dispersed workforce—records were easier to manage and better suited for version control. This also made compliance auditing a lot easier. Digitization further forced us to embrace cloud storage. And with some investments in cloud security, digitization empowered us to step out of our comfort zones and adopt more technologically advanced solutions. We streamlined RIM processes to eliminate bureaucratic hurdles and strategically position ourselves for success in the coming years.

Not so Smooth-Sailing Operations

Another obstacle was our lack of a written, operational records management policy. Even with digitization, providing access to files was still difficult without a formal policy and procedures for managing essential records. Under the old system, files could simply be passed from desk to desk. As a result, they were easy to misplace without a backup. The good news was the company was quickly transitioning to an enterprise management and document solution which would streamline records transfer and access. It also ensured records stayed updated, backed up, and secured against data loss and unauthorized access. With these changes, we were more efficient, and had significantly reduced risks and operating costs.

Once we finished digitizing records, we also implemented a document management system to organize files. Having a DMS allowed us to seamlessly name, sort, categorize, retrieve, share, and secure digital files, simplifying management and ensuring data safety. And with our new records management policy, we’d solve many of our workflow disruptions.

Business Partners, Not Just Clerks!

But even after all these changes, we still lacked a dedicated RIM manager, a significant challenge. After losing most of our HR team, I discovered RIM responsibilities had been distributed among various student file clerks and part-timers, who often lacked formal RIM training and experienced high turnover rates. Our workforce reductions also left no point person for records management guidance, which added to challenges accessing and distributing important information amid growing complexities.

Appointing a dedicated RIM expert is essential to centralize responsibilities, improve training, and maintain records organization and security. Organizations cannot manage data consistently and transparently without a robust data governance framework supported by clear policies and procedures and led a knowledgeable RIM professional. Fortunately, we were able to find a very capable RIM point person, and consequently, could make much more informed RIM decisions and better identified and addressed risks before they escalated.

Final Reflections: From Ruin to RIM

Reflecting on my first experience in HR management, I saw how critical it is for organizations to develop effective RIM policies and train personnel on good RIM practices. My organization’s COVID crisis highlighted the need to shift from outdated paper-based systems to optimal digital ones, significantly improving accessibility and compliance. Implementing a potent document management system and establishing a dedicated RIM professional were pivotal for enhancing operational efficiency, strengthening data security, and building organizational resilience. This experience deepened my understanding of effective RIM practices and emphasized the importance of proactive planning and adaptability navigating workplace challenges. And I learned that getting started now with a proactive approach to RIM not only supports sustainable growth, it may even prevent a future crises.

Disclaimer: The purpose of this post is to provide general education on information governance topics. The statements are informational only and do not constitute legal advice. If you have specific questions regarding the application of the law to your business activities, you should seek the advice of your legal counsel.

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“Just Scan It” – The Pros and Cons of Digitizing Paper Records

Zasio — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 21:44:15 +0000

Despite digitization and decades of paperless initiatives, companies still work with a lot of paper. For many organizations, core functions like accounts payable, human resources or account on-boarding remain mired in paper copies and manual workflow. Since the foundation of digital transformation is all about getting rid of paper, a common reaction is “Why don’t we just scan it all?” This might seem to be a reasonable approach, but it may not always make good business sense.

Digitizing paper records is not as simple as rolling in some scanners and hiring a team of data entry clerks. The complexities of preparing the documents, the intricacies of quality control, and the expense and expertise required for working with capture systems and equipment is often overlooked, especially when viewed from a strictly technology and storage point of view.

Shaping Up the Savings

The cost-savings of a ‘just scan it’ approach often fails to pencil out, even for large-scale scanning. One study conducted by Pinnacle Data Management in the UK estimated that one thousand document storage boxes could contain 1,000,000 sheets of paper, which if scanned at 10 cents per page would cost approximately $100,000 to scan. By comparison, storing those thousand boxes off-site in a warehouse would cost about $400.00 per month. The result is that it would take 20 years to recover the scanning investment.

Statutes and Compliance

A number of strategic concerns regarding information governance and compliance must be considered. Federal, State and International statutes all have stipulations regarding what you can or cannot digitize, for how long, and in what format. Depending on your industry, any number of additional standards come into play. These protocols may not always lend themselves to a digital-only approach. For example, Hong Kong’s Electronic Transactions Ordinance specifies a staggering array of documents that are exempt from electronic allowance. These include wills, trusts, powers of attorney, instruments requiring stamps or endorsements, negotiable instruments, and many more, that must be retained in paper form. Laws from other countries contain similar carve-outs.

Data Security

Factors surrounding data security makes digitizing paper records a much more complex issue than simply scanning pages and filing them away in image files. Information captured in an image archive or document management repository can represent a treasure trove of opportunity for computer hackers who are looking to steal sensitive and private data. Things like social security numbers, financial and medical account details, addresses and phone numbers, are all found in these archives that may, or may not, have an appropriate level of information governance applied. And the longer those files are held the more likely that they become redundant and obsolete to the organization while translating into great prospects and profit for cyber-thieves. A physical document may seem antiquated, but is easier to secure since it requires physical access to the record. Figurative “back doors” become real ones that you can lock and guard.

Best Practices

How can you determine when it’s a good idea to digitize your paper records? Here are a few important questions to ask as you plan your approach.

Which documents should you scan?
Do we need to digitize everything, or just the most important documents?
What if we scanned everything from today forward, and left the rest on paper?
Will “scan on demand” (as they are requested) meet most of my needs?
How much effort will be required to prepare these documents for scanning?
What about non-standard-size documents?
How frequently are you going to need access to this document once digitized?
Where will the information be stored?
How sensitive is the information? What is the risk?
Are there legal or regulatory stipulations associated with this document?

Moving Forward

“Just scan it” misses the mark for intelligent information governance. Maintaining effective information governance requires not only technology, but also thoughtful policies that allow you to meet legal and regulatory compliance while taking into account the hidden and often overlooked implications of digital transformation.

We can help. We’re experts in Records Management and Information Governance. Our premier software solutions do the heavy lifting, no matter the capacity of your records management and retention scheduling needs. And our personalized consulting and research services make us a global leader in information governance, records management and intelligent information management.

Find out more at Zasio.com or contact me directly at warren.bean@zasio.com, I’d be pleased to talk with you about how we can help.

Disclaimer: The purpose of this post is to provide general education on Information Governance topics. The statements are informational only and do not constitute legal advice. If you have specific questions regarding the application of the law to your business activities, you should seek the advice of your legal counsel.

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Is Records Management Ready for Blockchain?

Zasio — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 19:46:08 +0000

Blockchain is a subject that’s getting a lot of attention these days, and for good reason. Blockchain is an undeniably ingenious invention. By allowing digital information to be securely and transparently distributed but not altered, blockchain technology is creating a backbone of a new type of digital record-keeping. Originally devised for the digital currency, Bitcoin, the tech community and forward-looking organizations are now finding, or looking for, other important and disruptive uses for the technology.

Is records management ready for blockchain? The answer for me is that it depends on the specific use case for blockchain with regards to records management, and whether the added value is worth the cost. On one hand, you could conceivably use it as a database to securely retain all of the metadata for all of your records. The problem, however, is that the approach would be astronomic overkill; expensive both from a cost perspective as well as a data usage and bandwidth perspective. Imagine replicating an entire content management database to hundreds or thousands of computers in a network, with multiple systems running complex mathematical algorithms to validate the data each time a new piece of information is added. And, always adding information – never purging.

Chain of Custody

Blockchain may not be a panacea for records management, but there are applications where it can be a powerful tool. For instance, if you need a way to securely send a document from a repository to a third party, and you want to verify that nothing has intercepted it or modified it along the way, then blockchain would be a good fit. The information is encrypted securely and if it had to go through any third parties you can ensure that whoever is along the chain has been included in the trail of custody — you have a ledger of who touched it and anything that was added to the document along the way. Blockchain works to authenticate the document and the document contents.

Risks

With all the benefits of blockchain, there are some hidden downsides that often get overlooked. According to the science journal Nature, blockchain technologies like Bitcoin and others are power-hungry and the impact of CO₂ emissions is predicted to push warming above 2 °C within less than three decades. This has both scientists and economists worrying about growing electricity use. A new study published in Joule argues that, globally, bitcoin crypto-mining consumes at least as much electricity in a year as all of Ireland (about 24 TWh). While other experts disagree, the fact is that blockchain is not free and may indeed have hidden costs and implications not only to businesses and organizations, but the large whole of society as well.

A powerful aspect of blockchain is secure and validated encryption, but anything that is encrypted must have a key, and if the key is lost then so is the data. A recent Wall Street Journal article details the case of a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange where the customers’ holdings are trapped in an electronic vault after the firm’s founder allegedly died without revealing the access keys to unlock his laptop.

Bruce Schneier of Wired goes so far as to make the case that there’s no good reason to trust public blockchain technology.

Smart Contracts

One of the hottest features of blockchain is its ability to facilitate “smart contracts.” Smart contracts allow certain digital processes to take place only when certain conditions have been met and are being used in manufacturing and Supply Chain Management to automate the moving of materials based on predefined conditions. One real-world example in records management would be a freight company (like FedEx or UPS) using blockchain smart contracts to prevent the company from accepting material from a shipper that has failed to verify that their product has met certain criteria or regulation. This type of custodial documentation chain is invaluable, for instance, during the recent incidents with transportation of lettuce tainted with salmonella. Where did the lettuce come from, who handled it, and what happened along the way? Additional examples in Healthcare, insurance, legal and government operations all come easily to mind.

Best Practices

Any company planning a blockchain initiative needs to know that more is involved than just the business case for the technology. There are technical and operational issues that must be considered as well. Here are a few important questions to ask as you plan your strategies.

What data do you plan to put into the blockchain?
Will it be a public or private network?
Does blockchain solve a problem that cannot be solved otherwise?
How will encryption keys be protected?
How are you going to synchronize what’s happening in the blockchain with the rest of your enterprise systems?
How do you extend your smart contract logic — the basis of most business-oriented blockchain projects — into your other business process logic?
How will you analyze the data?
How many assets are you trying to record on the blockchain?
How many participants do you have?
What is the complexity of the smart contract?
Who can see what part of the ledger?
What is the value for us in using Blockchain?

Moving Forward

It is my hope that the records management community begins to have more discussions and exploration about the use of blockchain in records management. It is important to temper the promise of blockchain with the realization that there are costs and implications that go beyond the promise of digital transformation. Blockchain is something we need to seriously consider before we dive in and start using it.

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Hard-Copy Files in a Digital World

Zasio — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 21:54:41 +0000

Another day, another personal information data breach.

Many companies started looking at their own system’s weaknesses after learning about the recent Uber data breach. No one wants to be the next data breach headline. This kind of news can make people long for the days when records retention was simpler and paper-based documents meant data protection wasn’t always part of the daily routine. Some may even wonder whether the benefits of personal data protection outweigh the administrative burden of returning to hard-copy records. [1] But did you know that low-tech data can be just as easy, if not easier, to breach?

How do data protection laws apply to hard-copy records?

Cyber-security is on the front-lines of the personal data battle, but it’s just part of the equation. Careless retention of hard-copy records that contain personal information can also result in a data breach. Careless retention can affect both small and large organizations and those with domestic or international connections. Many companies moved from hard-copy records to digital records. Digital records are a more efficient and “greener” system. However, overlooking hard-copy documents can leave companies open to personal data attacks and heavy sanctions.

While some data protection laws define “personal information” in detail, most are purposely vague. For example, Serbia’s Law on Personal Data Protection defines personal information as “any information relating to a natural person, regardless of the form of its presentation or the medium used (paper, tape, film, electronic media etc.).[2] The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has its own definition of “personal data.” In fact, it makes no reference to the medium of the personal data.[3] However, the GDPR’s definition of a “personal data breach” covers the low-tech, minor data breaches and doesn’t even mention the medium of the data. The GDPR states that a personal data breach is, “a breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorized disclosure of, or access to, personal data.”[4] The lack of clarity in the law can be costly for businesses. They could face high sanctions for what seems like a trivial loss of hard-copy records.

What are some differences for hard-copy data protection requirements?

Most data protection laws have broad requirements for both electronic and hard-copy personal information. However, some laws are more specific about the difference between physical documents and digital information.

Many data protection laws carry records-handling requirements that explain how to store, destroy, or protect hard-copy records that contain personal information. For example, the Netherlands AFM Compliance Regulations specifies that businesses must store physical data in a fireproof safe and digital data must be “safeguarded by technical access security systems.”[5]

Different laws carry different requirements. Zasio can teach you how to protect your data based on the laws that affect your business. We can also clarify other records retention requirements for you. Call us today.

[1] Draft PCI/S Good Practices for Data Management and Integrity in Regulated GMP/GDP Environments, 5.3.3.

[2] Serbia Law on Personal Data Protection, RS Official Gazette Nos. 97/2008 and 104/2009, Article 3 (1).

[3] Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation), Article 4 (1).

[4] Id. at Article 4 (12).

[5] Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets Compliance Regulations, Regulations about handling inside information, Appendix 4 (Data Security).

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