Digitizing makes sense. Doing so makes finding and accessing information easier, quicker and more complete. But the trouble is that it can become just another dumping ground for everything in your office. Oftentimes documents and information are digitized and stored away without really taking time to categorize the content and apply retention policies. This lack of basic information governance will come back to haunt you.

The promise of Digital Transformation is that eliminating paper will improve process performance. But have we traded one mountain of clutter for another?

Is SharePoint the Answer?

Many organizations use SharePoint as a way to rein in the digital clutter and complexity. And it’s true that SharePoint provides better collaboration with the ability to make content follow specific rules. But it seems that even SharePoint has become another disorganized mess. Often users or departments are allowed to create their own sites – without any retention or metadata rules established ahead of time, and as a result, the digital dumping ground has expanded just as rapidly, if not more so, than with basic file shares.

Don’t Get Boxed In

The advent of consumer-based Cloud storage repositories is feeding the information chaos. Services like Google Drive, Box, OneDrive and Dropbox are popular with users, especially those working virtually or who are constantly on the run. It’s easy to upload content to the Cloud and work around the hassle of corporate protocols regarding information governance. It takes the burden off of IT in terms of expanding discs and server sizes since these online repositories have seemingly unlimited storage capacity. Convenience and expedience often override the forethought of good information management. The result is that users end up creating yet another place where content is stored without proper organization. The problem is compounded if the cloud drives are owned solely by a user, with no corporate-wide visibility or access. And, unlike old-school stacks of boxes, or servers in the data center, the problem can be invisible – just waiting to be discovered by an opposing litigant.

Retention and Governance

Some Cloud repositories, like Box, for example, have a governance module that does provide some basic retention and hold functions and does so from a corporate level. But for most serious information management applications, these facilities do not go far enough. In that case, I recommend that organizations look closely at partnering with third-party suppliers, like Zasio and others, who specialize in records retention and information governance. In any case, organizations should have an eyes-wide-open strategy; perhaps standardizing on one particular Cloud-based repository and then apply some thoughtful third-party tools on top of that to better manage and retain that information.

Battling the Chaos

With all the collaboration and storage options available, it can be difficult to determine the next best steps to battle information chaos. Here are some tactics to consider.

• Before you let users run wild and use whatever storage platform they want, consider standardizing on a single platform, preferably one which provides some measure of governance and control.
• Look for tools within those platforms that can help with information governance, at least at the retention level, if not also able to apply holds and other data governance measures.
• Consider if it’s necessary and/or feasible to manage retention, holds, and disposition within a given tool, or if it might be better to move documents into a long-term repository once the active period for those documents is completed.
• Evaluate existing policies and workflows to ensure you’re not driving users to more convenient alternatives by an overly-cumbersome document classification process. I have witnessed systems that require five or more screens of questions just to save a document.
• Evaluate tools from third-party vendors that have the ability to apply retention and governance policies and that provide centralized management. The Zasio suite of solutions is one good place to start.

Moving Forward

Your company may have already set up a well-organized policy for electronic records management. But the reality is that the process may be cumbersome and restrictive enough where people simply decide to circumvent that policy and load content on the next convenient Cloud drive because they don’t want to take the time to go through the governance process. Make sure that Google Drive and other Cloud-based repositories don’t become a dumping ground for information that will be impossible to clean up later.

Speak with a Zasio Solutions Consultant

If you would like to speak to someone about your current electronic records management policies, or how our Versatile™ solutions could be a good fit for you, please fill out our Contact Form and one of our Solutions Consultants will get in touch with you.

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.

The post Are Cloud Drives the Latest Dumping Ground? appeared first on Zasio.

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.

The post “Just Scan It” – The Pros and Cons of Digitizing Paper Records appeared first on Zasio.

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.

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.

The post Is Records Management Ready for Blockchain? appeared first on Zasio.