Just when you thought that paper was making its way
to the museum of obsolete objects, somebody decided to clear out the
basement! Perhaps the basement once
provided a cheap, quick and easy storage solution…’out of sight, out of mind’;
although with many agencies facing backlogs of unsentenced records, the burden
of excessive paper weighs heavily over time.
Ah yes, I hear you sigh…that old chestnut! But there’s a reason we have to keep
revisiting this old chestnut – it’s still an issue! Our experience tells us that projects set up
to sentence and dispose of information backlogs are still only being initiated
when the agency is planning a move, budgets are strained, or the proverbial
hits the fan. But as you probably well
know (preaching to the converted) the financial and business costs will have
already begun their march out the front door.
When delivering disposal courses, participants will
often say to us “management should come along to this”, or “we just can’t
get resources allocated to deal with the issue”. So here are some top tips for getting things
moving before the proverbial…
1. Conduct a
comprehensive information audit to identify the issues associated with your
agency’s ever-increasing information holdings, identifying (as a minimum):
o
current information resource holdings (including
records)
o
information repositories
o
estimated material generated
weekly/monthly/annually
o
quantities of inactive material
o
current storage costs, and
o
retrieval costs;
2. Assess
implications and risks for the ongoing management of your agency’s information
holdings, such as:
o
projected financial costs (storage, retrieval and
management)
o
space inefficiencies
o
loss of business productivity
o business inefficiencies
o
non-compliance;
3. Deduce
the benefits of implementing a sentencing and disposal program based on steps 1
and 2;
4. Prepare a
comprehensive report/business case to management which clearly and concisely
identifies these issues and offers a solution that is capable of realising
tangible benefits (inclusive of a financial return that will outweigh the cost
of the disposal program…or at least be cost neutral).
If the International Data Corporation’s (IDC) 2013 prediction that the
total of all digital data created (and replicated) — will reach 4ZB in 2013’ is
anything to go by (Gens, 2013), you might want to think again before you decide
to put sentencing and disposal of digital information holdings on the back
burner!
References
Gens, F. (2012). Top 10 predictions: competing on the 3rd platform. Retrieved
from http://www.idc.com/research/Predictions13/downloadable/238044.pdf
