Boiled down to its absolute barest bones, records management and storage is all about securing key information and complying with regulations. But it is so very much more.

Organizations that prioritize records management as part of their employee and community engagement projects can use their storage and management resources to better connect their workers to the company and develop more meaningful relationships with customers and members of the community. A recent example is the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) archive system.

According to a recent report published on the university’s website, the Penn archive has been functioning for decades, but has recently put a few key changes into action. These shifts are helping the university connect with researchers, the local community and students in a more meaningful way, helping to generate excitement about the institution’s accomplishments over the years and spurring growth opportunities.

This began in the 1980s, according to the report, when a new retrieval and delivery system made records more accessible and easier to search. This was followed by a major milestone in 2009, when the facility was moved from Franklin Field, the university’s football stadium, to a dedicated archive site nearby. This has allowed the staff to employ new practices that draw the university’s community into its history, prestige and future goals. For example, historian and web master Alyssa Sheldon is now using Twitter to reveal photographs and official records pertaining to the university’s past to reach out to students, faculty, staff and others interested in the academic institution.

Within businesses, these kinds of practices can generate major results. Releasing key corporate strategic goals can help employees see where their work falls into the big picture, motivating them and making them more productive. Similarly, using records to showcase the company’s history can make workers feel like they are part of something more meaningful than their day-to-day activities, motivating them to work more effectively.

What are you doing to look beyond the box and connect your records and information management program to better your community and engage employees?

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The flip side of this is that employees in general have been left without the level of corporate loyalty that their parents had. You are probably not going to be at your current company for life. It’s probably not even a long term relationship and more and more full time employees started looking more like contract workers. Sure, you are part of a team, but if the company doesn’t go the extra mile for you, why should you go the extra mile for the company?

But this is short sighted. A happy employee is a productive employee. An employee that believes that the company cares about them is more likely to put in that extra time or deliver that extra inspiration, even when the absence would not be noticed. Of course the economy mandates that people get hired and they get laid-off. That’s an unfortunate fact of the times we live in. But a smart company, one that wants its employees to give 110 percent, is going to show that they do actually care about their employees and is willing to also give 110 percent  back (at least as much as  possible).

And the interesting thing is that this doesn’t have cost a lot. It’s often the little things that can mean so much because it shows that they care. Employees working late and miss dinner? Spend a few dollars and have some instant soups or snacks in the convenience area. If you’re getting 2 extra hours out of someone, isn’t that worth spending $1.00 on a snack? If the whole team is working late, send out for a pizza. What do the employees make per hour? How much did that pizza cost? Do the math.

Ironically, there are things that companies can do to help their employees that will actually end up saving them money as well. Look at how many health insurance plans now cover health club memberships. Because, oh gosh, they finally figured out that it’s cheaper to keep people healthy in the first place than giving them medical care after they get sick.

One interesting benefit that companies can give their employees is access to free shredding. It’s an extra perk that makes the employee’s life a little easier by freeing them from having to hand feed a home shredder with bills, receipts, and endless pre-approved credit card applications. And it really doesn’t cost the company much – shredding services just aren’t that expensive, especially considering what they offer.

And it’s even actually in the best interest of the company to do it as well. Why is that? Think about it: an employee gets sloppy with their financial information because the shredder at home is sometimes just too much trouble. So, they toss out a few envelopes with credit card applications or even that pile of tax documents from 10 years ago. Hey, no one ever really gets that information stolen, do they? Turns out they do. In fact, I met someone just last week who had exactly that happen to him. He thought, “It can’t happen to me,” and got lazy with his information. Someone went through his trash and got enough information to begin stealing his identity. Turns out this caused more than a little trouble because he was the communications officer on a nuclear submarine and had all kinds of secret clearance. When the Navy found out someone was forging his identity, they were not happy about it.

So, even if you are not someone with super-secret clearance, fixing identity theft is no small matter. Many, many phone calls, emails and letters are needed to begin to undo the damage. Most of these calls will be made to other businesses. During work hours. When you would normally be working. Get the picture? You can end up losing days or even weeks of work time trying to put your world back in order. Not good for you, not good for your employer.

So maybe giving employees access to free shredding isn’t just a nice thing for the company to do, it’s also something that ultimately helps them as well. You shred everything you should, no one steals your identity, and you don’t have to spend work time recovering.

Being nice to your employees isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s also good business. Loyalty begets loyalty. So buy someone a pizza next time they work late. Give them a gym membership. Throw a few snacks in the common area. And let them bring in their documents to toss into your shred bins. Everyone wins – except the thieves, of course.

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As an IT professional, one of your most difficult jobs is getting senior managers on board with making a change. What can you say? Some people are just set in their ways. The task requires a savvy pro to convince management that changes are necessary to reduce costs and redirect the saving to fund specific projects and innovation, and ensure the success of the organization.

Some of you may find this to be the case for data backup and recovery too. Changes may be necessary given the critical importance placed on enterprise data.

These days, decisions-makers are finding that taking a hybrid approach to data protection is the way to go. Specifically, companies can often mix tape storage and the cloud to get the most effective results possible.

For example, the quick access to data stored in the cloud makes it a perfect technology for short-term information, in other words smaller sets of data that may have to be accessed and recovered often. Tape, on the other hand, is a much better option for archiving needs. The media has a long lifespan, making it a robust technology for long-term storage and a reliable means for complying with industry and government regulations.

There are several tips you can follow to make the case for updating and modernizing a backup and recovery plan.

1. Set a Target

Those in charge of the budget need to know what you plan on doing with the company’s money. So tell them. Of course, your ideas must be shaped by the organization’s objectives.

Continuing with the example of mixing technologies for backing up data, a company’s decision to invest more in tape or an emerging technology, will be determined by its requirements for recovery. If your industry is highly regulated, it’s probably better that you place a higher priority on tape and offsite tape vaulting.

2. Consider Infrastructure and Time

According to experts, companies should think about backup and recovery like this: The time it takes to back up information is on par with the capacity of all applications needed to be protected divided by the performance – measured in terabytes per hour – of a current solution.

To put it simply, part of making the case for making changes to a data protection program will require getting into the specifics. Decision-makers will want to know how effective the new, layered approach will be.

3. Be Sure to Mention the Cost of Downtime

We saved this one for last because it can serve as your “ace in the hole” or the “cherry on top” of a strong argument. Since the decision-maker is looking at a possible deployment in terms of dollars and cents, so should you. Let him or her know exactly what it will cost the company should it be cut off from critical data.

This figure will be different for individual organizations, but in this instance it’s OK to use industry averages to make your case.

Judging by industry estimates, energy firms are most impacted by downtime and can suffer losses of $2.8 million per hour. The average for telecoms is also up there, at $2 million per hour, followed by manufacturing firms, which stand to lose $1.6 million per hour of downtime. Financial firms, meanwhile, stand to lose about $1.5 million per hour when knocked offline.

No company wants to be caught in such a position, and no longer has to be, because innovative and reliable data backup options are available today.

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Not surprising, is that agencies do not have adequate controls for most major activities, and are greatly lacking in understanding how to manage electronic records.  They’re lacking training, and are overwhelmed by the volume of records.

Sadly, since the last survey, small amounts of progress were made, but the general consensus is that the recommendations from the 2010 response still hold.

This year there was an emphasis in the executive action recommendations to create a deeper partnership of records managers and IT, as well as the need for training.  Moreover, there was an emphasis on having a holistic policy on records management, something that we’ve talked about a lot, and we’re addressing with our Unified Records Management framework.

Now, I didn’t count all of the answers, but there are obviously more agencies that were high risk than low risk, the pattern of scores was not promising.  This is not great news given that new rules and regulations are being issued July 27^th in the federal directive around the new rules for Records Management. It’s not hopeless; there are people out there who are industry experts to help.

What can a federal records manager do?  You can take a look at where your agency ranked, and see if there is anything that you can do to get organized while you wait for the new directive.

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Over the past few decades, or centuries in some cases, court systems throughout the United States have maintained paper records detailing key information about trials. At first glance, keeping paperwork on site made perfect sense. During trials, judges and clerks had access to the records they needed to understand the case and they could research past trials from the region with similar issues to inform their judgments. The system worked. But over the past few years, many of the attics and basements filled with paper records have turned into quagmires that are overwhelming courthouses, leading to structural damages, overwhelming records management challenges and a system that sometimes feels so antiquated that it is easy to wonder how it has lasted so long.

When a teenager at school can grab a smartphone and research old case files for a research paper while a judge is being given paper packets that were specially collected by a full-time clerk, the problem is clear. But it is always easier to fall into a quagmire than it is to escape. When you first enter you haven’t gathered all kinds of muck on your clothes from patches with more mud than solid ground. You also aren’t tired of trying to keep going for an extended period without relief. In many courtrooms around the country, clerks are overworked and budgets are stretched to their limits trying to keep up with outdated records management processes, few have the resources needed to take on an ambitious new project.

Because the resources really aren’t there to establish sweeping digitization projects that also meet security and regulatory demands throughout the legal industry – not to mention paper’s vital role in many facets of operation – seeking relief in more manageable phases is necessary. Working with a records management company can meet this need for many court systems feeling overwhelmed by their records storage predicaments.

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Business Insider recently highlighted 14 of Franklin’s lessons for getting what you want out of life. Taking a closer look, we realized that these same pieces of advice can be applied to data backup and recovery as you and your company can use them to kick-start a strategy.

Below are just a few of those lessons and how you can apply them to a data protection program.

Be Prepared

That’s some advice that all companies can live by when engaging in offsite tape storage and other means of backup. You should be looking at all threats to your enterprise’s data and crafting a protection program that addresses and works to prevent each one. As new issues arise, add their solutions to the plan.

Don’t Procrastinate

As they say, there’s no time like the present. The best time for you to initiate a backup and recovery program is long before an IT disaster strikes, certainly not after the damage is done. Waiting until it’s too late can have some serious implications for your company and operations in the form of data loss.

Know Yourself

How can you expect to prepare for and mitigate the risks of data loss if you don’t know what information you have stored? When developing a data protection program, run an audit of information produced and stored by the company, making sure to note the data that is most important or sensitive and should take priority.

Give Yourself Permission to Make Mistakes

This one can get dicey. Of course, you’ll want to avoid mistakes at all cost as the damage done by data loss can be immense. However, what really matters is that you learn from past mishaps and use that insight to prevent similar situations in the future. A real tragedy would be to suffer similar incidents two times or more. As they say, fool me once shame on you; fool me twice shame on me.

Don’t Fear Change

The enterprise sector is a volatile one, with changes cropping up all the time. Instead of shying away, however, your company should be focused on meeting new developments head on. Take the cloud, for example. Adoption seems inevitable, so why not add it into your backup and recovery strategy by pairing hosted technologies with tape storage use for a hybrid program?

Don’t Give Up

No one ever said that protecting data was a low-stress job. Threats and risks lurk around every corner, forcing the IT department and tech pros to be constantly on their toes to ensure that the information colleagues depend on is available as often as possible. That’s why you can never give up and must remain ever vigilant in fighting the good fight.

Keep Growing

As we said, enterprise data is always changing, and, for the most part, that means growing. As a result, your data protection practices must grow along with trends. A backup and recovery strategy is not a one-time deal where you can implement it once and forget about it. Constant tweaks and updates are needed to ensure that everything runs smoothly.

We can be certain that Franklin didn’t have the protection of information in mind when he came up with his life lessons, but by taking them into account you can be sure that data will be available when you need it.

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The last time we checked in with a Shred Alert, a hospital’s records were found blowing in the breeze in the field of a Boston neighborhood. This time, the records didn’t get quite so far. Unfortunately they still ended up somewhere they should never be: a trash can.

Throwing away records with confidential information simply isn’t good enough these days considering how quickly an opportunistic identity thief can compromise credit histories – or something far worse. Still, accidents happen and some people just don’t realize the implications of tossing paper in the garbage.

What Happened

The KSAT television station in San Antonio recently reported that boxes full of confidential health records were found stashed in a trash bin in nearby Castroville, Texas. Gilbert Padilla told the station’s news team that he came across the records when he was throwing out some garbage of his own.

Included in the records were medical conditions and treatments, names, addresses, phone numbers and Social Security numbers of patients. In other words, it was a treasure trove for identity thieves.

Fortunately, all Padilla had in mind was to get the word out about this shining example of document destruction oversights.

It turned out the records belonged to a medical clinic that shut its doors after losing its contract with the state of Texas in September 2011. Contacted by KSAT reporters, the former owner of the clinic said the records must have ended up in the trash after he failed to pay the rent on a storage units and its contents were auctioned off.

Why It’s Bad

With incidents such as this, one must first think about the identity theft implications of having such information exposed. Aside from presenting a potential threat to a patients financial or physical security, medical records contain an added layer of risk.

For example, details of pre-existing conditions could impact a person while searching for a job as a result of the stigma that continues to be attached to certain conditions. Revelations related to mental illness, for example, can have a dramatic effect on someone’s personal and professional lives.

How to Avoid It

The best way to avoid similar situations is to follow the guidelines and requirements of industry best practices and legal regulations. In basic terms, all medical facilities must implement a wide-reaching shredding program to properly and completely destroy records.

This can be carried out on premise, which may be tedious and burdensome to existing employees, or outsourced to a third-party shredding services provider.

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While it doesn’t appear that a third national television network will create a series on digital hoarding, which would add to the already crowded prime-time lineup devoted to hoarders, experts are calling on companies and individuals to act, the newspaper found.

“Digital clutter doesn’t beget mice or interfere with walking around the house,” Kit Anderson, the former president of the Institute for Challenging Disorganization, told the Wall Street Journal. “But it’s more insidious because no one else is going to insist that you get help.”

According to the report, digital hoarding encompasses everything from having a computer desktop cluttered with icons and shortcuts to companies amassing and storing boxes upon boxes of paper records or rooms overflowing with backup tapes. As a company, the last thing you want to be is a digital hoarder.

Unfortunately, some organizations can’t help themselves. The big data boom and tightening of both legal and industry compliance regulations has led decision-makers to craft their records management programs around the “keep everything” mantra. But that’s something that is much better on paper than in practice.

According to the Wall Street Journal report, people typically only use about 20 percent of what they save. The other 80 percent serves little purpose other than to bog down records storage practices and cause an information manager to lose their hair because of stress.

“It comes down to fear and indecision,” current Institute for Challenging Disorganization president Katherine Trezise told the Journal.

She gave the example of a person with too many desktop icons. They create so many shortcuts and clutter their screen because they are afraid of never being able to find them again. What happens, however, is that it’s still difficult to find the icons because they are lost in a sea of disorganization.

With a better approach to the process, a company can both ensure that pertinent information is kept and the records manager’s sanity is preserved. Here are a few things you should think about with a records management strategy.

Document Destruction

Contrary to your fears and beliefs, not every single piece of enterprise data must be kept. While employee records, contracts and other financial information is required by either law or regulation to be kept, stored and protected, there is still plenty of information that a company can purge.

When doing so, it’s important that the appropriate actions are taken. Experts recommend that secure shredding services be utilized for document destruction. Even though information is being disposed of doesn’t mean the organization is free of the responsibility to protect it. By shredding documents securely, decision-makers can rest assured that the information they contain is safe.

Offsite Storage

After all unnecessary information is tossed out, then comes the time for companies to decide what, in fact, should be kept. To further ease the pressure of the entire process, many companies now utilize the offsite records storage solutions of a professional information management company.

Taking data offsite further relieves the stress of records management. Service providers can pick up files at the company’s location and securely transport them to a storage facility. And just because they are no longer on premise doesn’t mean a company can’t access their records. In fact, they may be even more accessible through online portals and imaging on demand services.

Data Backup

Even with documents shredded and records stored appropriately offsite, some digital hoarders may still be concerned about the security of their data. As Trezise noted earlier, many hoarders are driven by the fear of losing their information.

But that doesn’t have to be the case with a data backup and recovery plan. Whether backed up on tape, the cloud, or with both, a company can rest assured that information is both protected and can be recovered and restored at a moment’s notice.

Managing data is becoming more difficult by the year. According to enterprise news provider Seeking Alpha, the growth of data volumes is expected to increase 500 percent during the next three years. And 90 percent of the data currently in circulation was created within the past two years alone, the news provider stated.

So instead of keeping everything, companies especially should be taking a more calculated approach to information management. While, yes, keeping everything will ensure that you have a specific record should it be requested in litigation. However, the stress and difficulty of ultimately finding and producing the data will be too great.

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It’s a little bit more challenging in business.  We write decks with words and pictures to illustrate what we’re trying to say.  When done right the pictures get across a point in a more meaningful, concise, and easy to comprehend way.  The growth of information, both paper and digital, is a big concept.

Taking these thoughts into consideration, we created an infographic (below) on Modern Records Management.  It depicts the evolution of records management within the federal government – from the current state of information overload to outlined steps for improvement. Proper records management is the backbone of Open Government, and Open Government has been at the forefront of the Obama Administration.

Ready to modernize your government records management program? Take a look to at our picture journey.

View in high-res >>

Per the rules of discovery, you can be forced to dig up and unearth various forms of information – that can date back years – at a moment’s notice. So what will you do if an opposing party requests a piece of data that may be buried in backup tapes or stuffed in the back of a filing cabinet? How far would you go to get that file, document or email back in time to meet the deadlines set forth by the judge?

Hopefully, you’ve taken proactive information management measures so it never has to get to that point. How often is a state of panic the appropriate and most effective way to approach anything involving court or the law?

So long before you went and hired that medium to hold a séance in hopes of conjuring the information back from the other side, the better plan would have been to take a proactive approach to organizing and storing information. That’s something that too often slips through the cracks and is forgotten about until it’s too late, which most often becomes apparent the moment you begin digging for information.

Sending your records manager into the basement archive room with a flashlight certainly isn’t the best way to go about responding to a discovery request.

Half the battle of facing down the challenges of litigation is won long before a lawsuit, complaint or discovery request is filed. By preparing ahead of time, a company is more likely to come out of litigation with its reputation and integrity intact, while a records manager will be able to say the same of his or her sanity.

It starts with first knowing what types of information the company is sitting on. Conducting a thorough audit or investigation will allow a records manager to identify which information may be relevant to future litigation and thus be stored either offsite or within backup tapes for long-term posterity.

Digging even deeper, stored records should also be searchable so it’s easier to locate and produce them with the time comes. It’s important to keep in mind that finding stored records should require a magnifying glass, not an electron microscope.

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