What is the relationship between records management and compliance with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests? In short, it’s complicated. Obviously, good records management is critical to meeting formal FOIA requests. It’s how staff can even find the information that’s being requested. Unfortunately, according to research published last year from the U.S. National Archives and [...]

Every record has a job to do, and errors compromise their ability to fulfill their purpose. For example, some records provide mission-critical information. In these cases, inaccuracies and errors will reduce their ability to meet objectives and mandates. In other cases, record-keeping is about increasing transparency and public confidence. Here, errors will erode trust and [...]

Once upon a time, organizations had to host and manage all their physical computing equipment themselves to run necessary software applications and store data. That has completely changed: today, almost every organization in the world uses “the cloud,” a network of interconnected servers located in data centers worldwide that can be access via the Internet, [...]

Protecting Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Protected Health Information (PHI) is no small task for organizations and their records management teams. Government agencies in particular deal with PII and PHI all the time, because they often include mission-critical information like: Full Name Address Date Of Birth Assigned Identifiers (e.g., Social Security Number, Passport Number, Known [...]

One of the key elements of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) emphasis on electronic records management is the collection and transmittal of appropriate metadata. Metadata refers to information about the information stored within the record. As NARA itself says, “Simply put, metadata are elements of information that answer the questions ‘who, what, where, [...]

With NARA placing more emphasis than ever on electronic records management – and already beginning to eye the next set of target goals – many agencies are looking to make sure their existing or proposed Electronic Records Management (ERM) platforms can meet the needs and challenges that lie ahead. Unfortunately, far too many organizations default [...]

The Office and Management and Budget (OMB) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) have been pursuing a years-long quest to get the federal government to transition into electronic records management, with significant deadlines falling at the end of 2016, 2019, and 2022. Does the most recent deadline – December 31, 2022 – mean [...]

Records management is challenging even with just the normal types of documents and records most organizations generate. Add in records that contain information that must be protected – because they contain protected personal information, trade or state secrets, or other confidential content – and the task of records management can become much more complicated. Here’s [...]

After a yearslong process of scrambling to meet a series of increasingly ambitious records management deadlines, federal agencies now find the next major deadline nearly here. It all started back in 2012 with OMB M-12-18, a directive to manage all permanent and temporary emails in an accessible electronic format by the end of 2016. Next, [...]

Destroying records inappropriately can land any organization in hot water. For example, getting rid of a record that is subject to regulatory retention requirements or a legal hold can lead to serious consequences. That means it’s important to ensure that organizations enforce a “defensible” and responsible approach to disposing of records, as we discussed in [...]