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 [...]

Federal agencies have been ambitiously pursuing a digital agenda for several years now, working hard to meet federal mandates and modernize their records management to make greater use of digital technology. Along the way, they have faced numerous challenges. One of those has simply been people. Getting skeptical team members to adopt and follow new [...]

As federal agencies face down a rapidly approaching deadline for managing records in electronic format by December 31, 2022, a reprieve may be in sight. In comments made at the 930GOV conference in August, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Chief Records Officer Laurence Brewer indicated that NARA and the Office of Management and Budget [...]

Increasingly, today’s information management is about taking advantage of opportunities inherent in the information rather than just formulaically following pre-existing rules designed principally around compliance. To be sure, risk mitigation is always going to be a major concern, but modern information management can help mitigate risks while also doing so much more. In some ways, [...]

Ultimately, the goal of any records management workflow is to ensure your organization can facilitate its work, produce desired business outcomes, and reduce costs and risks as much as possible. The ultimate disposition and destruction of unneeded documents is a crucial part of that process. Indeed, holding onto records unnecessarily can be counterproductive, making the [...]

What does the future hold in store for records management? Right now, merely converting to digital records at all is pushing many organizations to the limit of their capacities. But technology never stops moving, and all sorts of interesting innovations are offering the potential to improve or even – in some cases – revolutionize records [...]

Eighty percent of businesses want to reduce paper from their normal workflows and business processes, according to research from Xerox. It’s no wonder: paper is becoming harder than ever for organizations to wrangle. Research and consulting firm Gartner reports that the annual growth rate of the amount of paper produced by the average business is [...]

As the deadline to comply with OMB/NARA Memorandum M-19-21 rapidly approaches, it might be helpful for agencies to familiarize themselves with allowable exceptions to its mandates. While all agencies are expected to comply with M-19-21’s requirements – which, broadly speaking, mandate that federal agencies begin managing virtually all records, both permanent and temporary, in electronic [...]

With only six months left to meet the records management mandates of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) memorandum M-19-21, many federal agencies are still struggling to comply. Transitioning to mostly electronic records management by the end of this year is a big ask, especially after the complications caused by the ongoing pandemic. [...]