Forgetting the most important question in records management
Almost no one ever talks about the single most important question in records.
"What should we record?"
We leave this to people for whom that question is critical - if they record the wrong thing, or don't record something, their job is made harder.
But they're not records experts.
So they do it badly.
They know their subject, but they're not records experts.
And then we end up managing the provenance and retention of crap.
And classifying and trying to describe and secure garbage.
And implementing a compliance standard that no one really cares about because the only people who care about whether crap and garbage are compliant are in waste management.
All because we're leaving it to the amateurs to decide what needs to be recorded and how.
Absolutely.
But Records Managers (and IT) need to stop advising people to 'keep everything' (Records Managers because 'it's all records' and IT because 'the system can store unlimited data and sort it all out for you).
Perhaps if we started suggesting to them 'do you really need to keep absolutely everything?' we can get in on their process design and help solve 'their' problems as well as 'ours'.
To do that, Records Managers need to be proactive in engaging with business teams, and not wait until business teams come to them with requests to 'archive inactive records'.