How to answer the information asset register maintenance question and make it more than just another maintenance task.

One of the challenges for us in records at the moment, is the need to change our thinking about records.

Records have historically been kept for accountability or reference or historical value.

We're not used to thinking about them as a tool that tells us where we are, so that we know what to do next.

This thinking pervades the discussions about information asset registers.

For them to be meaningful, they have to create action.

This clashes with the dominant narrative in our industry, which is that all records are valuable and that the retention schedule tells us how valuable.

Nowhere is this clearer to me than in the discussion about information asset registers.

An information asset register has to create action - or it's just another maintenance task

Most of the value in an information asset register is in knowing what you've got - as opposed to just suspecting, or thinking, or anything else vague that an executive can use to create doubt about the value of what you're holding.

The challenge is that information asset registers are a big piece of work, and need to be maintained.

So what's the value of knowing?

Knowledge is for action.

Every time you put a field on the information asset register, write a business process for the action that you or someone else is going to perform based on that field, and describe the trigger for that action.

If you can't think of one - leave the field off.

Doing this will also help you answer the question "how often do I need to update this?"

If a field triggers a process that needs to run once a week - you need to update it weekly.

If someone is telling you that they need the process to run once a week, it will only become a sensible discussion when you tell them that they will need to fund a head to maintain the register that frequently.

If you establish a governance process and reporting for those processes at the same time, you'll also put yourself in a position where you'll know if the fields are actually being used - because you shouldn't be funding their maintenace if they're not being used.

Include this in your process and you'll very quickly know whether your IAR is meaningful, or you've just saddled yourself with another maintenance task.