The competitive aspect of records.

Here's a great word for you "equifinality."

It's a principle from systems theory that basically means "there are many ways to get to an end."

It's also a good word to get to the competitive aspect of records funding.

The question we as a professional group need to ask isn't "does this practice work?" (ie. deliver what it says it would).

The question we have to ask is "does our way of achieving this end do it better, faster and cheaper than other ways."

Take retention for instance, it is a fact that IT backing things up delivers retention outcomes better records practices in most of the organisations I work with.

I know this, because I frequently talk to organisations where things have been deleted.

There was a records policy in place that said "deletion must be properly approved."

And the policy was a failure - as were all of the systems built and money spent to implement it.

It's OK though - because IT implemented something more effective than the records policy. They implemented a backup policy that said "everything needs to be backed up."

If someone put a gun to your head and said "you have to guarantee retention, and if the policy you choose fails, we're going to shoot you," what would you put your money on?

Personally, I'd put it on backup.

While this might sound silly, this really is the choice being confronted in most organisations.

Records are saying “get everyone to put their things in just this system” - which means you have to get every single person in the organisation to change their behavior and use special purpose systems (which also means choose not to use other special purpose systems).

And IT are saying “we could back it up.”

If you’re a chief executive being presented with two choices, which one do you think they choose?

This is the competitive aspect of records management.