What maintenance of an information asset register should really look like.
One of the real opportunities of an information asset register is to fundamentally change the way people look at records.
The trap of an information asset register is to just create and maintain it.
The other way to use it that’s more valuable - bust still a trap - is to create it and use it to outline where the risk classification says you need to manage something more closely.
The soul of asset management is the implicit acknowledgment that the thing you are managing has value.
The goal of asset management though, isn't to know things about your asset - useful as that is.
The goal of asset management is to maintain and improve the value of the asset you have.
Five years after an information asset register is developed, there are three general outcomes that I expect to see -
The IAR is gathering dust somewhere. Status uncertain.
The IAR has been maintained, is accurate and being used as an operational tool.
The organisation has embraced information asset management, and the IAR is a strategic planning tool used to understand where the organisation should focus next.
I'm only really interested in the third one of these.
What does that actually look like?
It's a conversation about quality with your organisation.
There are two important questions -
Where is the quality of your information assets impeding your ability to get stuff done?
How does your quality specification need to change to enable this value to be realised?
In records management, this is what appraisal is for.
When we're doing it well we write policy that describes and defines what records should be created by a process, where else they are needed in the organisation, and what level of quality is required.
It's nothing new for us.
The Information Asset Register is just a new tool that we can use to have a conversation with our organisation about doing records management the way it should have been done all along.