Records management is resting on shaky ground.(Association for Information and Image Management )

Byline: David tebbutt

Records management is resting on shaky ground

David Tebbutt exposes a faultline that results in responsibility for records and document management being batted back and forth between departments

At a recent Butler Group conference on document and records management, research analyst Richard Edwards claimed that more than 70% of records management professionals believe that IT is responsible for management of corporate documents and records. He coupled it with a further claim that over 60% of the same people claim that IS/IT don't understand the organisation's document lifecycle.

If true, this suggests a faultline at the centre of organisations. How can you make a department responsible for something that it is largely clueless about?

The source of the statistics was the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), which received more than 2,200 survey responses from records management professionals, mainly in the US.

The two relevant questions from the survey are: "Who has primary responsibility for the day-to-day management of electronic records in your organisation?" and "Do you believe that IS/IT at your organisation understands the concept of life cycle regarding the management of electronic records?"