Wanted: Common Sense in Records Management

If you’re one of those who thinks all the talk about privacy and records management disaster preparedness is merely a plot by consultants to rain on your parade, then consider this story from the New York Post of November 7, 2009:

Confetti-crazed Yankee fans in buildings along the parade route decided to use confidential financial documents in place of ticker tape – literally tossing common sense out the window.

While the Downtown Alliance distributed more than half a ton of recycled confetti to buildings, some office workers, in their enthusiasm, dumped entire files over the Canyon of Heroes.

"We're finding pay stubs. We're finding personal financial information. We found a balance sheet of someone's trust fund showing $300,000 in stock," said Damian Salo, 29, an internal auditor attending the parade with friends.

Just another reason to hate the Yankees, I know.

But it also points up the critical fact that nothing is as secure as you think it is, and nothing goes as far as a little common sense. There’s little doubt that the manager of the office from which the aforementioned balance sheet was flung was sure the documents in his or her control were protected. Like as not, they were signed out to a trusted employee, placed on a desk in a locked office suite, and probably marked “confidential” as well. Too bad the desk was near an open window facing the parade route.

Read the rest of this article in Infonomics magazine on the AIIM Web site at www.aiim.org/infonomics/Wanted-Common-Sense.aspx.

What Doesn't Work: 5 Steps to Requirements Document Oblivion

AIIM’s Atle Skjekkeland recently listed five steps for producing an ECM requirements document. In the interests of full disclosure – and a small bit of fun – here’s my counterpoint to his solid recommendations, as drawn from the pages of the Big Book of ECM Blunders.

1. Avoid “paralysis by analysis” and charge full-steam ahead. Don’t do so totally without a plan, but don’t wait for every “t” to be crossed and “i” to be dotted, either. Time is money, after all, so get after it as quick as you can. And besides, people will let you know if you go off course.

2. Reality-check your suspicions as to what your ECM system should do by asking a few other people what they think too. Four or five should be plenty, especially if they come from different departments – and extra especially if they’re the department managers, who can represent the views and experiences of all the people who work for them.

3. Look at the answers you get and compare them to the ideas you already had. If they’re different, that means you’ll have to design the system to do more than you first thought, and thus will have to allow some extra time to finish the job. If they’re largely the same, that means you know exactly what’s to be done and probably don’t need any more outside input.

4. Write down everything you know about what the system needs to do and which functions are most important. Since you’re driving the project, don’t worry too much about how you structure the information or even what you call things – just be sure you know what you mean, and that you look at this document every so often to be sure you’re staying on track.

5. Now that you’ve talked to everybody and documented their input, you’re ready to start building the solution. Good luck!

Good luck, indeed. A recipe for disaster if ever there was one!