SEARCH
Follow us on Twitter
- No tweets available at the moment.
Assess
Establishing a successful records governance program is a combined effort of executive leadership, business units, legal and compliance, and information systems, and ultimately impacts the overall effectiveness and success of the organization. The maintenance of complete, trustworthy and verifiable records for the statutory length of time is a basic requirement of all institutions in the public, private and non-profit sectors. A transparent, unified records governance program provides a solid foundation for risk mitigation and regulatory compliance, and also generates a valuable source of reliable information to direct and tune the organization for more effective execution. On the other hand, sub-standard records management practices can lead to increased exposure to litigation, particularly related to new rules regarding electronic discovery (”eDiscovery”) under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures.
A comprehensive assessment addresses:
- Records management policies and procedures
- Records retention schedule and file plan
- Records audit procedures
- Current inventory of records from physical and digital sources
- Current practices, including records indexing, search and retrieval
- Security, certified destruction and access controls
- Capacity and cost of physical and digital storage
- Use of abstracted information for analysis and business optimization
In highly regulated industries, such as health, finance, energy and utilities, assessments should be conducted annually.