2013 trends to shine spotlight on information governance.

• Author: Lanter, Amy
• Position: IN FOCUS: A Message from the Editor

In this issue of Information Management, our authors highlight trends that will affect records and information management in the coming year, putting information governance center stage and giving more credence to information governance professionals.

Exploding data growth is one major factor driving these trends. Though the final figures are not available yet, IDC predicted in its "2011 Digital Universe Study: Extracting Value from Chaos" that businesses would create and replicate more than 1.8 trillion gigabytes of electronic information in 2011, increasing by a factor of nine in just five years.

As data volumes continue to grow, expanding into the petabyte and exabyte range, the records management function will continue to evolve, writes William Shute in our cover article. He lists five trends organizations should be poised to address in 2013, all of which will put records and information management in a leading or vital supporting role.

The rising use of mobile technology is also contributing to data growth. Although this trend began years ago, it is changing at an astonishing rate and continues to be a challenge for records professionals. Brent Gatewood, CRM, addresses the bring-your-own-[mobile]-device (BYOD) challenge in his article. He provides guidance about developing organizational BYOD policies and procedures--an important way organizations can mitigate the risks related to having corporate information stored on employee-owned devices. While it is a daunting task, Gatewood says the tools for managing the BYOD challenge are ever-changing and one day may make it a little easier.

Another emerging trend to note is unified archiving: using single-instancing technology for data de-duplication. In this issue's installment of The Principles [R] Series, R. Scott Murchison, CRM, explains that deploying unified archiving will result in information being retained in only one instance for retrieval, discovery, and business purposes. He describes how this supports the Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles [R] and...