Are you ready for a RIM health checkup?

• Author: Lanter, Amy
• Position: IN FOCUS: A Message from the Editor - Records and information management

Just as a healthy heart is essential to a healthy person, a healthy records and information management (RIM) program is essential to an organization's ability to comply with legal requirements, protect its information, and leverage its information assets to reach organizational goals.

Similarly, just as people visit their doctors regularly to address their health risks and ensure their good health, organizations must audit their RIM programs to identify and address information risks to ensure their information governance health.

While the thought of being audited often provokes fear and anguish, in "Audit to Ensure RIM Program Health, Growth," Helen Streck writes that audits should be valued because they serve as tools for improvement to make RIM programs strong and vibrant, as well as recognition for work well done.

Streck emphasizes the usefulness of the Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles[R] (GARP[R]) as benchmarks for a RIM program and the GARP[R] Information Governance Maturity Model (Maturity Model) as the metric by which its effectiveness can be measured.

In this issue's cover article, author Joanne Frampton agrees that GARP[R] should be used to identify risks and drive improvement, but--beyond that--she writes, when RIM is incorporated into the corporate governance and risk management framework and integrated into the internal audit regime, the GARP[R] methodology can underpin and drive the entire audit process. This can happen, Frampton suggests, as risk managers, regulators, and internal auditors become accustomed to the best practices evidenced by the use of GARP[R] and begin to recognize it as a de facto standard for information governance.

More information about GARP[R] and the GARP[R] Maturity Model is available at www.arma.org/garp.

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