Catalyst or cataclysm?

• Position: In focus: a message from the editors - Records and information management

Incremental changes often make a difference in process, spurring a rethinking of how things are done. This has been true in the records and information management (RIM) world, where attention has focused on the transition from paper to electronic records and their attending policy, procedural, and political aspects.

Now comes a shift in perspective that is reshaping ideas about what is required for good--or at least adequate--records management, the cumulative result of subtle changes over the past several years. Thanks to high-profile investigation, litigation, and regulation, RIM topics have moved from industry journals to general business magazines and even to the mainstream press, ending the image of RIM as a custodial function in the minds of many. Meanwhile smaller, subtler changes have occurred as well, and their cumulative effects will have an impact for years to come.

The coming change in RIM is like an earthquake at sea, washing a tidal wave over the entire profession. Broadly, it goes to the heart of why, how, and by whom records are managed. It has the power to drive progress and move issues forward, but it will also threaten basic tenets, accepted principles, and conventional knowledge. The force for change has many positive aspects in that things that languished will finally get done; but it may well divide records practitioners into two classes: those who learned records management in a paper-based world and are trying to adapt that knowledge to fit the electronic age, and those who, like the records they manage, have only lived in a digital world.

Changes in Discovery and Settlement

The justification for RIM, once based largely on avoiding legal discovery and settlement costs, has shifted. The pendulum on discovery costs is starting to swing from defendant to plaintiff: In Kubulake vs. UBS Warburg, a gender discrimination suit, UBS Warburg estimated its costs to produce e-mail in response to Kubulake's discovery request at $250,000. The company asked the court to consider making the plaintiff share the costs of document production. Kubulake countered that she was only one individual with limited resources, not a major corporation. The court held that Kubulake should pay $75,000 toward the cost of e-marl production for use in her case.

Given the costs associated with discovery and the knowledge that many companies want to avoid those costs, settlement demands have escalated in recent years. But, in another sign of change...