Establishing and monitoring the right metrics for RIM program success.

• Author: Wiler, Vicki
• Position: IN FOCUS: A Message from the Editor - Records and information management - Editorial

Metrics," "benchmarks," "key performance indicators (KPIs)," "measurements," "standards"--whatever terms your organization uses, you're expected to establish and meet them. After all, according to the oft-quoted and variously attributed adage, "What gets measured gets done."

On the other hand, it's important to be sure you're measuring the right things; as Albert Einstein reportedly said, "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

Echoing that idea, Paula J. Smith, practice lead, Information Management at Optimation, responded to a RIM Professionals LinkedIn Group question about what the best KPI for a records management department is: "... before we start looking at the KPI's--first what business outcomes are you trying to achieve?" She added, ".remember KPI's do drive a certain behaviour set so if you are focused on meeting KPI X, then that KPI must have value to the organisation--let's make sure we are measuring the right things for the right outcome."

The right KPIs, Smith said, provide "... a means of monitoring and demonstrating performance, ensure that we are tracking to our goals, highlight any areas that require further analysis or investigation and give us and senior managers often, the visibility that the programme(s) they are investing in has returned results."

Several articles in this issue of Information Management will help you in your quest to measure the right things in the right way to ensure your records and information management (RIM) program's success.

In the cover article Andrew Altepeter writes about an objective way of measuring compliance with RIM program policies and procedures, which can be critical to the program's legal defensibility. Control standards, Altepeter writes, are "binary, concise, numbered, unambiguous, easily referenced ways of stating and measuring compliance with policy."

So, for example, changing a narrative policy...