Feds' budgets out-paced by volume of information to manage.

• Position: GOVERNMENT RECORDS - Brief article

US. federal agencies--and their budgets--are being overwhelmed by the amount of information they must manage, according to a recent study of federal records managers and finance professionals from MeriTalk and Iron Mountain.

Published in March, the results of the online survey of 100 federal records managers and 100 federal finance professionals conducted in September 2012, "Federal Records Management: Navigating the Storm," showed that each federal agency spends an average of $34.4 million a year on records management, $5 million--or about 17%--more than budgeted.

According to the survey report, records management spending will likely more than double to $84.1 million by 2015 because of a projected 144% increase in records per agency.

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Some of the main reasons for the overspending are:

* Too many records--a single federal agency currently manages about 209 million records, which totals 8.4 billion records government-wide.

* Runaway information growth--the number of records per agency is expected to grow to 511 million by 2015.

* Multiple information types--records are increasingly...