Focusing on the big picture: RIM's leading role in protecting organizations during downsizing.

• Author: Jablonski, John J.

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The voice on the phone is direct. A confidential report is due in two weeks. The current downturn in the economy is landing squarely on the records and information management (RIM) professional's desk. The organization is downsizing and a plan must be prepared to:

* Recommend significant cost savings

* Protect the organization's legal recordkeeping obligations

* Redistribute records from departing custodians, including records from office, department, or facility closings

RIM professionals must be prepared to provide practical solutions for an orderly redistribution of records within a shrinking organization and take action to protect against legal pitfalls during downsizing.

RIM's Role in Minimizing Risks

It is extremely important for RIM professionals to take proactive measures, whether or not downsizing looms on the horizon. The mis-management of records is a significant legal risk during good times and bad. However, downsizing magnifies the risk with its potential for records to be abandoned, lost, prematurely destroyed, or mis-managed as employees depart, departments consolidate, and offices close.

RIM professionals help minimize this risk by:

* Ensuring compliance with retention schedules

* Mirroring appropriate retention periods with business operations

* Developing and refining policies that ensure records are retained for appropriate (and not overly long) retention periods

* Helping identify specific records in support of appropriate (and not overly broad) scope of legal holds

* Adhering to disposition schedules

* Archiving non-active files

* Ensuring documented destruction of expired records and non-records

During downsizing, RIM professionals can play a leading role in ensuring an organization's risks don't increase by refining the RIM program and protecting legal recordkeeping obligations.

Refining the RIM Program

By working to squeeze more efficiency out of the RIM program, the organization will be better prepared to respond to economic hardship or downsizing. Proactively working to reduce the volume of information stored at an organization can reap obvious cost savings, such as by reducing fees for offsite paper storage, archiving, and server space.

Refining the policy and procedures used to manage records can also help prepare for the orderly transition of records should downsizing be required. Developing innovative ways to increase compliance with existing retention policy and procedures will help shape an organization's culture, predisposing it to maintain optimal record efficiencies through tough times.

There are a number of simple initiatives that will reduce the volume of stored information and their associated costs and risks. For example:

* Ensure non-records are removed from active storage as expediently as possible (e.g., drafts, notes, scraps of paper, and other non-business related documents and communications).

* Work to reduce unnecessary duplication of records. To illustrate, sending an e-mail with a 1 MB attachment to 100 people adds 100 MB of electronically stored information (ESI) to the organization. Storing

that same 1MB record in a central server or document management program and sharing a link to access it would eliminate the need for extra storage space.

* Utilize document management or enterprise content management systems to implement or expand automated disposition of expired electronic records to help streamline disposition.

* Analyze and update current policies and procedures. Periodically reviewing retention schedules is essential to effective records management, but conduct an analysis now to determine whether the retention schedule can be refined further by weeding out obsolete classifications or reducing the number of classifications by combining record series. This will make the retention schedule easier to follow and can help increase compliance.

* Develop user-friendly RIM guides (think whitepaper for RIM policy and procedures) to enhance adherence to retention requirements. Classification and disposition checklists, flow charts, intranet links, and other user-friendly compliance tools are all inexpensive ways to help organizations reduce the volume of stored records. Judicial opinions are rampant with criticism of party witnesses who lack basic knowledge of retention schedules and legal hold policies and procedures. Easy-to-create training can increase knowledge. For example, an inexpensive, recorded presentation can be posted on an intranet or e-mailed to members of the organization. A lunch time webinar or conference call can quickly reinforce RIM practices organization-wide.

* While it will not reduce the overall volume of an organization's records, developing legal hold policies that preserve a defensible, yet more targeted, scope of relevant documents and ESI can reduce the volume of records subject to the legal hold and result in significant cost savings. The largest cost in litigation right now is the preservation and production of ESI. More data means higher transactional costs for preservation, collection, review, and production during litigation.

Protecting Legal Recordkeeping Obligations

Extraordinary steps are required during downsizing. There...