Forging stronger relationships with IT and legal to advance your RIM program.

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

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If you are a records and information management (RIM) professional who is looking for practical opportunities to work alongside and increase your influence with IT and legal, you will find support in this issue's articles.

As the person most knowledgeable about your organization's information-handling processes, you are in a prime position to work with IT to integrate your enterprise content management (ECM) system with other business solutions to enhance employees' ability to do their jobs and comply with RIM requirements. Patricia Franks, Ph.D., IGP, CRM, CA, FAI, tells you how in the cover article.

Franks uses examples from Gartner's 2016 "Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management" to introduce three ECM systems, provide examples of integrated solutions used by knowledge workers, and discuss how RIM professionals can support business processes by helping select the right tools, developing policies, and implementing the appropriate controls.

Sharing our second feature article with your in-house counsel will encourage him or her to take a more active role in working with you to promote the importance of information governance (IG), secure needed resources for IG, and drive collaboration among key IG stakeholders to reduce your organization's risk profile. In "Five Steps In-house Counsel Should Take to Mitigate Information Risk," author H. Kirke Snyder, J.D., IGP, recommends: preparing for a U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure's Rule 30(b) (6) deposition, creating a data map, securing financial and human resources, revising the records retention policy and schedule, and modifying storage vendor service level agreements.

When revising your retention schedule, you should consider the advice given by Tom Corey, J.D., CRM, about "Minimizing the Use of Trigger Events to Increase Records Retention Compliance." He provides practical guidance for using straight retention periods...