Organizations struggle to implement unified records policies.

• Position: GOVERNANCE

A study released in late May revealed mmly organizations are still struggling to implement information management programs and AL Jkare finding it hard to get employees to comply with information pelicies and procedures. As a result, many organizations are at a great risk for information loss, non-comphance, and litigation.

Iron Mountain's 2012 "Comphance Benchmark Report: A View into Unified Records Management," which was based on an analysis of 4,000 comphance risk assessments, found that the number of organizations with a single pohcy for handling paper and electronic files is increasing. The companfs previous comphance study, which was released in 2010, showed that organizations then tended to focus their policies on paper and not take into account electronic records and e-mail.

While this is a positive trend, the continued growth of new record sources, such as social media, is countered by the increase in social media use, wikis, and collaborative technologies (e.g., Microsoft SharePoint), which are making it difficult to keep policies current and compliant.

"This year's report shows promising trends of stronger oversight of information management and better integration of policies for electronic and physical records," said Harry Ebbighausen, president of North America, Iron Mountain. "At the same time, however, those gains are threatened by whether organizations can consistently apply records management policies across the organization and how well they enforce them through training and auditing."

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