Records life cycle: a cradle-to-grave metaphor.

• Author: Hoke, Gordon E.J.
• Position: RIM FUNDAMENTALS

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All records are dynamic--never static. Even records as long-lived as a sequoia have a date of creation, a use/purpose, and a date of disposition or archiving. The times of a record's arrival or creation and its disposition (if only to persistent storage) are the limits of its life cycle. The concept of creation-to-destruction is analogous to biological birth-to-death. Life cycle is a helpful way to look at records' progressive stages.

Sometimes, extending the analogy further is instructive. A record's creation, classification, use, inactivity, and disposition can be illustrated as an organism's birth, development, maturity, seniority, and demise.

Being dynamic, records require management. A static view of records diminishes their value, curtails their management, and often increases risk to the records' owners.

The lifecycle analogy is especially valuable when addressing records and information management (RIM) with non-RIM records stakeholders, notably information technology (IT) leaders. Few administrative workers in business and government see records as dynamic. Once records go to storage, many records stakeholders and custodians like to think about disposing records as little as they like to consider their own demise.

Content and document managers, in particular, are intent on capturing unstructured information with comparatively little consideration for organizing the documents and even less for disposing them. On the front end, this allows content managers to buy systems with a return-on-investment measured in months, ignoring the back-end costs that can weigh down, if not sink, an organization.

Content management offers cost-effective tools for acquiring and manipulating information. By itself, this is a seductive quick fix to document overload, not an answer to systemic problems. The true solution requires not only acquisition, but also a program of information governance throughout the entire records life cycle.

The discipline of records management is comprehensive, governing information from creation to final disposition. The concept of a records life cycle emanates from this as a useful metaphor.

From Birth to Demise

A records life cycle begins when a discreet parcel of useful or relevant information arrives at or is created within an organization. That datum must enter an information governance program to be considered for retention. In the United States, courts accept all relevant data, regardless of any formal designation as a record. This expands the universe of information that must be retained.

"Information is being created all the time, and the rate is doubling at least every 18 months," said Howard Loos, CRM, director, Gimmal Group. "Companies that do not use the life cycle are not even putting on a band aid. It is better to deal with it now than down the road. You...