RIM and IT professionals disagree about who is responsible for ERM.

• Author: Launchbaugh, Cynthia
• Position: Records and information management, Information Technology, electronic records management

Just as electronic records management (ERM) has grown as a global issue for businesses and governments, so has the disparity between records and information management (RIM), business, and IT managers' perceptions of RIM's role in ERM.

A recent study commissioned by ARMA International and conducted by Forrester Consulting surveyed 75 business and 75 IT professionals to better understand the market needs and the reality of electronic records management

In the study, several areas were identified where groups disagreed, including who has responsibility for developing ERM policies and determining business needs and user requirements. The study findings also revealed that neither business nor IT fully grasps the role of ERM in compliance regulations and legislation.

The finding confirmed what many records managers already knew--or suspected: IT is driving ERM. ARMA attributes this largely to the shift of ERM away from a standalone technology to a component of enterprise content management (ECM) suites. Responsibility for selecting ERM vendors rests with IT.

IT may be driving ERM, but to be effective it needs to understand the RIM principles and compliance issues involved. RIM principles that are at the heart of the basic functions integral to managing electronic records include the following:

* managing the retention period, which ties in with the records retention schedule

* initiating and controlling holds or freezes (legal, audit)

* managing ultimate purging, including approvals

* managing migration (copy, transfer) to new media/systems

Despite this obvious link to RIM principles, business and IT said that IT has final responsibility for developing ERM policies. Only 21 percent of IT and 31 percent of business saw RIM as having final responsibility. By contrast, 73 percent of RIM professionals believe it is their responsibility.

There are a few possible explanations for this gap. First, there may not be a shared understanding of what comprises "electronic records management." For the purposes of this study, "electronic records management" was defined as electronic information in any format which is created, received, and managed and that has business, legal, compliance, financial, operational, or historical value that is intended to be kept as evidence and reference information by an organization or person. Message archiving is the hottest area in ERM, yet IT does not tend to view it in the context of ERM.

A second possible reason is that...