Wellsprings of change for RIM: six emerging trends affecting information and records management offer challenges and opportunities for RIM professionals.

• Author: Dearstyne, Bruce W.

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RIM (records and information management) professionals work in programs that are constantly affected by change--in workforce demographics; technology; the legal, regulatory, and competitive environments; use of information; and expectations of how RIM will contribute to enterprise goals.

The signs of change are constant. At last spring's Microsoft CEO Summit, Chairman Bill Gates pointed to the worldwide adoption of technology as the catalyst for "the digitization of the economy," in which global business and education are often conducted online. He also referred to the new "digital work style" of workers who, because of collaborative technologies and the Web, have unprecedented interconnectedness that allows them access to information about their own and their competitors' businesses and the ability to collaborate with global partners.

Accenture, the largest consultant company in the world, identified "Eight Trends That Are Transforming IT," creating a new "technology ecosystem" They include:

* seamless interoperability

* customized, process-centric IT

* new methodologies for IT projects handled by onshore-offshore teams

* adaptive enterprise intelligence systems for better enterprise resource planning

* a new generation of collaborative tools

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IBM, often a bellwether of change in the information arena, last fall announced a major expansion of its collaborative software portfolio "to help customers improve productivity, business networking, and knowledge sharing."

These and other strategic changes are intended to make the management of information more effective, to help it buttress enterprise goals, to ensure that it fosters collaboration and sound decision making, and generally to wring more value out of it. Information is being recognized as a central organizational asset, which poses both challenges and opportunities for RIM professionals.

Six Emerging Trends Affecting the Current and Future Course of RIM

1. Aligning Information Policies with Enterprise Goals

   In the past, records and information policies often focused on administrative objectives of efficiency, economy, legal compliance, and getting the right information to the fight people at the right time. Those goals remain valid, but with the growing centrality of information to enterprise operations, RIM programs face a higher challenge: demonstrating contribution to enterprise goals. One way to achieve that is to develop policies that clearly tie information work to goals identified by top organizational executives. A few recent examples:

   Treasury Board of Canada, Policy on Information Management (2007). "The availability of high-quality, authoritative information to decision makers supports the delivery of programs and services, thus enabling departments to be more responsive and accountable to Canadians" it says. "Managing information and records ... supports managers' ability to transform organizations, programs and services in response to the evolving needs of Canadians." This policy document is particularly adept at integrating records and information policy.

   National Archives of the United Kingdom, a New Vision for the National Archives, 2006-2011 (2006). In addition to a commitment to guaranteeing the survival of today's information for tomorrow's users and a promise to "bring history to life for everyone" the Archives asserted a major role in assisting government-wide digital information management. Its strategic plan discusses the challenge of today's "volatile world of information" and the need to better manage information to get the most from information assets. It also pledges to be a leader in helping the public section understand the importance of managing information and to create an infrastructure to support this and other information-related goals.

2. Assembling Information for Decision Making

   In this area, there are four important but inconsistent trends that may be of interest to RIM professionals; each has implications for how information is created, managed, and used. They may all be at work simultaneously in an organization, complicating the challenge of setting priorities for assembling information and records for decision making.

   * Gathering, filtering, assembling, and summarizing information for key decisions. In this approach, decision makers carefully develop a process for decision making. They gather a good deal of information themselves but, more importantly, they encourage their staff members to pour through information and provide advice based on their analysis.

   Michael Roberto, an expert on decision making, espouses this rather information-and-consultation-intensive approach for decisions that are high stakes, where there is novelty and ambiguity, and where the decision will mean a substantial commitment of resources.

   * Using information technology to let the group recommend or make the decision. In this approach, managers involve large numbers of informed people either in providing input or in settling on a course of action. This strategy requires three things: a sizeable cadre of informed, engaged people; availability of relevant information; and superb technology to connect the people and the information.

   IBM held the largest online brainstorming session ever, InnovationJam, in 2006, involving more than 150,000 employees, customers, academics, and others from 104 countries to identify emerging business opportunities. The results were so impressive that IBM decided to invest $100 million in...