
The information landscape is constantly changing, especially for government. Federal records are no longer limited to file cabinets full of paper documents. They are now much more fluid, residing across a variety of platforms and technologies that the government utilizes to do business. From digital documents, to emails, to social media posts, to text messages - the scope of records is rapidly expanding. But does the government have a robust enough information management skillset to scale alongside that expansion?
Currently, worries are mounting that some agencies might not meet an upcoming December 31st, 2016 deadline set by the Managing Government Records Directive, which requires agencies to manage their email records in an electronic format. Further, they will be required to manage all permanent electronic records in an electronic format by the close of 2019. But with agencies still struggling to meet current goals, there is growing evidence that the government will not be in a tenable position to meet looming future information management requirements.
To correct their course, agencies will have to devote significant effort to overhauling their individual agency cultures, as well as their information and risk management frameworks. These frameworks are operational self-assessment tools that allow agencies to compare their performance against baseline controls, proactively address any gaps, and continuously quantify and demonstrate compliance.
Setting up a comprehensive, agency-wide framework is understandably a very daunting task, but doing so will ultimately increase the usability and value of government data. This is why agencies need to make sure that they are focusing on establishing a structured taxonomy within their management framework. Doing so will also enable analytics technology, improve decision-making and generally increase the agency's Return on Information.
Once a suitable framework is in place, agencies must grapple with the perpetually ongoing struggle of ensuring that all employees are adhering to the set policies. Properly educating employees about their records management roles and responsibilities goes a long way towards achieving this goal. Further, increasing the amount of training available to employees will only benefit an agency's information management program. Providing more training in various areas of expertise will help employees to understand when they are creating government records, as well as the responsibilities for preserving those records, securing government information against rising cyber attacks, and innovative ways to address common problems. All of these are critically important, since virtually every federal employee will be responsible for creating or handling government records as part of their day-to-day tasks.
Of course, all of the above recommendations hinge on having agency leadership that understands the need and motivations for an agency-wide culture shift when it comes to information management. Currently, agency information management professionals are the most likely to understand their agency's information management capabilities and future goals. As such, they should be the vanguard for advancing their agency's information management positioning to where it needs to be - but they can't do it alone. They need both the understanding and support of senior agency leadership.
If you would like to learn more about how you can engage your agency's decision-makers about the rising importance of effective information management in the digital age, be sure to check out the recent Government Executive whitepaper, 5 Key Competencies for Information Management Professionals Making a Business Case to the Agency C-Suite, sponsored by Iron Mountain.
More from Iron Mountain Entertainment Services
14/06/2017
Early on in EMR implementation it was all about getting up and running to realize the incentive payments offered by the government. How could legacy information...
14/06/2017
If you run or work at a small business, you know there are many perks. From the close relationships to the opportunities to take on new skills and roles, there&...
14/06/2017
Custom kitting can be viewed as the process by which your business touches pro...
29/03/2017
This year's Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference had another record-setting year for attendance, with over 40,000...
28/03/2017
Having worked in Health Information for over 39 years, I recently had an opportunity to speak with Health Information students at Cuyahoga Community College. Th...
09/03/2017
On Tuesday, February 28th, Amazon Web Services (AWS) had a service disruption that affected its Simple Storage Service (S3) which supports over 150,000 websites...
07/03/2017
I don't know about you, but I'm just way too busy these days. When I ask...
01/03/2017
The Dodd-Frank Act is currently being reviewed by the Trump administration in an...
28/02/2017
In a competitive retail environment, creative use of point of purchase displays can set you apart from the dull roar of conventional installations. Manufacturer...
16/02/2017
Imagine a seamlessappointment with your health provider:
Even with a last-minut...
14/02/2017
ARRA. HIPAA. Meaningful Use. Value-based Care. MACRA. And so it goes The only th...
09/02/2017
As a Healthcare Information management (HIM) professional for the past 40 years, I have experienced the transition of the paper medical record to today's mo...
08/02/2017
Companies often struggle with numerous issues when developing and administrating...
06/02/2017
We face a big challenge in healthcare. A doctor's success is largely not dependent on the quality of care they provide a patient. We won't dive into the...
03/02/2017
A lot has been written about the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, better known as MACRA, since it was published in October 2016. The intent of this...
31/01/2017
Despite all predictions on the future of our healthcare delivery system, healthcare is - and will continue to be - one of the key drivers in our economy. While ...
27/01/2017
It's appropriate that this year's Data Privacy Day (January 28) takes place just three weeks after the giant Consumer Electronic Show (CES). CES is an a...
13/01/2017
This is certainly the time of year for predictions, forecasts, and trends, so we...
05/01/2017
As an Iron Mountain technology escrow customer, you have access to our online portal in Iron Mountain Connect called the Escrow Management Center.
We hope all ...
05/01/2017
When developing a retention schedule and looking at the legal research that supports it, there are laws and regulations that set minimum periods that must be ad...
30/12/2016
You may know that technology escrow (also known as software escrow) is a best practice for safeguarding your software source code in case there is ever an issue...
23/12/2016
This is the last of a 7 part series on energizing compliance. The last? I though...
29/11/2016
Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestures (MA&D) happen for many reasons - to create ...
18/11/2016
If you're concerned with business continuity in your company, it's impor...
18/11/2016
Over the past few years or so, data protection has trended towards the Cloud. But that doesn't mean tape is dead-far from it. Today's forward-thinking o...
04/11/2016
I was the oddball millennial at the recent Gartner IT Financial, Procurement & Asset Management Summit in Grapevine, Texas.
As one of the few millennials at th...
21/10/2016
One of the challenges that keeps healthcare leaders up at night more than any other is managing cyber security threats to health data management. Unfortunately,...
17/10/2016
At some point during the past decade, storage costs crossed a threshold that made it cheaper and easier for organizations to keep data than to throw it away. Th...
08/10/2016
Typically, when a data breach makes the headlines it involves a well-known brand with deep pockets which might give you a sense that hackers are only interested...
05/10/2016
Records management is a complicated job. RIM professional work hard every day to take their company's R and I and M the heck out it. So we took to Twi...
30/09/2016
The information landscape is constantly changing, especially for government. Fed...
30/09/2016
I was once part of the Internet of Things. A sensor on my sneaker linked to a tiny computer on my wrist. When I plugged the computer into my laptop the battery ...
30/09/2016
September is National Preparedness Month and a good time to think about whether your company is ready. Companies can improve preparedness by being proactive - r...
28/09/2016
With what? Never heard the term Forcing Functions used in Records Management (...
16/09/2016
Extortion. Ransom. International crime syndicates. No, this isn't a descript...
16/09/2016
There is a tendency for discussions about information risk to focus exclusively on the dangers organizations find themselves exposed to and potential disasters ...
15/09/2016
In today's business environment, no organization can afford to ignore information risk. The consequences of an information related catastrophe, whether it...
23/08/2016
Once you have made the decision of whether or not you need technology escrow, ha...
22/08/2016
This past June, our Pittsburgh ARMA chapter toured Heinz Field, home to the Super Bowl LI Champion (you heard it here first!) Pittsburgh Steelers. Directly out...
18/08/2016
I recently watched a demo of the IBM Watson natural language processing (NLP) tool that showed how it was used by police for criminal investigations at a Record...
15/08/2016
Empowering Federal Professionals with Next-Generation Information Management Skills
As anybody who has been paying attention to federal headlines or budgets ca...
10/08/2016
There is a lot more to protecting customer privacy than locking down facilities and enforcing strong passwords. It's about getting the entire organization a...
09/08/2016
Investing in technology is not a decision that is made lightly. In today's technology-driven world, companies are competing to be the best of the best and t...
05/08/2016
Some organizations dispose of their IT assets by recycling what they can and discarding the rest. For others, this process involves reselling parts that still h...
05/08/2016
In the age of big data, IT managers are increasingly tasked with taking more comprehensive views of their organizations' data. This requires them to evaluat...
05/08/2016
Identifying and addressing the burgeoning skills gap issue
The federal governm...
04/08/2016
I recently checked in with Karen, the project coordinator for the Records and Information Governance Group at a large healthcare corporation in Missouri. Karen ...
28/07/2016
Friendliness, patience, and determination are qualities that make for a remarkable customer service agent, and Kim possesses all three. As a member of Iron Mou...
22/07/2016
You have to spend money to make money, as the old adage goes. But, when it comes to print and fulfillment, most companies would prefer to spend less and make mo...
21/07/2016
In my last blog, 6 Bad Habits of Data Management- Part 1, I covered three bad habits many IT departments across the globe are guilty of committing. Here are 3 m...