Conducting an Information Inventory

Deidre Paknad, CEO PSS Systems

Changes in electronic discovery rules, the rapid increase in office documents combined with decentralized corporate structures, and the increase in regulatory scrutiny in the last few years have created new records retention challenges for companies. The costs of manually identifying, classifying, retaining, and destroying this information are tremendous and the costs of discovering and producing it for litigation purposes are truly phenomenal. One of the most significant lines of defense a company has against these costs and risks is an effective retention program.

Fred Diers, CRM, FAI

Companies have difficulty enforcing their records retention policies. Particularly challenging is controlling the documents on users’ desktops and at the document level. In my experience, there are few if any good examples of effective policy enforcement. Only 40% of the documents created must be retained; implementing good practices for distinguishing documents & managing well from cradle to grave is an essential requirement for coporations today.

The bottom line…

Effective retention programs are no longer middle-office conveniences, they are board room imperatives. Sarbanes Oxley Section 802 makes it a federal crime to dispose of records inappropriately and lack of policy enforcement unnecessarily exposes companies to millions of dollars in discovery costs. The bottom line is your retention policy must be both well thought out and well executed to provide any benefit to the company.

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