RIM: The Fundamentals, day 1/2

This is a two day Pre-conference seminar preceding ARMA 2007 conference led by Dr. Mark Langemo, CRM, FAI

I’ll apologize in advance for the length of this post – it was a whole day session - I assure you my actual notes are MUCH longer! non RM lovers will be asleep by word 100…..
The session seemed to be composed of people from Records management and IT areas – more from private sector than public. There were no attendees from the legal department (or none that want to admit to it!)

Dr. Langemo told us that he was going to start from the bottom, assuming no knowledge on our part about RM...but he also assured us he would structure things so it is not boring or “the two longest days of our lives”. He introduced himself & definitely proved that he is a truly engaging speaker. He said that all reactions are welcome (but questions might have to wait a bit.) He also invited us to plagiarize his content if needed in developing our own programs.
Then he presented his “upside down triangle” Agenda (anyone who is considering taking this session should check this out)
Day 1
1. What is RM2007?, benefits & ROI for making RM a high priority, What are the components of an org wide RM program (what they should be)
2. Strategies: what are the steps which usually need to be taken to ensure your program is supported in our org (sr. mgrs and users)
3. ERM: not many orgs are managing their electronic records well
4. RM & the law – how to develop legally valid RRS
Day 2
5. How to develop state of the art filing systems for papers records
6. Managing inactive records
7. Imaging and applications of Imaging (film + digital)


What is RM2007?, benefits & ROI for making RM a high priority, What are the components of an org wide RM program (what they should be)

To set up his talk, ML established the idea that recorded info is growing exponentially in volume, and therefore the time required to manage it is going to increase even more. The components of what we are going to need to do to deal with it are Political – Organizational – Methodological – Leadership in New Technology tools.

He emphasized the importance of selecting and implementing an electronic records management system, as this has become the only viable way to execute your plans. He also stressed that compliance has never been more important – especially since the new amendments to the Federal rules of Civil Procedure.

He defined what a record is, what the records lifecycle is, and what Records Management is. He briefly overviewed events of the past few years and how they have brought us into a “compliance age” of sorts. Dr. Langemo reviewed the lack of RM education, and lack of knowledge about it in organizations. He also stressed the need to centralize this function in your organization which should be centrally managed.

He urged us all to develop a formal strategic plan for each of our organizations, and covered what he believed to be the elements of a successful Organization-wide RM program, and the Elements of a Successful eRecords Management Program
He urged all practitioners to maximize use of the Internet/Intranets/Portals for Quality RM – he thinks every organization needs to develop a strategy to do this, and that Records Managers need to be leaders in making this happen.
He also urged all of us to evaluate our RM programs using an ARMA tool:

www.arma.org/standards/eassessment.cfm, and by checking out the ISO standard so that we can benchmark our programs and show our senior management where we stand.
Dr. Langemo also explained how important it is in this industry to network, especially with Records Managers in our own industries or verticals. He thinks that while we are all at the conference we should find a Records Manager in our industry and ask them:
a. How their RM programs were set up,
b. where their position falls in their org,
c. their inventorying and surveying strategies,
d. a small part of their retention schedule (for format),
e. what SW they are running & lessons learned
Strategies: what are the steps which usually need to be taken to ensure your program is supported in our org
Dr. Langemo gave us the 8 strategies he believes are the critical program development strategies – he believes that implementation of them can result in establishment of a successful org wide records management program : 0 If you have ever met him, you will know that he is very passionate about this!
He strongly believes that every organization with a RM program should establish a RM Website on their Intranet with information about personnel, the program itself, inventories, policies, retention schedules, etc.
Dr. Langemo also stressed RM Education for all of us. He urged us to consider getting our CRMs, take ARMA’s RIM 101 Fundamentals course on line, and read up on the reference books available
Managing Electronic Records
Dr. Langemo discussed the fact that not many orgs manage their electronic records well yet. To quote him “It is still a new frontier”. This part of the session really just covered the fundamentals of electronic content, and ways to manage it, including collaboration and all that goes along with it. He warned us that he was going to simplify a lot of it into 45 minutes of material.
Though there are lots of advantages to Electronic records, E records are “A huge problem – and a great solution” because of whose control they are under and how they proliferate. He believes that there are a lot of things ERM Programs can do to be successful. Some of them include partnering with IT, using ERM software, and keeping an inventory of your electronic records.
He kept us laughing with a list of similarities between success in baseball and Records Management, and showed us some great pix of him playing baseball and showing off his talent at the catcher position!
Developing and Implementing Legally Valid Records Retention Programs
He stressed to us that managing records retention is not an exact science, that a good faith effort must be made to develop and implement a RRS for your org, and that, Retention Management must always be driven primarily by valid user need within organizations.
He pointed out to us that the Legal counsel with whom we all work, have almost definitely never studied this stuff in law school. But that now Judges really know how to ask questions to get to the heart of the matter: do you have a schedule, do you follow it, etc. Dr. Langemo then discussed the reasons why every org needs a legally valid RRS and what the risks are of not having one.
He made a great joke about the standard “7 year” retention answer we all seem to get from our customers.
Most of all, he put retention law/reg development in perspective for us. He told us that in the US there are about 8,000 US fed and state regulations and 4,000 state laws which total up to 12,000 laws and regulations which may impact how long we keep records. The number of Canadians laws are right behind the US in total number…He also gave us another useful stat – that there is now 1 attorney for every 273 people in the US, followed closely by Canada. In Europe it is 1:5,000. Because of this we’d all better be good at researching and making our best effort to comply with the existing regulations. There is now good research software for use in tracking down regs and laws surrounding retention of our records, and he listed it out for our reference.
Can’t wait until day 2 – if Dr. Langemo could keep me this engaged for an entire day of records management, I’m expecting great things from day 2!

If you're reading this, it means you made it through my first "liveblog"...well i had to edit it a lot - it was too long (still is), I couldn't get the wireless connection to work at the conference, and the My Word 2007 'Publish blog' function wasn't cooperating very well with me! All in all, a good learning experience, but a big apology for all my formatting that was lost : (

More tomorrow...