Retention Management Best Practices
Published:
August 03 2009, 06:18 AM
by
Pete Pepiton
I wonder if the title of this post might be misleading. I don't know of anyone who talks about retention management who doesn't say that the goal is to keep information for its proper length of time, given business, regulatory and legal concerns, so that is the obvious aim of retention management. But to fully do this, workers would have to be deciding and assigning the proper retention period all day long. Surely (almost) no one wants to impose that sort of productivity tax on their business.
At the same time though, failure to address retention management usually results in a "˜keep everything' or a "˜keep nothing' mentality, almost in a right-wing vs. left-wing sort of approach. What is needed, and what most organizations are looking for, is a centrist approach. Again, a proposition to keep information for the "˜proper' amount of time.
I think it is time for a new examination of what companies are doing in retention management. Certain questions are sure to arise such as:
- How much appetite is there to pay attention to retention management, in these trying economic times?
- How much are organizations willing to ask of end-users, who are already overworked?
- How centralized is the policy that you push out to your employees? Do you have individual or group retention periods or can users choose among a menu?
- Where do you focus retention management efforts? Email? Office docs? Other?
- How do you accomplish the "˜end of the life-cycle' process "“ by automatic deletion? If so, how? Based on exceeding standard pre-determined time since receipt? By cumulative excess over storage limits?
By: Pete Pepiton
Pete Pepiton is the eDiscovery Solutions Director, inside the Information Governance group at CA. Pete has 15 years of experience in delivering professional services, both as a practicing attorney and the owner of several document management companies, helping large corporate clients address, process...
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