Understanding Digital Records Management
Download the complete white paper now.
Recently, formal records management practices have become an important part of conducting business within government organizations and private industries. This is due in large part to ever stricter legislation and compliance regulations aimed at securing and archiving critical information. Most legislation and regulations have been handed down with no road map for compliance. Security and compliance officers as well as records managers have been left to fend for themselves in search of the right combination of products and procedures to ensure that complying with these regulations does not disrupt day to day operations or the ability to do business.
Fortunately, a records management standard that has evolved for several years has begun to emerge as the de facto standard across most industries. The United States Department of Defense developed a records management standard (DoD 5015.2) as a requirement for records management applications (RMAs) implemented within its departments.
Unlike other requirements though, the DoD developed very specific criteria as well as a formal testing process to determine whether a records management application meets the standard. Because of the formal testing process and the strictness of the requirements, organizations outside of the DoD have used the 5015.2 as a starting point for evaluating records management applications for their own use. Knowing that a DoD certified application has been rigorously tested against a standard that is much more demanding than the regulations they must comply with provides a great deal of comfort to compliance officers and records managers.
The goal of this paper is to describe the principles and generally accepted practices of records management.