Perhaps, just perhaps, we’ve taken Buzz Lightyear’s “to infinity and beyond” a little too seriously with our data. At least according to the recently released 2010 Information Management Health Check Survey, “infinite retention results in infinite waste.” While there may be some truth in this, the digital hoarder in me yells surely not. Either way, it brings up several questions: What data should we keep? What’s the best window for data retention, 30 days or 300 days? Is there a right answer?
First of all there is really no wrong answer as it would depend on the organization and their business strategy. For instance do we really need to know the names of our customers’ children from 2 years ago? Maybe, but highly unlikely. On the other hand, how long we keep data needs quite more thought than an “it depends”.
Just last week I retrieved a five year old email and used it to write a response a Sales Engineer needed for a prospect. A document which would have taken days to re-write took only minutes. Furthermore time after time we’ve seen our clients utilize old data to increase efficiency in R&D and reduce costs. Hmm, infinite waste? Not so much.
The 2010 Information Management Health Check Survey recommends that “enterprises develop and enforce information retention policies (what can and cannot be deleted, and when) automatically.” While this is great advice our business environment today is fluid. Our needs last month and in some cases yesterday have already changed. So even if we do implement a retention policy we must revisit it regularly to ensure that it still fits the organization’s strategic goals. The bigger question, however, is does the retention policy benefit users or is it merely a ploy to reduce corporate risk and costs?
In an ideal world Buzz would be right. The ability to keep every piece of information like the Internet would be awesome. We agonize over the loss of tacit knowledge when an employee retires or resigns, yet we tell organizations to get rid of old data. How ironic. When we delete data we lose historical facts and may even cause duplicate work as a project shelved two years ago may be viable today. Unfortunately we’re not in an ideal world and security, relevance and access are all real issues when storing data. This is why Information Optimization (IO) is so important. With IO you have immediate access to data, even legacy data. It’s contextual intelligence, and relevancy factors give you the exact insight that you need. With IO old data does not obscure or hinder transparency.
Information never goes out of style, is extremely value, is not obsolete, and delivers power and value with the right access level. I’m with Buzz on this one. What do you think?
contextual intelligence, data waste, retention, tacit knowledge
When we have “in the flow” mechanisms for capturing and retrieving info/knowledge, the amount that we store will become much less of an issue.
Amount is only a problem when we don’t have an algorithmic way of sorting through that data. If we are capturing things in hierarchies that are themselves out-dated then it becomes an unaccessible graveyard.
See you on #KMers chat Tuesday at noon!
Swan
Fact or Fiction: “Infinite Retention Results in Infinite Waste.”: A Records Manager’s view
I quite agree that retention periods would depend on the organisation and their business strategy. Also how the piece of information is stored. Business information is stored collectively for example all documents relating to on business function is stored under that function according to the business classification scheme.
Record Disposal Schedules provide minimum period of retention. If required we have the option of keeping it for a longer period. Those records which have an enduring value are kept permanently. Also, under Normal Administrative Practice (NAP) we can delete or dispose records such as newsletters or emails sent to multiple recipients.
When I was managing medical records for an organisation, according to the RDS legally we could dispose records 15 years after the last contact. Because of the nature of the illness we knew that patients might come after very long periods of time. In the best interest of patients we made a policy to keep records for 20 years.
Swan, I think you raise a great point about the overall challenges of knowledge management. The more you try to control the less valuable it can be. Business is fluid, but it is hard to ensure all the controls are as well. This is why it becomes so critical to have automated ways for understanding one’s information and extracting its value.
I missed you at #KMers chat this week as I was on the road traveling, but plan on attending next week!
Swinitha,wow 20 years is a very long time, but I absolutely believe in the medical world it is critical to keep this type of information. I have seen many large pharmaceutical companies struggle with how long they keep clinical trial records, R&D reports, etc. Part of the need is to abide by any outside regulation out of fear of lawsuit, but then there is a question on whether any of that research will provide insights to current research. Regardless of industry, I agree there is not one clear answer.