Records information management (RIM) is a unique facet of a business. It is not the same as information management and comes with its own set of problems, benefits, and industry standards. According to the ISO 15489: 2001 standard, records management activities include “the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of business activities, including the processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of and information about business activities and transactions in the form of records.” This field is generally considered essential for a variety of business fields including enterprise information management, business analytics, and regulatory compliance.
RIM is considered a professional field that holds a variety of certifications. The highest accrediting agency and group is ARMA International, formerly known as Association of Records Managers and Administrators. ARMA has set forth 8 principles of a sound governance for RIM.
- Accountability: There must be a senior most person to oversee and be held accountable for the program. Part of accountability is delegation of practices and to adopt policies and procedures to guide delegates. This will ensure it is auditable.
- Integrity: Make sure the records generated and managed have a guarantee of authenticity and reliability through the identified and targeted technologies.
- Protection: The records and information must be protected to ensure security. The records include private, confidential, privileged, secret or essential to business continuity.
- Compliance: The system must comply with all laws, regulations, and policies across all data and records.
- Availability: They must ensure that records can be accessed in a timely, efficient manner for accurate retrieval of information.
- Retention: The records must be retained for the required length by organization, legal, regulatory, fiscal, and historical requirements.
- Disposition: Records that provide no value or create liability must be deleted.
- Transparency: The system must be implemented in an understandable manner to both internal and external stakeholders.
Record and Information Management Systems that meet these 8 principles will put your business a position of compliance with industry standards. At that point, you will be able to capitalize on the benefits a system can provide. If you are looking for expert help in record and information management consider contacting Biel’s today fo top of the line technologies with excellent customer service to meet all of your needs.