The need for dynamic records management

I’ve made the point before that one of the greatest challenges posed by Web 2.0 to records management is the fact that the underpinning focus of control has now shifted significantly from the organisation to the individual (a fact acknowledged by Time magazine two years ago when it made ‘You’ its prestigious ‘Person of the Year’ in recognition of the fact that in the Web 2.0 world ‘You’ control the information age. This trend is, of course, contrary to many of the assumptions on which records management is based which relies upon and extols the virtues of organisation-wide standards, policies and conformity.

In the latest print edition of Information World Review (though curiously not yet on their online version which is still showing last month’s column) David Tebbutt alludes to the same general trend in relation to social networking technologies:

“Forget centralised planning and control. No one can plan these connections, or their value, in advance. Power shifts to the participants who, frankly, deserve it most”.

Though not talking specifically about the RM and governance agenda, its not difficult to see how these same trends apply in this context and point to the need for far more reactive and dynamic approaches to information management which are able to adapt and change ‘on the fly’ .