ARMA Conference this week in Orlando

I'll be at the ARMA Conference in Orlando tomorrow and Friday. ARMA is a non-profit organization devoted to records management, which includes document management, eDiscovery, archiving, scanning and so forth. As we've written here, understanding your electronic records is a key aspect of content management and it it comes into play in a big way when you are investigated by a government regulatory body or receive an eDiscovery order to produce certain electronic files as part of a litigation process.

The fact is that too many companies don't have a grip on their electronic content as I wrote in "Could ECM save the American justice system?" last spring. As I wrote at the time, lawyer Ralph Losey says neither lawyers nor the companies they represent are prepared to deal with these types of orders because they don't have the proper electronic record keeping systems in place:

"Part of the problem is that, as Losey says 'most trial lawyers are Luddites,' and the companies they represent haven't organized the information they have to make it easier on themselves in an eDiscovery process. And that's a dangerous combination. 'The problem is the companies haven't taken the time to understand the information they have and they can't find the information they need to defend themselves,' he says."

Tomorrow and Friday I'll be talking to companies like Recommind, EMC, Nuxeo, Autonomy and Alfresco about ways to help companies track and find this type of content and how to set up systems ahead of time so you are prepared to deal with information requests from legal and government entities.

In prior times we stored our records in file folders and cabinets. We moved these records to archives in warehouses and eventually (if we were smart) we destroyed the records when they were no longer needed. Your company should have a similar lifecycle for its electronic records and an organization like ARMA can help you understand how to get that done. Look for some reports in next week's newsletter on what I learn at ARMA '09.

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