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Shacking Up - IT and RIM In Love

By Chris Walker posted 09-23-2013 22:22

  

Back in June (2013) during the ARMA Canada Regional Conference I attended a pretty good session delivered by Emily Gusba (Information Management Lead, GCDOCS Implementation at Natural Resources Canada). Emily was accompanied by Trevor Banks and Julie Colgan (ARMA Int’l President, Julie rocked as a last minute walk-on for Debra Power who is all better now). The session, titled Learning IT-ese, was about IT and RIM having to work better, together. Essentially, the point was that RIM had to learn to speak IT.

A couple of weeks ago I had an email exchange with Charmaine Brooks of IMERGE and one of the topics that came up was … wait for it … IT and RIM needing to work better together.

Now, I’m all for IT and RIM working better together, but I don’t mean what you think they (see above) think you think they mean. Simply put, we’re not on the same page. Bear with me a bit …

IT and RIM are both service providers within their organizations, n’est pas? They serve the same clients, though they provide different but complementary services. RIM and IT also have a symbiotic (some would say parasitic, but that’s just mean) relationship with each other. The truth is that one’s not much good without the other.

RIM and IT need to join together, not to serve the purposes of RIM, but to serve the interests of the entire organization. Having RIM sit with IT to explain RIM’s wants/needs (in whatever language they choose) is, in a word, crap. IT and RIM need to approach stakeholders with a joint message; “Your stuff needs managing and governing and we’re the team to do it for you.” Yes, children, RIM and IT need to get together and become a formidable team. They need to approach the cheque-writers (notice Canadian spelling, thank you) as one.

When Marketing wants to migrate from one platform to another, RIM/IT needs to be in those meetings TOGETHER. When HR wants to implement a new HRMS, IT/RIM needs to be there to make sure all that information flows correctly throughout its lifecycle.

When I talk about RIM I don’t mean the RIM we knew from the paper days; I mean what RIM can and should be in 2013 and beyond. Drop the Records reference and focus on the Information and the Management, regardless of the medium that information is created or stored in. Join with IT to become IM&T (the M comes before the T because you need the management bits before the tools) and provide your clients the information services and governance that they need. In some organizations there still is, and always will be, the need for the Records part of RIM. However, the Records function really needs to be a subsidiary of the IM&T group.

If IT provides the plumbing, and information is akin to water, then RIM performs as the treatment facility. IM&T not only gets the information to you, they make sure that the information you get is clean and safe. (Sorry about the crappy analogy.)

Yes, RIM and IT need to work together, but not as two different parts of the organization. They need to join and serve the organization as a single unit. I’m not saying that RIM professionals ought to become developers or systems analysts. Nor am I advocating for IT professionals to become Records Managers or Archivists. What I am saying is that the IM&T TEAM needs to incorporate roles that address the Information Management and Governance needs as much as the Information Technology needs. Separating RIM from IT hasn’t really worked all that well after all, has it?



#Records-Management #information governance #informationmanagement #governance #EIM #ElectronicRecordsManagement #ECM #corpculture #informationtechnology #InformationGovernance
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10-16-2013 11:48

Probably not many of my thoughts I'd be able to publish anyway. :-)

10-03-2013 11:58

A lovely discussion happening in the ARMA LinkedIn group. You should play. Everyone else is welcome, too.
http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=40713&type=member&item=275971341&qid=6202ac32-a5f5-4c5f-a8bd-6059be0600ac&trk=groups_most_popular-0-b-ttl&goback=%2Egmr_40713%2Egmp_40713

10-02-2013 17:36

Now to convince the IT folks...

09-24-2013 10:33

See what happens when I assume that everyone knows that RIM = Records & Information Management?
In my defense, the failing Canadian company officially changed their name to Blackberry late last year or early this year. :-)

09-24-2013 07:38

Once I figured out that you weren't talking about the failing Canadian mobile technology company, I got it. But it took me to the end, along with a lot of head scratching!
M.