Blogs

How come the companies that keep everything forever always get in trouble, while the folks that retain very little get off easy? If this continues to hold true, why not aggressively – I mean VERY aggressively – dispose of as much electronic content as possible?

I remember my dad marching into our backyard one summer holding a can of kerosene and a Zippo lighter, mumbling something about “hornets’ nests only get bigger; better off torching them as soon as possible.” And as a kid, I loved to see the fireball explode, and then I did my share of running to flee from any of the bugs that may have escaped the inferno.

But the basic principal is consistent: Get rid of unneeded content as soon as possible. Of course, to do this we need users – authors, email recipients, etc. – to make decisions and take action. And they need tools. So while torching a hornets’ nest might seem like the right action to take, few people would be comfortable with the kerosene (did I mention my dad would often have a lit cigarette in his mouth the whole time?).

Alternatively, my dad could have hired a “service” to remove the nest. This would be equivalent, in a corporate setting, to relying on departmental records coordinators to do the dirty work. But imagine a single individual trying to clean up the mess of 50 or 100 individuals. Their only reasonable course of action is to begin lecturing (“educating”) their department members on the merits of good document hygiene.

Why can’t we just give the users an electronic kerosene can? Could it be that simple? It all comes down to the comfort users have using the tools made available to them. Could it be as simple as having a “record” button within the Microsoft Word or Exchange ribbon? Absolutely. But what about the dialog box that pops up and asks the user to pick a record series, and there are 42 different options in the drop-down? Ouch.

So meanwhile, we as users keep everything, and corporations say, “Unless told otherwise, we will delete everything.” Ouch again.

It really comes down to simplicity. Keep the user requirements simple – for example, providing four “buckets” to choose from: 1) Declared Records, 2) Automatically Deleted in 90 Days, 3) Retained for 3 Years, 4) Retained Forever (ouch, but hopefully less “ouch”). And this might be a lot to ask of users. Time will tell. It was certainly easier for my dad to decide “torch or no torch” rather than attempting to isolate the queen hornet and dispose of her properly. Image me, the environmentally conscious son, making that suggestion!