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I am big advocate of the Information Governance Reference Model.  In the IGRM it outlines four key players and they are RIM, legal, IT and business.  As I have been studying the IGRM it has recently dawned on me that a Certified Information Professional is crucial for implementation.  One of the purposes of the CIP is to bridge that gap between IT and business.  Maybe eventually I’ll take the Certified Records Manager exam, but only one part of it deals with technology and with the changing information landscape someone working in electronic records management needs a strong technology base.

If you Google social media and e-discovery, as the old saying goes, “the hits will keep on coming.”  Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. are not just fun things the kids are into these days or avenues for marketing and networking, but they can be a huge risk of indictment as well as return on investment (if done properly).  I went into the CIP thinking I knew social media well, but the area that it changed my thinking was in terms of how social media relates to the context of enterprise information assets. 

The consumerization of IT and mobile technologies are another area that records managers need to have a seat at the table for.  RIM professionals have long been concerned with how do we protect information and make it available so that it can be leveraged for business needs.  This brings up questions of if information will be hosted in the cloud or locally.  Records manager will often say that personal information and business records, should be kept separate, but in a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) setting how will they be segregated.  There is also the sticky situation of text messages as those are eligible for e-discovery.

Being a Certified Information Professional does not make one a technical expert, but when questions about storing records in the cloud or a data center comes up it allows RIM personnel to be a player in that conversation and not just a bench warmer.  A CIP will not replace IT staff, but when discussions on technical architecture and security take place business can have a voice that brings up compliance implications without blindly going with what IT says.  Previously when I worked in content management I did not have the knowledge that I gained from the CIP and with what I know now from CIP prep I believe I could definitely be more useful to my former IT company.

There is so much I could say about how the knowledge gained from the CIP needs to be in the back pocket of everyone working in RIM and I plan to continue this blog post on one of the most crucial areas where the CIP is needed (how is that for a teaser), but I just want to conclude this edition with this last thought.  Not everyone can be a PMP (to apply you have to have between 4,500-7,500 hours of project management experience) and most likely RIM initiatives and projects will be led by people who are not PMP’s.  For anyone who has to lead a scanning project, implement a content management system or any other project that is information management related I would highly advise them to watch the videos from the plan/domain videos to get the fundamentals of project management.  I have led several software development projects and taken project manage classes from Learning Tree International, but those videos provided me with new information and built upon prior knowledge. 

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent my employer or client.