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I recently read an article titled “House federal records plan would prevent repeat of IRS email scandal: Would require agencies to save instant messages, fire workers who destroy data.”  Even before reading the rest of the article, I already had my information professional defenses up.  It was the subtitle of the article that really irked me the most with the phrase “fire workers who destroy data.”

When I think about this phrase from an IM perspective a few things come to mind. 

1. As far as I understand the “Keep Everything Retention Policy,” it is largely unenforceable unless the organization intends to restrict employees from deleting anything and remove the delete key from all the keyboards.
2. The focus is largely on avoiding an inappropriate destruction of data, either intentionally or accidentally, but doesn’t offer any suggestions, guidance or recommendations about how to manage information properly in the first place.  As we all know, proper information management is the first step required to prevent mishaps from happening, not blanket policies.
3. There is a complete lack of understanding about the importance of information management and the necessity of information governance as a way to enforce policies.
4. This is an example of an extreme reaction in the form of a “band-aid solution” to something that is actually a legitimate and pressing problem in US Government agencies and elsewhere. 

As I read more about the IRS email scandal I find it really interesting how infrequently information professionals are interviewed or consulted to offer an expert opinion on what is really happening.  On occasion there might be a sound bite from NARA or National Archivist David Ferriero, but in general this voice is largely missing. 

In watching a portion of the hearing with IRS Commissioner Koskinen, I was faintly amused at the scrutiny this man was under.  It’s easy for congress members to act outraged at this egregious act of records destruction, but I’m sure if the scrutiny was turned on their own information management habits they would be in the exact same predicament.   

It’s easy to point the finger when something goes wrong and becomes a public spectacle, but it’s much harder to take a step back and evaluate what’s really going on from a macro view.  In the case of the missing IRS emails with the crashed hard drives, it’s hard to tell if it’s an instance of incompetence, gross negligence or a direct violation in an attempt to cover something up.  The reason it’s hard to tell is because the systems with which one could perform an audit and an assessment of what’s going on don’t exist, or exist in outdated fragments with largely unenforceable policies. 

So here’s my question, we read all these news stories about breaches and erroneously deleted information, so why are information professionals not part of the picture?  How can we have our voices heard so that we become part of the news stories as active participants instead of from a more passive role discussing and tweeting the stories in our communities?  After all, we’re the experts.