Government finance and records professionals cite exponential growth
of records as main culprit and call for better training as a top solution
BOSTON & ALEXANDRIA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar. 18, 2013--
The volume of information federal agencies must manage has outgrown
their budgets, challenging the nation’s records handlers to control this
deluge of information and costing their agencies more and more money.
This is the central finding of a new study from MeriTalk, the government
IT network, and storage and information management services company Iron
Mountain Incorporated (NYSE:IRM) that asked federal records managers
and finance professionals to assess the state of federal records
management. The results show agencies exceed their annual records
management budgets by an average of 17 percent, despite shelling out
increasing sums to store and manage mounting volumes of data.
Titled “Federal
Records Management: Navigating the Storm,” the online survey asked
100 federal records managers and 100 federal finance professionals in
September 2012 to assess their records practices, budgets, opportunities
for savings, and views on the future. Chief among the findings is each
federal agency spends an average of $34.4 million per year on records
management, or $5 million more than budgeted. And according to the
results, those sums will only increase. Agencies expect records
management spending to more than double to $84.1 million by 2015 due to
an expected 144 percent increase in records per agency over that period.
The survey revealed that the chief causes of blown records budgets come
from:
-
Too many records – A single federal agency currently manages an
average of 209 million records; government-wide, agencies manage
approximately 8.4 billion records.
-
Runaway information growth – The number of records per agency
is expected to grow to 511 million by 2015, an increase of 144 percent
over current records volume.
-
Multiple information types – Agencies increasingly create records
in more varied sources and formats. For example, 47 percent of all
records are electronic, while 41 percent of records are created
electronically but managed in a paper format.
-
A D-I-Y approach – Sixty-two percent of federal records
managers use in-house systems, but that may not be the most effective
approach, as 60 percent of federal finance professionals say problems
with managing records hinders agency operations.
In addition to the cost and volume pressures of managing records,
federal agencies are also racing to comply with the Presidential
Directive on Managing Government Records, a government-wide effort
to reform records management policies and practices. The Directive,
enacted in August 2012, instructs each agency to modernize its records
management policies through more efficient operations, including
digitizing records and establishing a new infrastructure that will
minimize costs and promote openness and accountability, which form the
backbone of President Obama’s Open Government initiative.
“Federal record volumes will only continue to grow, driving up budgets
and making it harder for agencies to manage information on their own,”
said
Sue Trombley
, managing director of consulting for Iron Mountain.
“This growth and the added pressure from the Presidential Directive are
combining to make records management very complicated and unsustainable.
Most agencies know they need outside help and are looking for
alternatives that include the development of a strategic plan,
agency-wide collaboration and training, implementing technology
solutions, and policy guidance and enforcement all aimed at regaining
control for today and the future.”
When asked to name solutions for their information management problems,
survey respondents cited training (43 percent), more funding (33
percent), and greater support for records management from agency
leadership (32 percent). By focusing on those three factors, federal
finance professionals estimate saving 24 percent of their records
management budget, and records management professionals estimate the
savings at 36 percent. This could mean an annual savings of $8.3 to
$12.4 million per agency and between $330 million and $495 million
government-wide each year.
To realize these significant cost savings, Iron Mountain recommends the
following building block strategies:
-
Make it an executive priority – Bring together leaders from all
functions within the agency, including IT, finance, operations,
legal/compliance, and security to help create, implement, and enforce
a culture of records and information management compliance.
-
Invest in training – Regular training and education creates a
culture of accountability and responsibility for records management,
helping to ensure that employees are invested.
-
Smart digitization & timely destruction – A common mistake
when converting paper records to an electronic format is to scan (then
save) everything; instead, agencies should consider what records they
have, who needs them, for what purpose, and for how long, then
digitize those records first and destroy older inactive records no
longer needed for compliance or business reasons.
-
Where possible, streamline – Choose a process to standardize on
for the entire agency, as records management programs have a better
chance of success if there is agreement on common policies/practices
and schedules for addressing access, retention, and other processes.
To download the full study, please visit www.meritalk.com/navigating-the-storm.
For more information on Iron Mountain’s services for the federal market,
please visit www.ironmountain.com/federal.
About MeriTalk
The voice of tomorrow’s government today, MeriTalk is an online
community and go-to resource for government IT. Focusing on government’s
hot-button issues, MeriTalk hosts Big
Data Exchange, Data
Center Exchange, Cyber
Security Exchange, and Cloud
Computing Exchange – platforms dedicated to supporting
public-private dialogue and collaboration. MeriTalk connects with an
audience of 85,000 government community contacts. For more information,
visit www.meritalk.com
or follow us on Twitter, @meritalk.
About Iron Mountain
Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM) is a leading provider of storage
and information management services. The company’s real estate network
of 64 million square feet across nearly 1,000 facilities in 32 countries
allows it to serve customers around the world with speed and accuracy.
And its solutions for records
management, data
backup and recovery, document
management, and secure
shredding help organizations to lower storage costs, comply with
regulations, recover from disaster, and better use their information for
business advantage. Founded in 1951, Iron Mountain stores and protects
billions of information assets, including business documents, backup
tapes, electronic files and medical data. Visit www.ironmountain.com
for more information.
Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/multimedia/home/20130318005269/en/
Source: MeriTalk and Iron Mountain Incorporated
MeriTalk
Erin Leahy, 703-883-9000 ext. 139
eleahy@meritalk.com
or
Iron
Mountain
Christian T. Potts, 617-535-8721
christian.potts@ironmountain.com