Cadence Group to Present at ARMA InfoCon 2023
Cadence Group is proud to present at ARMA InfoCon 2023 Information in Motion, occurring October 9–11, 2023, in Detroit, Michigan. Register and find more information on the ARMA InfoCon 2023 event page. Visit the agenda for the full schedule of events. Cadence Group will present the following educational sessions:
It’s the Same Old Song with ROT
- October 10 at 4:00 PM, 140 DE
- Kiji Burston, MBA, Senior IG Consultant
Cadence Group’s Kiji Burston will present It’s the Same Old Song with ROT on October 10 at 4:00 PM in location 140 DE. In this beginner level session, Kiji will use Motown trivia to explore the challenges and strategies associated with Redundant, Obsolete, and Trivial (ROT) information. It’s not “Just My Imagination” that, year after year, the amount of information organizations collect grows. In 2020, Forbes blogger Jon Simpson predicted that more than 150 trillion GB of data will exist by 2025. With those numbers increasing like a “Quiet Storm”, so does the risk associated with ROT information. “I Ain’t to Proud to Beg”, so “Let’s Get Serious” about ROT! While many understand that our “Endless Love” with ROT is not sustainable, our “Fire and Desire” to hold on sometimes outweighs the consequences. This fun and informative session will explore the associated risks and needed strategies to come to the “End of the Road” with ROT.
M-23-07 Moved the Deadline – Now What?
- October 10 at 4:00 PM, 142 ABC
- Mary Beth Weaver, MLS, CRM
- Tina Teree Baker, IGP
Cadence Group’s Mary Beth Weaver and Tina Teree Baker will present M-23-07 Moved the Deadline — Now What? on October 10 at 4:00 PM in location 142 ABC. In this intermediate level session, Mary Beth and Tina will address the federal government’s move towards going digital, through various Presidential Memoranda and OMB/NARA Directives. M-19-21 set a December 31, 2022, deadline for transferring analog records to NARA Federal Records Centers, but M-23-07 moved that deadline to June 30, 2024. So, now what? How do you address the continued need to identify and transfer analog records while also addressing the priorities put on hold for agencies to meet the initial deadline? This session explores the efforts and lessons learned while trying to meet the initial deadline. Mary Beth and Tina will discuss how to leverage those lessons to meet the new deadline AND jump-start program initiatives previously put on hold.
About Cadence Group
Cadence Group, a certified woman owned small business, is a user-centric information management company with over 30 years of experience in consulting and information management services. Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, with an office in Washington, D.C., Cadence Group provides services to commercial organizations, large federal agencies, and state and local governments. By combining information governance, process improvement, data analytics, web content management, app. development, records & information management, library science, knowledge management, user experience, training and technology services, Cadence Group helps corporate and government clients easily obtain, manage, disseminate, and communicate information. Our clients optimize information assets, maintain compliance, and acquire information experts through our consulting and placement services. For more information, please visit the Cadence Group website.
ARMA Spring Seminar Mania featured Cadence Group Speaker
Cadence Group is proud to announce that our Vice-President for Operations was featured in the ARMA Spring Seminar Mania. The event took place over a two-month period, from April 4th to May 19th, and featured 13 educational sessions. You can find information about this annual event here: https://armamilwaukee.org/spring-seminar-mania-2023/.
Cadence Group Speakers
Cadence Group is proud to continue our support of this RIM event; it is the second year in a row we have had CG Records Managers present at this informational event, joining a cadre of expert RIM practitioners. With decades of experience in Records Management, the ARMA Spring Seminar Mania is not to be missed. Learn about their seminars below!
Mary Beth Weaver: How do Records/Information Managers Keep Up in a World that Keeps Transitioning
Mary Beth presented on May 2nd from 12-1 EST. This thoughtful session analyzed the key skills the RIM profession is currently demanding, including maintaining RIM policies, managing evolving workflows, staying abreast of technology, protecting organizational information, weeding out “ROT,” and honing the so-called soft skills to sell your program.
About Cadence Group
Cadence Group, a certified woman-owned small business, is a user-centric information management consulting firm with 30 years of experience in information management services. Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, with an office in Washington, D.C., Cadence Group provides services to corporate, non-profit, and government clients. By creating structured, compliant, and sustainable information management strategies for web and content management, records and information management, libraries, collaboration and knowledge management, technical assistance and training, and information technology, Cadence Group helps clients easily acquire, organize, and disseminate information. With the help of our Information Governance expertise, clients optimize information assets, maintain compliance, and acquire information experts through our consulting and placement services.
For more information, check out Cadence Group’s RIM Services Page.
Follow us on Twitter @CadenceGroup for updates and other Cadence Group news.
College and Research Libraries News Publishes Employee
Cadence Group is proud to announce that our employee Holly Beverley published a two-part article in College and Research Libraries News. Students gain beneficial experience working with industry professionals through onsite internships and in-person mentorships. So, what happens when the site is closed? How do you gain fieldwork experience when the field is virtual? Holly Beverley, now a Research and Reference Librarian at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, was a graduate student who experienced a virtual practicum. In the June issue of College and Research Libraries News, Holly co-authors “Virtual LIS practicums: Student and supervisor experiences during COVID-19, part 1” to relate the pros and cons of the experience. Part 2 of the article is included in the July issue.
For more information about our library and research services, check out Cadence Group’s Library Services Page.
Follow us on Twitter @CadenceGroup for updates and other Cadence Group news.
About Cadence Group
Cadence Group, a certified woman-owned small business, is a user-centric information management consulting firm with 30 years of experience in information management services. Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, with an office in Washington, D.C., Cadence Group provides services to corporate, non-profit, and government clients. By creating structured, compliant, and sustainable information management strategies for web and content management, records and information management, libraries, collaboration and knowledge management, technical assistance and training, and information technology, Cadence Group helps clients easily acquire, organize, and disseminate information. With the help of our Information Governance expertise, clients optimize information assets, maintain compliance, and acquire information experts through our consulting and placement services.
Cadence Group is proud to present at the virtual ARMA InfoCon 2022, occuring this year October 16-19, in Nashville, Tennessee. Go to the ARMA Infocon Site for the full schedule at https://www.arma.org/page/ARMAInfoCon2022Schedule. You can register for this event either virtually or in-person at https://armainfocon.us2.pathable.com/registration-info. Learn more about Cadence Group and what we do at our website.
Cadence Group’s Presentation at ARMA InfoCon 2022
Cadence Group’s Kiji Burston, MBA, IGP and Mary Beth Weaver, CRM, MLS are presenting Conducting Physical Record Inventories in the Midst of a Pandemic on October 18th from 5:00pm – 5:50pm at ARMA InfoCon 2022. In the session, Kiji and Mary Beth tackle a world that is increasingly electronic-centric, physical records still exist for many organizations, whether legacy or ongoing collections of information. As such, IG programs must account for and manage these collections – a task made exponentially more difficult during a world-wide pandemic necessitating widespread corporate remote work. This session focuses on ways to conduct inventories of physical records against the constraints imposed by the pandemic, in a lessons learned type of format – for various (unnamed) organizations, what worked, what didn’t and how to change on the fly to adapt to unexpected roadblocks. For more information, see Conducting Physical Record Inventories in the Midst of a Pandemic .
About Cadence Group
Cadence Group has over 25 years of government prime contract experience. The company, with offices in Atlanta and Washington DC, provides support to government and commercial sector clients. Services include information governance, software evaluation and integration, records and information management, knowledge management, information architecture, web design and development, business process improvement, and project and program management. For more information, please visit our website.
For more information, check out Cadence Group’s RIM and Info Gov Practice Page.
Follow us on Twitter @CadenceGroup for updates and other Cadence Group news.
A Lack of Electronic File Cleanup: A Hidden Cost is Revealed
Despite a decrease in the cost of electronic data storage, other costs associated with electronic information continue to rise: electronic file cleanup remains as important as ever. In most organizations, unstructured data is not effectively managed. From years of obsolete and duplicative documents on shared drives and in email to legacy backups, the unnecessary cost of storage, the threat of data breach, and the risk of e-Discovery are real. As piles of electronically stored data continue to grow, compliance and security become increasingly difficult to manage. Consequently, information becomes increasingly difficult to effectively retrieve.
The complexity and volume of this task can initially seem overwhelming, but don’t sweep it under the rug because your cleanup project will only get more costly and complex over time. And if you think cleanup is expensive and time-consuming, wait until you go through the e-Discovery process! In this article, we will show you how to tackle electronic records cleanup without breaking the budget or your colleagues.
The Best Offense is a Good (Disposition) Defense
Before you begin your electronic file cleanup efforts, you must have the legal foundation to do so. Ad hoc or random destruction of records/information based on whether your colleagues think they need it or not opens up your organization to unnecessary legal risk. If records subject to a future legal discovery are missing, your organization can be at risk for a finding of spoliation of evidence, which can be quite costly – both in terms of money and reputation.
To ensure the legal defensibility of your cleanup efforts, you must have the two foundational elements of every records and information management (RIM) program in place – the RIM Policy and Records Retention Schedule. Therefore, the first step in cleanup is to review your Policy and Schedule to ensure that they reflect your current organizational structure, regulatory environment, and industry best practices. Even better, make sure you have a robust training program in place to ensure your colleagues know how to stay in compliance. After all, your information management program is only as strong as your weakest (untrained) link.
Once you have the foundational elements in place to operate a legally defensible RIM program, you may now turn your attention to the organization of your electronic records. A key step in organizing enterprise information is the development of a functional taxonomy. A taxonomy is essentially the structure and language of your organization’s information. A functional taxonomy is important for the usability of your Records Retention Schedule and is leveraged as you develop file plans for your electronic information. No matter how sophisticated your system’s search capability, defining a hierarchical structure by which your users can store and retrieve information improves your results and bolsters organizational productivity.
There also needs to be enterprise level guidance regarding file plans and naming standards. The department coordinators understand their business needs, but don’t expect them to understand the complexities of applying compliance requirements, implementing a sustainable lifecycle management plan, or mitigating the risks associated with immature rights management plans. Additionally, in today’s cyber environment, it is critically important to make sure you understand the security requirements associated with the information in your organization’s electronic file plans.
Before building your file plan, gather everything known about your organization’s technology strategy for managing unstructured information day-forward. You want to understand the strategy for all components of your unstructured data (e.g., documents, email, and web content). What software is part of your 5-year IT strategy and what software is targeted for upgrade or conversion? If there is a preferred content management tool, how do the retention policies integrate with the tool, and what implications does it have on your file plan?
Remember, records life cycle management is important whether you are implementing a single purpose repository (like clinical studies or web content) or a large multi-function, enterprise-wide solution.
Finally, if you are moving the active content to a new Content Services Platform (CSP) or Electronic Document and Records Management (EDRM) repository, or collaboration space, there are additional considerations such as metadata, site governance, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Electronic File Cleanup Strategies
Once you have addressed the policy, records retention schedule, taxonomy, file plan and technology strategy, you can begin managing the electronic file cleanup. There are several approaches that you can take:
1. I CAN DO IT MYSELF:
Certainly, many organizations simply delegate the task to the departments who own the information. Unfortunately, this is often done without completing the necessary preparation steps, discussed above. Without a solid foundation and go-forward plan, departmental cleanup efforts may result in a reduction of the well-organized information that is eligible for destruction, but typically an avoidance of the older or disorganized content that no one is sure about. Without a file analysis tool, this is a time-consuming process and business priorities justifiably win out at the expense of the cleanup effort.
2. THE IT APPROACH:
The IT approach simply reviews your content based on the created and last modified dates and targets a list of older content for destruction. There are obvious compliance issues with this approach. However, you can offset these issues with an approval process. Be warned that implementing approval processes (which are typically manual) is usually labor intensive for the business units and therefore often ignored. Conversely, approval completed by IT and/or Legal without full disclosure to the owners of the information can interfere with business processes, too.
3. DATA DISCOVERY AND RECORDS MANAGEMENT TOOLS:
There are many software tools that can help you analyze your shared drives and other unstructured repositories and make the process of cleaning up your electronic information easier to manage and legally defensible. The tools can be categorized as:
- DATA DISCOVERY or SEARCH:
There are many sophisticated search engines out there that can help you analyze your shared drives, from standalone search tools or storage management tools to and a long list of eDiscovery vendors. Commentary to Sedona Principle 11 notes: “The selective use of keyword searches can be a reasonable approach when dealing with large amounts of electronic data… This exploits a unique feature of electronic information – the ability to conduct fast, iterative searches for the presence of patterns of words and concepts in large document populations.” These tools are usually leveraged with the intent of a more thoughtful consideration of which content should be deleted or preserved, but are only effective if testing, sampling, and iterative feedback are employed to move a low (e.g., 20% effective) “Go Fish” approach to something that can be over 80% effective. But again, compliance issues with this approach are often offset with an approval process that is typically manual – and labor intensive for the business units or completed by IT and Legal without full disclosure to the owners of the information.
- RECORDS MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS:
Electronic Document and Records Management (EDRM) systems within Content Services Platforms (CSPs) have the tools to apply retention policy to your unstructured records. For the content in your CSP product, annual cleanup activities can be automated, compliant, and auditable. But few people want to spend the time and energy loading their old content into an CSP just to document the destruction process. Some of the vendors have data discovery modules that can search, auto-classify, and help organize content to eliminate the low hanging fruit before content is uploaded into a document and records management repository.
- IN-PLACE FILE ANALYSIS & CLEANUP:
There are also tools that offer in-place cleanup of unstructured repositories (e.g., Rational Enterprise and Active Navigation), and the rebranded Microsoft Purview (formerly Security & Compliance Center), all of which can perform discovery, autoclassification and records lifecycle management functions. These tools leverage machine learning against user fed datasets to automate data classification, discovery, and lifecycle management. Be cautious, however, as these tools are not a magic bullet; you will need to invest the time to train these tools to achieve the appropriate level of accuracy. This can be time-consuming, and the process must be repeated as the data landscape changes within your organization.
The right tool for you will depend on your volume of information (terabytes or petabytes), your long-term IT strategy, your budget, and your need for compliant and auditable records cleanup. Which approach and potentially which software is best for you to use when cleaning up your information stockpile requires an understanding of your organization’s volume of stale information, the technology strategy and budget, and the amount of labor that will be available for implementation. Then make sure you have a management-backed strategy, a retention policy, updated retention schedule, mature taxonomy and file plan, and a knowledgeable information governance team.
Need help?
Cadence Group has been providing information governance and records retention consulting services to public and private sector organizations of all sizes for over 30 years. Our certified consultants can help bring your organization into compliance by providing:
- A full information governance program assessment
- Records retention scheduling, including legal research
- Records inventorying and information mapping
- Physical and electronic records cleanup
Click here to set up a free consultation.
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Cadence Group is proud to announce that we will have multiple employees featured in the ARMA Spring Seminar Mania. The event started April 5th, and will go through May 26th, and will feature 13 educational sessions. You can find the full event schedule and register here: https://armamilwaukee.org/spring-seminar-mania-2022/.
ARMA Spring Seminar Mania Cadence Group Speakers
Cadence Group’s Mary Beth Weaver, MLS, CRM and Michael P. Allen, MBA, CRM, IGP will both be presenting at ARMA Spring Seminar Mania. With decades of experience in Records Management each, these presentations are not to be missed. Learn about their seminars below!
Mary Beth Weaver: April 21st, 12-1 EST, Handling the 7 Deadly Stakeholders
This light-hearted session overviews 7 types of typical difficult stakeholders (apathetic, hostile, too busy, dismissive, misinformed, helpless and saboteurs) that RIM practitioners have to deal with in a “7 deadly sins” context. Exploring the reasons underpinning the behavior and presenting practical tips for combating each behavior, the session will provide RIM practitioners with the ability to recognize the motivations of each stakeholder and win them over as RIM supporters.
Michael P. Allen: May 5th, 7-8 EST, Essential Negotiation Skills for RIM Pros
As the IG/RIM profession continues to elevate itself into the executive boardroom, it becomes paramount for practitioners to acquire the necessary skills to advocate for themselves and their departments. One key skill that every business professional needs to succeed is negotiation. Strong negotiation skills enable practitioners to:
- Secure the resources needed to manage their departments
- Gain the best value for acquired products and services
- Receive compensation that reflects the value they add to their organizations
Join this lively discussion and learn the building blocks of successful negotiating!
About Cadence Group
Cadence Group, a certified woman-owned small business, is a user-centric information management consulting firm with 30 years of experience in information management services. Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, with an office in Washington, D.C., Cadence Group provides services to corporate, non-profit, and government clients. By creating structured, compliant, and sustainable information management strategies for web and content management, records and information management, libraries, collaboration and knowledge management, technical assistance and training, and information technology, Cadence Group helps clients easily acquire, organize, and disseminate information. With the help of our Information Governance expertise, clients optimize information assets, maintain compliance, and acquire information experts through our consulting and placement services.
For more information, check out Cadence Group’s RIM Practice Page. Follow us on Twitter @CadenceGroup for updates and other Cadence Group news.