WHY?

• Managers spend too much time waiting or searching for documents, Files needed by customers, employees, auditors, the public, attorneys, and others are increasing difficult - or even impossible - to find
• Important documents are sometimes inadvertently discarded or removed without authorization
• Offices are needlessly housing records no longer required for day-to-day business; current filing systems are no longer able to handle the growing volume
• Office space is becoming crowded with filing cabinets - each requiring allocation of .49 Sq. meters of floor space (cabinet base, file use space, and passageway space for other staff) to house, provide access to, and permit employee traffic while drawers are open and in use
• Employees suffer morale problems when they compete with the growth of records for rapidly diminishing space
• There are no policy-based retention schedules, and “old” records are kept “just in case” and stack up in attics, basements, closets, and passageways because no one is sure what ought to be done with them
• Important categories of critical records (e.g., vital records, archival records) go unidentified and unprotected - some may be thrown out in the trash
• Inactive records are banished to hostile environments, such as basements, attics, garages, closets, abandoned buildings and there is neither an adequate list of locations nor an effective index to what is stored there
• Records are exposed to dust, dirt, rodents, insects, mold, mildew - all of which accelerate deterioration of records
• Records storage areas for active and inactive records as well as digital media do not meet national standards for climate control
• Despite vendor claims, a lack of certainty prevails about the various types, benefits, limitations, and applicability of recordkeeping technologies
• Backups for each computer (not just network files) not regularly made and all media rotated to secure offsite locations (putting a backup disc next to ones computer won’t be helpful if the office burns)
• Lack of policy and procedures manuals to standardize effective information handling processes
• Corporate image suffers when records needed by customers or auditors are “missing”
• There is a crisis (e.g. broken water pipes, fire, flood, lawsuits, embarrassing audits, etc.) that reveal inadequacies in recordkeeping