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From the desk of the 

LOWRIE McINTOSH
PE, CRM, MIT

Anyone watching the monumental advances in storage technology and cost per gigabyte going down, down, down should begin to realize that "information" storage is becoming so cheap as to mesmerize users into thinking that no one need worry about running out of space, much less keeping records that should have been destroyed (for a variety of reasons).

What is even more clear is that conforming to Sarbanes\Oxley will become more and more difficult as the volumes continue to grow.  Separating-out what is important when it is needed can be expected to become very labor intensive.

The second indication that others are recognizing the difficulty of finding the right information when it is needed is the emphasis in "data mining".

A variety of new search engines are emerging with algorithms that help identify what the user needs. As important . . . is the merging of these individual engines into mammoth engines that are intended to do everything needed to organize information.

Where the information function doesn't have the understanding nor the motivation to provide support that maintains control of recorded information, we see miles of paper and a google of bytes stored away forever both electronically, and within cartons, and file cabinets.

This is more than the costs associated with storage (which can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars), but the millions of dollars in labor searching through these huge repositories of data to extract knowledge out of information.

One school of cynics argues that all you have to do is acquire the "Discovery" software the opposing attorneys used to find the damaging files that resided on  file servers and cartons in storage. You know, . . . those files that a good retention management program would have destroyed . . . had you known where they were and what they contained!

There are legal issues that require a company to understand the liabilities that can occur from the misuse of electronic records, such as email. In litigation, the potential exposure from a discovery process can be devastating, for those not prepared.

According to California Senate Bill 1034, Section 1. The Legislature hereby finds and declares all of the following: ... (c) that computers have become so commonplace that most lawsuits involve discovery of some type of computer-stored information..~. (f) that the principle embodied in California's discovery statutes is that information which is stored, used, or transmitted in new forms, including computer data, should be available through discovery with the same openness as traditional forms.

By integrating electronic data through USCS, an enterprise can be prepared as to Sarbanes\Oxley but, in addition, to potentially damaging legal charges.

In the world of Electronic Commerce using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), the protocols provided by each transaction set generate a clear and recognizable set of records that provide an environment for easily automated retention management. However, automated retention management is the one missing element in the integration of Electronic Commerce systems. How can a system be complete without knowing how long it is necessary to maintain records before purging? The answer is, it can't.

USCS taxonomy integrates document and records management functions, and, contains a built-in life-cycle schedules that are directly linked to the Code of Federal Regulations.

Treating records as both an asset and a liability, USCS taxonomy does the task of controlling and tracking all information through to the end of its life cycle.