• October 7, 2016
• Doug Austin
• no comments

When it comes to effective records management of your organization’s data, many people think that the data has to be moved to a centralized location, such as a server or other file share, to be managed effectively.  But, you can also effectively manage that data where it resides with an In-Place Records Management solution.

As discussed by Julie Lintner in RecordLion (What is In-Place Records Management?), In-Place Records Management is when the Records Management Solution does not physically move the content to manage it; the content remains it its original location, but the solution is managing the retention policies and overall File Plan for the content.

As Julie notes, many solutions are not architected to use in-place records management, utilizing instead the concept of moving the content so it can be managed.  Unless there is a valid use case for moving records (e.g., transfer them to a specific area for later disposition), moving them could have security and workflow implications.

Julie notes there are many advantages of In-Place Records Management and lists five specific reasons to consider it for your organization, as follows:

1. Your users can still find their documents in the same place. The users will still search and view the documents the same way; they don’t have to go to a different location or use a different interface to find the documents.
2. Security does not have to be replicated. The security that you created for your documents is still applicable since the documents will not be moved.  The originating business system is still responsible for the document and controlling the security.  You don’t want to have to re-create a security plan inside your Records Management solution.  It should be noted that the Records Management solution should absolutely have the ability to lock down a record (e.g. make it immutable), but it should be able to do that without moving the record.
3. Centralized policies. This may not be a standard feature for all solutions with In-Place Records Management, but it should be.  Your policies should be managed in a central location by a single web interface.  This is especially relevant if you have disparate systems.  Your Records Managers should have a single File Plan to manage, and that File Plan should be managed from a single interface.
4. Your workflow does not have to change. Since the content hasn’t moved, your workflow processes do not have to be updated to incorporate a new location for the documents.  Updating workflows can become an arduous task if you have extensive workflows.  If your documents are being moved, you also need to consider if your existing workflow solution can interface with the new repository.
5. One solution for all disparate systems. Many large organizations have a variety of repositories in which their data is stored.  If you are forced to move your content to a centralized repository, this can be an overwhelming task and may take many years to complete in a large organization.  In contrast, if your data can remain in-place, then the Records Management Solution can be implemented faster because it doesn’t have to move the data and it will just need to know the location of the data.

Just because the data may be dispersed in various places doesn’t mean it would necessarily make it more difficult to perform data discovery when you may need to collect that data for litigation, audits or other types of investigations.  Technology exists that can support that data discovery on the in-place data.

So, what do you think?  Does your organization utilize an In-Place Records Management solution?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.