The flip side of retention: Strategies for cleaning up physical records

Blogs and Articles

Disposition is in the spotlight as organisations look to reduce cost and risk by cleaning up their physical records. In our August Education Series webinar, experts tackle paper overload and discuss new strategies for an old problem.

Sue Trombley

28 August 20245 mins

How are organisations tackling the over-retention of physical records as they speed toward digital transformation? In our August Education Series webinar, I joined expert panelists Bill Morey, Head of Information Governance, Legal Operations at Oracle, and Amy Sheaves, Head of Global Operations Transformation & Solution Strategy at Iron Mountain, to address this critical question and more around the urgency and complexity of paper records cleanup.

Nearly 87% of the listeners we polled during the webinar are prioritising paper cleanup. As these and other organisations transform to more digital ways of working, my fellow panelists and I discussed the crucial task of making timely and defensible decisions about legacy records disposition and how we can apply new technology to this old problem.

Privacy regulations and potential penalties are driving the need for effective records disposition

Over 90% of respondents to a 2022 survey stated a goal to eliminate paper records in the next five years. Factors like remote work and workplace cultural shifts, and the emergence of new technologies including artificial intelligence (AI), are driving organisations to create and retain fewer physical records. Records and information management (RIM) leaders are looking to their own programs to help improve operational efficiency by reducing paper storage and increasing information accessibility across geographical and functional areas.

We don't have to be that keep everything culture that we were for so very, very long.

With a focus on data privacy and compliance, central repositories and enhanced control are important to organisations that want to protect themselves from breaches and financial penalties. Over-retained or unorganised records lead to more cost, less value, and greater risk.

Solving old problems with new technology

The application of technology, automation, and AI has made records cleanup more attainable than ever before. Today’s tools can help remove not only the time and cost associated with manual cleanup but also the subjectivity of disposition decision-making that can put your organisation at risk.

Applying technological solutions to previously manual processes can help you find a logical, systematic starting point in your cleanup efforts. Where are you using the most resources, time, labor, and money? Do you need to identify, sort, scan, or destroy the majority of your records? Discovery and decision-making made with an objective approach through technology can help guide you through a more streamlined and defensible process.

When you’re ready to create a disposition strategy and launch a cleanup project

Before you begin the process of physical records cleanup—or if you’ve already started but aren’t making the progress you hoped—creating a strategy that secures stakeholder buy-in, considers potential actions, and prioritises those actions is important. Here are three areas to consider when tackling records cleanup:

Assign accountability: Get executive buy-in and a sponsor
Determine potential actions: Digitise, securely destroy, retain in paper format until eligible for destruction, or archive
Prioritise your plan of action:
- Low-hanging fruit – Accurate metadata and indices to enable defensible decision-making
- High-risk records – Contain sensitive or private information and are a potential target for litigation or audits (HR, patient records)
- Greatest value – Candidates for digitisation for use in data mining/AI/ML (loans, patient records, etc.)

When you’re ready to launch a records cleanup project, it’s crucial to follow a clear plan. RIM leaders recommend a few important steps. First, retain paper documents only until they’re no longer valuable or eligible for destruction, and meticulously document all actions taken to identify and perform destructibility. Securely destroy any records or boxes that can be disposed of immediately. Finally, determining which documents should be digitised and made easily accessible is essential to streamline processes and improve information retrieval.

Best practices for defensible disposition

Whether your organisation is still swimming in paper or has been on a cleanup journey for many years, finding the right automation tools, engaging the right people in your organisation, making objective decisions, and tracking progress are key to success.