Some records have been maintained electronically since 1992, when the bank built the first generation of its Integrated Records and Information System (IRIS). The third-generation IRIS, rolled out last year, combines images and data in a database available to World Bank offices and clients worldwide via the Internet. The system was custom-built using a Lotus Notes front end linked with an Oracle database that tracks access and retention information about each document. As the number of documents available on the system has increased, the bank’s total cost of document and records management, including the cost of handling and storage, has declined 20 percent, says Muhsin.

Because the records need to be preserved for decades, Muhsin decided to use Adobe Systems’ PDF file format for storing every document. "At some time in the future when PDF is replaced by another format, at least we will only have one format to worry about," says Muhsin. Some records management experts are also looking into using XML standards to create an archival file format.

Automating the Process

For most organizations, though, the biggest problem is not keeping documents around but getting rid of them in a timely and efficient manner. Automating the retention and deletion process in an electronic records management system is emerging as a best practice for information management.

Ford Motor Co., which is in the process of rolling out its second-generation Enterprise Document Repository (EDR) infrastructure, is doing just that. Ford’s original repository system, from OpenText, was rolled out companywide in 1996, when Ford started encouraging employees to rely on electronic versions of critical documents, such as marketing plans and engineering reports. Steven Scheerhorn, manager of knowledge workplace infrastructure at Ford’s System Integration Center, says the system saves the company millions of dollars a year in printing and document shipping costs alone.

The new EDR system adds the ability to automate records management. Up to now, employees have had to manually review all their online documents once a year. Getting busy employees to comply with the schedule and destroy documents on time took weeks or months of cajoling. Worse, says Scheerhorn, the owners of information, whose permission is necessary for keeping or destroying a document, might be difficult to track down because of a transfer or retirement.

Automation will eliminate those bureaucratic obstacles. The system will prompt employees who create documents to classify them according to Ford’s existing records retention rules. When it comes time to purge documents, or copy them into a permanent file, the owner is automatically alerted. "This new functionality allows users to specify when a document should be deleted [at the time] it’s created," explains Elizabeth Adkins, manager of global information management at Ford. If documents are needed in a lawsuit, the new system’s tagging feature allows them to be frozen by the legal department so that they can’t be tampered with. That, plus the ability to simply and quickly locate all the documents on a given subject, helps Ford reduce litigation costs and save time, the two knowledge managers say. They declined to discuss specific cases.