As I was going through my normal morning routine of catching up on reading the blogs I subscribe to, the title of this one that came from a Google blog search for enterprise records management caught my attention on a Monday morning - SharePoint is an ECM Virus.  I discovered upon further investigation that it was related to a CMS Watch press release dated December 4, 2007, for the then latest version of their ECM Suites Report (side note - I've read some of their past reports - they are very thorough and worth the investment).

Even though the message is dated, I am convinced it is still applicable some two plus years later.  And the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) virus is not just a problem for SharePoint implementations - it is a virus for many content management implementations, regardless of the specific technology employed.  SharePoint happens to get more attention because of the way that it is implemented at most organizations - with no rules or guidelines - and how prevalent it is in the marketplace because of its association with Microsoft.

As Alan Pelz-Sharpe indicated in the press release, many organizations are out of control when it comes to their SharePoint sites.  I have seen organizations where you can have a new SharePoint site established by just calling your local Help Desk and answering a couple of questions (I've seen this with EMC Documentum E-Room and other vendors, too).  This interaction with the Help Desk typically happens in a vacuum with no review of what other sites may already have similar content types or common metadata.  The requester is typically given administrator rights for the site with little training about the role and you suddenly have another silo of disconnected content.

This process can happen regardless of the technology employed, but in the engagements where we are called in to solve the problems that have been created by this lack of consistency, the technologies are typically blamed as the culprit.

What we find is the real problem with some of these out of control ECM implementations is there isn't an ECM strategy or what many call Information Governance.  The term information governance in the context of an ECM system means defining accountability for an organization's information assets.  It has been summarized by many industry experts as looking after information responsibly.  What happens in many organizations is they pick a technology platform but don't always consider how the content is going to be managed so it can be used as an asset of the organization.

If an organization has implemented information governance properly, then their information management should exhibit the following characteristics:

• The organization will have a framework to manage "corporate memory".
• The organization will be compliant with any relevant legislation or regulations.
• The orgnization will be positioned for exploiting their information assets, including relization of productivity benefits such as finding relevant information faster.
• The organization should be able to exploit new ways to work more effectively, such as deliverying information to their customers in new ways or providing faster responses to customer requests or inquiries.

The key components of an information governance framework include:

• Policies that will govern behaviors of all information workers in the organization
• Procedures for all stages in the information lifecycle (create/capture, classify/index, file/save, use, preserve, dispose)
• Specific roles with specific responsiblities for the information assets of the organization
• Auditing capabilties to ensure all components of the framework are being followed consistently across the organization.

We have delivered presentations on Information Governance for Enterprise Content and Records Management (ECRM) programs (webinar recording available here) and written specifically about SharePoint governance for the AIIM Digital Landfill blog here.   Regardless of the technology employed the message is the same - you need rules of the road so your users can understand how they are to use the technologies your organization is deploying to manage content.