Even the Internal Revenue Service is reaping the results of poor document management practices. This interesting information came from Cruxial CIO in their article, “Shoddy Archiving Behind IRS’ Lost Emails.”
We all remember earlier this year when it was reported that two years worth of electronic messages belonging to IRS official Lois Lerner disappeared when her computer’s hard drive crashed, according to the agency. Lerner retired from the IRS last September as the director of the Exempt Organizations office that held up approving the tax-exempt applications of conservative groups from 2010 through the 2012 election.
The flaw was in having the employees store the file on their personal computers, instead of an archive or some other separate storage device. This cause of data loss is very common and very preventable.
Any records management system requires a system of indexing to create findability. We know that indexing against a strong, standards-based taxonomy can ensure comprehensive search results. Access Innovations is one of a very small number of companies able to help its clients generate ISO/ANSI/NISO compliant taxonomies to produce comprehensive results.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
