How Enterprises Can Capture Elusive Online Data

Kurt,

I am totally with you on this one.But as someone who has also been in the security business for quite some time,I totally agree with you and remain as sceptical as you are.But lets give Mimi and the rest of the RIM industry some slack.Maybe it might actually work(after some serious fine-tuning)???

Regards

Ashish.

Mimi,

I have spent nearly my whole life in the security field. And I am quite familiar with people not considering the security of their system until it is ready to be deployed. And then they get their skivies in a bunch and blame the security team of blocking their program from going online.

My point is; no matter what department you work for, If security isn't a primary consideration for your processes. You process is doomed to be rewritten.

Thanks for the info. And forgive me if I sound skeptical. Because I am.

Respectfully,

Kurt

Hey Mimi,

Why on earth should enterprises be interested in our online data that is lodged in social networking sites? Are you in essence giving a sort of 'road map' as how Enterprises can covertly go after our online data that they have no buisness looking for in the first place?

I can understand the fact that Enterprises wanted to keep track of what is said about their brands in online social communities but when you referred to the data as elusive, I want to infer that you are talking about personal information people have posted in social networking sites. So is this all what Enterprise 2.0 is all about, going after elusive online data?

Hi Kurt,

Thank you for reminding me about security--I think it's important, too, but it's not the only subject of importance in the Records world. That's the wonderful thing about Records and Information Management: it embraces so many fascinating topics most colleagues specialize in. Not us. It's not that we're generalists--far from it--we're required to be expert in many particular topics that are more...industry-related.

Since I'm a new writer to this forum I'm still trying to take a measure of how much Records knowledge there is here at InternetEvolution; the less there is, the more basics I should cover before I move on to the advanced. I look forward to writing more about privacy, security and Records in the future, because they're very worthy themes. There's only so much space per post, however.  :-)

I still recommend coordinated efforts by multiple departments. It empowers everyone to keep an eye on the store and allows for better tracking, especially if you have workers in multiple time zones.

Michael,

You said it so well: information into its relative silos. I like that very much. And I agree with you that it should be a coordinated effort of many parties--every organization should have a Records committee which is comprised of a representative from every business unit/function in the organization. But in the end one person should head the effort. I cannot think of a better candidate to trust the strategic collection of information than its RIMgr. who understands those records silos in the retention schedule and the organization's data map (or in the absence of a RIMgr., an extremely Records empathetic CIO).  But maybe that's just my professional bias. :-)

Hi RobJVargas,

The great thing about posting on InternetEvolution is that it's comprised of a bunch of smart folks. :-)  You ARE thinking six steps ahead of my post--do you play chess?--but I do call a policy a tool in the Records world. 

In my experience I've found that Records policies specifically reflect the culture of an organization--much more so than most other department policies.  Our policies are something we call upon in our Records discussions with colleagues (I once had a six hour debate, complete with lunch break, with a colleague on "what is a Record" and I was fortunate to have a policy to reference--but that's a story for another day).  "What is a record" is a topic that most colleagues just don't know how to answer. This slows the pace of a successful Records implementation...if colleagues don't know what is a Record, how can we achieve a successful enterprise-wide Records project in a timely fashion? The policy is the first step towards agility.

I think a policy would be flattered it's called a tool for us, myself. :-)

Mimi,

Thanks for the insight. I think what readers may miss here is the complexity of wrangling all of the information in a 24 minute news cycle about a project or brand that you need that is not inside your own network.

On a simplified level, setting up a Google Alert helps identify sources of some information, but in the realm of social media, ideas, contacts, and even rumors fly faster than F-16 fighters. Some enterprise tools in the market are trying to work around this. Trendistic comes to mind.

But of course the biggest problem is not necessarily damage control, but sorting the information into its relative silos. If your company is submitting an RFP for Toyota and a new meme pops up about trouble with gas pedals, then you have a problem.

I'm not sure if there should be a sole person directly responsible for meme wrangling. That sounds like a multiple effort good enough to assign to several divisions.

Hi Terry,

Thank you so much for your comment--I must confess I like comments very much because they force me out of my comfortable Records zone.

I think the RIMgrs of the world are interested in this discussion of Enterprise 2.0 data collection because we understand that content is no longer just on paper--if your company data maps, then it recognizes its content is everywhere. 

Also, one of our primary business partners is Legal.  The Legal community is concerned about how to collect data on social networking sites.  For example, this data might be information about the company that should be collected because it's relevant to a legal matter despite the fact that it's not housed in the organization's environment.  People talk about work after work on Facebook, twitter, yammer--Records colleagues are working on the tools (the policies which set the cultural approach) in order to know how to collect (the procedures outlining the mechanisms) the possible records for litigation purposes.

By the way, we have a saying in RIM: "Records owns the rules, IT owns the tools". My professional opinion of this aside, it's an ethos that pervades our community. Records people are readying themselves to answer that 6pm call comes from General Counsel who needs to know more about social media collection--and they always call after 6pm. :-)

Interesting way to think about about records and memes and enterprise data, Mimi. Since a lot of social media data is likely to be external to the company (neither created by the company nor resident on company's servers), what does that do to how recrods managers, storage professionals, and even end-users should approach this already complicated topic?