In my last post I started on the subject of Structured Records Management, an area of records management that is re-gaining a lot of relevance because ALL electronically stored information is discoverable in e-Discovery and FOIA, not just unstructured documents. 

In this and some subsequent posts I would like to introduce some of the concepts involved in structured records management. To start with, let's have a look at the steps involved to turn data in structured applications into records managed according to corporate policy:

1. Definition - this step allows us to identify and model the records in the source system

2. Classification - this step allows us to model some descriptive metadata around the records to apply our records management context

3. Extraction - this step allows us to extract records from the source system, based on the modeling done previously

4. Ingestion - this step brings the structured records under the control of the corporate records management environment

5. Management - this step allows us to access, retrieve, query, verify, the structured data under the control of the records management environment

6. Dispose - this step allows us to manage the retention and legal holds of structured data under the control of the records management environment

As I mentioned before, in HP IM we have created a solution that covers all the steps listed above, using our Database Archiving and TRIM products.  It is a truly exciting project to be working on! Throughout the process I was amazed how well the two products complement each other. I will let you know more about some of the details for each step in follow-up posts...