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Managing the Web 2.0 life cycle

Managing the Web 2.0 life cycle
As more and more information is communicated through informal channels such as blogs and wikis, the importance of incorporating those electronic documents into a formal life cycle strategy also increases.

An area of particular vulnerability is the issue of knowledge retention as the baby boomer generation moves into retirement. Capturing, disseminating and preserving such knowledge should be a top priority, but much of it is currently shared not through formal reports but rather through newly emerging social media such as blogs and wikis. Most organizations do not have a strategic plan for capturing such knowledge or maintaining it as records.

From a legal viewpoint, organizations should not ignore the content contained in social media, even if it is transient or incremental in nature. The Federal Records Act of 1950 requires federal agencies to document their functions, policies and essential transactions.

"The definition of what is a federal record under this Act has not changed in almost 60 years, even though the methods through which they are created have evolved," says Jason R. Baron, director of litigation for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). "The Federal Records Act encompasses Web 2.0 information along with other electronic content." NARA provides guidance for how to handle some of the unique characteristics of those records, such as their transient nature.

In the private sector, the challenge of keeping up with new types of content is similar. "Record-keeping obligations do not go away for companies attempting to comply with regulatory requirements, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, but if you are using various types of Web 2.0 technologies, the challenge may get more complex," Baron says. For information in both the public and private sectors, the criteria are not so much related to the medium as to the contents. Certain topics, authors and timeframes might result in a document's being categorized as a record and entering a life cycle management process.

Systems that allow users to decide whether a document is a record should be monitored carefully, according to Baron who adds, "The effectiveness of selecting from a drop-down menu or other user-initiated decision depends on the compliance of that individual." He describes an electronic archiving approach that captures everything as the "least worst" of currently available approaches. Other options include continued reliance on printing to paper; IT preserving data on backup tapes; users saving electronic objects idiosyncratically in personal electronic folders, and firms deploying selective e-records management systems that rely on individuals to tag content. However, the volume of documents that results from saving everything generated from Web 2.0 systems poses massive problems when a particular document or set of documents needs to be located, and represents a challenge for today's information access and search technologies.

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