Cohasset Associates has published the results of a survey that provides some interesting findings on records management:

* Only 60% of the respondents’ organizations had comprehensive records retention schedules in 2007 that include electronic records, up from 51% in 1999. Only 49% of organizations have a formal e-mail policy focused on retention practices for e-mail, up from 45% in 1999.

* Only 55% of organizations have records retention schedules for e-mail, instant messages, blogs, collaboration tools and other types of communication; and only 43% have such schedules for electronic documents.

* Only 14% of organizations always follow their retention schedules, while another 50% generally do so.

* Only 16% of organizations has a formal policy focused only retention of voicemail, 15% have such a policy for instant messages and only 7% have a retention policy for blog content.

* Only 56% of organizations have a formal plan that will allow them to respond to discovery requests for their records.

What this survey points out, among other things, is that organizations simply are not retaining as much data as they need to retain, nor are they implementing policies and procedures to protect themselves from the consequences. Plus, there does not seem to be significant progress over time in this regard on the part of many decision makers, despite the fact that the new amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, recent court decisions and the growing quantity of electronic content that most organizations possess mean that there really should be more progress than there is.

Cohasset will be hosting the MER 2008 Conference in Chicago later this month to address many of these issues and I am privileged to be speaking at the conference. I hope to see many of you there.

Michael Osterman is principal analyst of Osterman Research.