Six months that changed the face of information management: it was a one-two punch from which the United States may never fully recover.

At the Core

This article:

* Examines how the records and information management profession has changed as a result of recent events

* Discusses the future of the profession after September 11 and the Enron/Arthur Andersen case

The horrific terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, shattered Americans' sense of security and complacency. A few months later, Enron's collapse and Arthur Andersen's illegal business practices tested an already-shaky trust in corporate America.

In the aftermath of 9/11 and the Enron/Arthur Andersen scandal, legislators rushed to pass reforms aimed at better securing our nation and protecting against corporate abuses. National identification cards and data sharing among federal and state government agencies were among the proposals. These two events, together with the subsequent war on terrorism and heightened emphasis on national security and individual privacy, changed everything.

Seemingly overnight, the records and information management (RIM) profession also changed forever and, along with it, the jobs of hundreds of thousands of records managers, information officers, and privacy officials worldwide. Like it or not, these jobs got tougher after 9/11 and the demise of Enron. As the United States fights a recession, wages a global war on terrorism, and becomes increasingly paranoid about security and privacy in government and business, RIM is not likely to get easier anytime soon.

In a column published in CIO magazine soon after the terrorist attacks, Abbie Lundberg, CIO editor-in-chief, wrote:

   Some of the more obvious things that will be affected are security and
   protection of critical infrastructure, including information systems and
   networks; business continuity and disaster recovery; international
   business; how we staff and organize for work; and how we manage our supply
   chains. Information technology will be an essential part of the solution to
   our country's recovery and reconstitution efforts. CIOs will be called on
   to provide leadership on many fronts.

Indeed, the past year's events have forced business and government worldwide to realize just how valuable and critical their information managers are. Now more than ever, these professionals are called upon to provide strategic information, global knowledge, and disaster-recovery planning. RIM professionals must help make crucial policy decisions that will affect the future of their organization and their profession.

How IM Has Changed

Witnesses to the attacks on New York, Pennsylvania, or Washington, D.C., can never forget the horrific images of devastation. Each attack site resembled a circle of the hell Dante so prolifically envisioned in his Inferno.

The image of millions of sheets of white paper freefalling and careening down the World Trade Center's Twin Towers was symbolic of thousands of disrupted and destroyed lives. This tragic event profoundly affected every aspect of our lives and work.

If 9/11 stopped the nation's heartbeat, then the Enron crisis brought arrhythmia to the pulse of American business. Enron was a crisis of a different sort. The energy giant's bankruptcy devastated thousands of employees and stockholders. Its senior executives' use of questionable accounting practices to hide the company's financial troubles, and Arthur Andersen's complicit document shredding, has forced other companies to scrutinize their own accounting and records programs. Andersen was indicted for allegedly obstructing justice when it shredded "thousands" of Enron documents, according to CNN, which reported that the destruction's pace was so frenetic at times that employees worked overtime and shredding machines couldn't keep up.

As more is learned about the way Enron handled accounting records, revealing memos, and employee retirement funds, more doubt is cast on every large company's practices.

While Enron's demise has been a boon for document shredding businesses, it has served as a wake-up call to all senior executives, who are keeping a closer eye on their accounting practices as well as their records retention policies.

September 11 was a tragedy, and the Enron/Arthur Andersen case was a scandal. But both events have profoundly affected the RIM profession and the way its professionals do their jobs. Even more important, both events have forced senior management in corporate America and the government to reconsider how information and records have traditionally been retained, stored, and shared, and how these processes should be updated and improved.

Barbra Cooper, group vice president/chief information officer (CIO) for Toyota Motor Sales USA, says that RIM is more important now. The events were very different, but the combination has pushed the entire profession to the forefront. "I think that people have realized that information is very important in today's economy, but what this does is [provides] a degree of strategic importance," she says. "It gives a perspective for senior management to think about it in a framework that may not have existed before."

Fred Pulzello, vice president, Morgan Stanley, says recent events have resulted in increased senior-management scrutiny of records and information managers' actions. "Senior management is very engaged in `what is the status of our program, who's handling this, and what kind of shape are we in,'" he says. "It's a direct result of 9/11, which put everybody in disaster-recovery mode. It's also a result of the Enron/Arthur Andersen scenario ... All that together has really shined a very bright spotlight on internal records management procedures and also the personnel."

And because RIM professionals now are working under heightened scrutiny, they must do their jobs a little differently. "They need to interface more proactively at a higher level in the organization," Pulzello says. "Typically, the focus on records has been the physical records, the very tactical and operational aspects of the records centers and retention schedules ... But I think now they need to think more strategically and also globally."

According to Pulzello, information managers cannot operate in a vacuum because no one knows--especially now--what might happen, and everyone must be prepared. Nobody ever thought anything like 9/11 could have been possible, or that entire companies and sites could have been knocked out in one single blow.

"As part of their disaster-recovery efforts, people realized that they need to disperse themselves and their workforce a little more effectively yet still maintain access to the information they need," Pulzello says. "So its has sort of blurred the lines between IT (information technology), the Web content providers, and the retention managers because now everybody is dependent on that same stream of information at different points, and physical location becomes less of an issue. It has created some big challenges, but you really have to think outside the box--and a lot quicker."

Now more than ever before, RIM professionals must serve as disaster-recovery managers as well as strategic information managers. At certain levels, particularly at the higher levels, RIM professionals already have been doing this, with varying degrees of acceptance and recognition from higher-level management.

"But now it's more readily accepted," Pulzello contends, "so we're interacting more often and earlier on in planning processes, records retention, and ... records managers, whether they're a part of a particular meeting or not, they're definitely part of the discussion taking place. That's a good thing for the profession because these are things we've been preaching all along."

Enron and Arthur Andersen's illegal actions have changed the way senior-level executives view records and documents. While Pulzello says records destruction could bring the industry down "very quickly," he also says the entire debacle "just reinforces what records managers have been cognizant of and trying to bring to management's attention: that this [job] really is a risk-management function as well as an information-retrieval profession."

Lessons Learned

According to Cooper, 9/11 in particular was a "reality check for everyone about the importance of business continuity." No one planned for a wholesale destruction of human assets and information assets at the same time. The loss of all forms of information, physical files and digital files, has resulted in an elevation of everyone's awareness about how to change or improve company planning perspectives.

Pulzello says Morgan Stanley had a strong business continuity plan in place before 9/11. But many executives now are strengthening existing plans. For example, many organizations may want to reconsider where and how their important records are stored. Offsite document storage is usually local, but digital information is often stored across the country or many miles away with an outsourced service provider.

"People realized that planes were not flying for several days, and you could not get your back-up tapes from your location to your disaster recovery site; no one had ever foreseen that that might ever be an issue," Cooper says. "There's a lot of re-thinking about how planning is going to happen around the results of 9/11 in terms of preserving and accessing records and information, both in paper and in digital form."

Businesses of all sizes go bankrupt or get into legal trouble every day, but the Enron case is different. The failed company's downfall has received an excessive amount of media attention and has been the subject of several accounting reform legislative proposals.

Because of its own and Arthur Andersen's egregious mistakes and illegal actions, Enron has become a timely case study for what information managers should not do.

"Everything always, always, comes back at the end of the day to something that was sourced from a document and that validates what someone said, or what someone thought, or what action was taken at some point in time," Cooper states. "That becomes the critical path for reaching justice, and if companies are not--both from a policy and practice standpoint--very conscious of how to maintain and improve their information management, they're going to be in more trouble than they would like."

Fortunately, most companies do not choose the path that Enron did. However, Cooper says the lesson is that the destruction of information, whether in paper or digital form, is an illegal practice in many cases, and it doesn't really work anymore.

"The ability to recover erased digital information is becoming an industry in itself," she explains. "The ability to source information that may have been produced on paper years and years ago, the number of copies people make, and the number of people who keep personal records even though the company has regulations against that ... creates an increasing challenge, not only to the records management workforce, but also to the executives of companies."

Not only must executives keep their employees' attention focused on this area, but they also must determine what level of practice is acceptable for the entire organization.

According to Cooper, the bigger the company, the more good information practices get lost in the long list of everyday challenges that businesses have to address. But recent events have helped to create awareness of critical business practices that otherwise would be difficult to bring up under ordinary circumstances.

"For example, I think CEOs, CIOs, and other executives, even board members of companies, are now educated though these events to ask questions [about certain practices] that perhaps would not have been demanded from that level [before]," Cooper says. "That in and of itself gives a boost to the records management practice and calls attention to and shines a light on it that it didn't get before."

It's unfortunate, Pulzello says, that it takes disasters to shift people's focus to what they should be doing, but events of the past year have been harsh reality checks for the RIM profession, as well as many others. "What they can learn from the events and what I think is quite apparent is something that records managers have been saying for a long time: It's about risk management, and that's really coming home to roost now because of all the different risks," he says. "The physical risks and the regulatory risks are really coming to the forefront now, and senior management is realizing that it's not just about box storage or storage costs--it's really about risk management."

The crises have forced businesses to look at their particular industries and to ask important questions about their internal records management programs.

"There are instances where people are looking [at their internal records department], and it is not where it needs to be, and they're going to have to deal with it," Pulzello says. "There's a very high demand for senior-level records management people, particularly in the New York area, who can come in and either fix the program or bring it up to date."

But in Pulzello's opinion, recent events definitely have raised RIM's profile. Organizations now are looking at it more strategically than operationally, he says.

As a direct result of such corporate soul-searching, companies value their CIOs and records and information managers more than ever before. For example, Pulzello says, IT professionals now are seeking out records retention managers in organizations to "coordinate what's going on and make sure all their ducks are in a row." This is a shift from pre-9/11 and pre-Enron, when records managers usually sought out the IT professionals when they had concerns.

"The tide has turned so that IT now is looking at `what should we be doing' on the retention end a lot more closely than historically they have been," he says. "The attorneys are ... starting to take a look at what their policies are and are turning toward the records management departments of their respective firms."

Cooper contends the CIO should be the "key go-to individual. CIOs also serve !he entire enterprise so they are essentially able, or should be able, to facilitate the connection points, for example, between the legal department and the finance department and all the different entities that jointly have to plan for improved information management practices and business continuity."

Many organizations are realizing for the first time the importance of a CIO position to coordinate and take responsibility for such actions. Even the U.S. government is considering appointing a federal CIO. Although the Bush administration has not supported the idea so far, many in Washington, D.C., see the need for such an officer to improve information management and sharing among federal agencies.

"Had there been better intelligence, and that intelligence been shared, it is very likely that September 11 could have been prevented," Rep. Jim Turner (D-Texas) said in an interview with CNN.

Pat Schambach, CIO of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), told the media that many government systems do not talk to one another, and called for the administration to appoint a federal CIO to oversee all technology operations and coordinate information across agencies.

What Next?

In light of all the destruction that resulted from 9/11 and the Enron/Arthur Andersen fiasco, it almost seems insignificant, even disrespectful, to note that the past year was a critical turning point for the RIM profession and that RIM professionals' jobs will never be the same.

September 11 highlighted in dramatic fashion the need for disaster-recovery and business-continuity planning procedures for every company. The Enron and Arthur Andersen indictments elevated the importance of ethical, effective accounting practices and records retention policies that are beyond reproach.

It has been a year of recovering and rebuilding for most; for this profession, it also has been a year of reinventing, and that process will continue far into the future.

According to Cooper, RIM professionals must be better prepared to respond to questions that now may be coming from the executive suites, including inquiries about questionable company policies and practices.

Pulzello adds that senior levels of management now are fully aware of the risks involved with record retention--and that they will be held accountable for any mistakes. There is an opportunity for professionals to examine what they are doing in terms of records and information management, as well as to inform executives about what kind of resources are budgeted for disaster-prevention protection, and perhaps what needs to be budgeted for in light of 9/11.

Professionals can look at the Enron example as a clear and strong signal that the relationship among the RIM professional in the organization and the executive management, general management, and legal department must be strengthened in order to ensure that company policies are reinforced.

In addition, Cooper says, better education is necessary in light of the recent events. This is an opportune time to improve and reinforce the awareness of what the practices and policies should be for a company regarding document retention and destruction.

As for RIM professionals, Pulzello predicts "they're going to be more technology-oriented, more strategic-oriented, and they're going to have more of a global focus than they've had historically."

But for all these requirements, both Cooper and Pulzello agree that there is real opportunity for RIM professionals.

"Right now, there's a great opportunity for people in the information management profession, and particularly the records management profession, to advance to the most senior levels of an organization," Pulzello contends. "Younger people coming into the profession can aspire to higher levels within the organization than before. If they have the right skill sets, they will have more of an opportunity to do so."

Cooper says recent events are catalysts that the professional can use to improve the practices and visibility of one of the most critical parts of a business--RIM. "The professional is given almost an opportunity through these events to seize the day, but it's virtually up to them and their management," she says. "At the end of the day, it's still based on whether an individual professional is going to take that proactive step or not. That is really what makes a difference. [Recent events] provide you the opportunity or platform, but the [RIM] professional has to provide the voice and the visibility."

Will Technology Play a Bigger Role in RIM?

While technology would not have made a difference in either the September 11 terrorist attacks or the Enron/Arthur Andersen scandal, some records and information management (RIM) professionals believe it will play a greater role in the profession as a result of those events.

Fred Pulzello, vice president, Morgan Stanley, says he has seen more interest in digitizing records across different industries because of 9/11. Why? He says more employees now are working from home--remotely accessing companies' intranet, networks, and documents.

"This presents challenges from a records perspective: In a paper world, it's easy to identify the flow and cycle of a particular document, but with e-mail it's difficult to follow the trail," he says. "IT (information technology) is grappling with this, too."

Barbra Cooper, group vice president/CIO for Toyota Motor Sales USA, says technology in and of itself will not have any more profound an impact because of recent events. In the Enron case, for instance, technology had no effect on the eventual outcome. It does not matter whether a company shreds documents or deletes them electronically--what Enron did is still an illegal practice in most cases.

She says technology can improve documentation, reporting, and accounting procedures in the RIM world.

"The natural progression of technology should be in support of accommodating the goals of business to increase the speed of decision making, the ability to serve customers effectively, and, in the case of Enron, to account for what is really going on financially, for example, "she concludes. "It's just a means to an end, it's not the end in and of itself."

References

Beltran, Luisa. "Attorney: Andersen Will Admit Fault, Won't Plead Guilty." CNN.com. Available at www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/04/04/anderson.justice. dept/index.html (accessed 17 May 2002).

"Former Auditor Gets Immunity in Andersen Case." CNN.com.

Kerber, Ross. "Happily, Business Is in Shreds." Boston Globe. 18 April 2002.

Lundberg, Abbie. "What Are You Afraid Of?" CIO. November 2001.

Pruitt, Scarlet. "Enron Bankruptcy Documents Get Own Web Site." CNN.com. Available at www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/ 03/26/enron.web.site.idg/index.html (accessed 17 May 2002).

Thibodeau, Patrick. "Vendors: CRM Apps Might Have Prevented Attacks." CNN.com. Available at www.cnn.com/ 2002/TECH/industry/02/28/crm.terror.prevent.idg/index.html (accessed 17 May 2002).

Nikki Swartz is Associate Editor of The Information Management Journal. She may be reached at [e-mail].