Silver Spring, Md. - Companies have a long way to go when it comes to determining their organizations' technology strategy to meet compliance requirements, according to a survey conducted in June of 741 end users from number of vertical industries, including banking, finance, healthcare and insurance. Partly because of media "over-emphasis" on Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA, end users have a "disturbingly narrow view" of compliance as a broader issue and what it means for their organizations, says AIIM, a Silver Spring, Md., enterprise content management association and author of the report.In its analysis, AIIM indicates that survey respondents have an intuitive feel that "something" is wrong within their organizations relative to managing electronic information, but are having a difficult time mounting a systematic and disciplined approach to meet the challenge.
The report also states that nearly two out of three respondents (63.3%) have not yet analyzed the risk they face from the mismanagement of electronic information. Less than four in 10 end users (38.6%) have created a central group focused on managing compliance efforts across the organization, and 42.6% say their organization "does not yet have a clear approach toward meeting compliance" requirements.
As for who has the most influence in driving compliance decisions, the top decision-makers are executive staff (25.1%), legal (22.4%), and IT (17.7%). Records managers across the implementation continuum play a supporting, not a lead role. Those categorizing themselves as records and document professionals represented 53% of survey responses.
Concerning records, nearly 64% believe that there is widespread understanding of what paper records are and how they should be retained, vs. 34% who described electronic records this way.
For more information, visit www.aiim.org.
