If our default, as we look at our e-mail is "I'll keep it just in case." Keeping everything is expensive and most of what we keep we don't need to. Data storage needs are going up about 50% per year (without taking into account pictures, audio and video). No one has responsibility for information retention management. How do we manage the costs of undisciplined data retention. Retention schedules cannot be implemented (because no one has the responsibility).
Suggestions:
- Give legal training to IT people so that they can argue with the lawyers over what can be thrown away
- Hire data archivists (directly, not as consultants)—who can make decisions about what to save and what to keep
Information value degrades over time—rarely does it maintain value. After the first month of e-mail archiving, archives are rarely hit. There are certain things that you should keep—but it is the exception, not the rule.
Five Myths about Rising Storage Demand:
- It can be offset by better technology
- It can be offset by paying less
- It can be offset with more storage tiers
- It can be satisfied with more tape
- It can be accommodated with archiving software
Determine TCO for storage and react.
Use automated methods to determine what files can be thrown away. Determine a set of rules that can help build a list of what could be thrown away.
How does this stuff affect us? For students, I assume that people's home directories aren't kept in perpetuity. For their submissions, how long do they need to be kept—do we want to keep them forever? For e-mail, for staff H: drives, we need to work out what can be stored forever and what can't. What's worse: not giving people lots of central storage so that things get lost on C: drives, or giving them lots of central storage and having capacity requirements go up and up…?
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