Managing Social Data: Is SharePoint the Answer?

I was approached late last year by ARMA to write an article for their Information Management publication. During a lapse of good judgment I suggested that a topic that everyone is interested in but no one is talking about is how to apply compliance controls to ‘semi-structured data’.  Semi-structured data being those things like Blogs, Wikis, activity feeds, calendar items, etc. that are stored as structured data but look very similar to unstructured data when being consumed. 

Here's the intro to the article and the cover of the magazine. Before you ask, no that's not me hiding behind the question mark.

Managing Social Data:
Is SharePoint the Answer?

Records management (RM) professionals have been challenged to manage electronic data for some time. Their efforts have tended to focus on unstructured data, such as documents, scanned images, and spreadsheets. Recently, structured data held in databases has also come under close scrutiny, especially during discovery. However, there is a third category of data that tends to be overlooked. Read on for more or download the PDF version

Although users of all semi-structured data providers need to take heed, I pointed out that SharePoint was an opportunity for companies to look at a single point to apply these controls. If you are using SharePoint for all of your ‘Web 2.0’-type content then why not look to SharePoint to apply the compliance controls that you need.

Interestingly, when I was 80% of the way through writing the document I reached the conclusion that all I was going to provide you my dear readers was the bad news; I was not unearthing much in the way of solutions to these issues. Luckily, I was able to get some time from some of the SharePoint product team and they were able to add some of the color around the capabilities of SharePoint 2010 - thanks to all concerned. I’d also like to thank the team from Gimmal who provided some of the use cases and real-life background data.

The article is long…maybe too long but it should be worth a read if you care about SharePoint, compliance or have chronic insomnia. This is a topic which will only get worse before we catch up...

Main article: http://content.arma.org/IMM/March-April2010/IMM0310managingsocialdata.aspx

PDF Version: http://content.arma.org/IMM/Libraries/March-April_2010_PDFs/IMM_0310_managing_social_data.sflb.ashx

Note: My email address is quoted incorrectly in the magazine, it is actually [email protected] (with an underscore not a period). My fault not ARMA's.

 

Comments

[Susan Cisco]

Andrew, I appreciated your recent IMJ article on managing social data in SharePoint. I wanted to comment on your paragraph:

“One critical component that was apparent from researching this article is the need for some guidance from the records management community regarding the types of operations that need to be applied to social data and what exactly constitutes the copy of a record. Vendors, including Microsoft, can keep adding discrete functionality for managing social data, but they are shooting in the dark if they are not following best practices from the records management community.”

Note that ARMA International recently launched a standards committee to develop guidance on applying records management and information controls to social media:

Implications of Web-Based Technologies in Records Management
http://www.arma.org/standards/development/standardsprogress.cfm

Susan Cisco, CRM
512-565-7021