John Cofrancesco Vice President,  Active Navigation is in the studio today.  We started off the interview with a remark by the Association of Information and Image Management.  They have claimed that 50% of an organization’s retained data has no value.  Some will call this Redundant, Obsolete, or Trivial Data (ROT).  Some even talk about data “hoarding.”

Well, how does that apply to federal information technology professionals?  During this far-ranging discussion, John Cofrancesco outlined some concepts about records management.  These include getting a grasp of the data that is on your network. From there John talks about systems that can “tag” data so it can be managed successfully.

During the interview John talks about storage concepts from the Office of Management and Budget as well as the National Archives Record Administration requiring agencies to eliminate paper and use electronic records.  The key phrase in this mandate is “to the fullest extent possible.” 

The cost of this excess storage is enormous. First of all, systems administrators can easily multiply the time it takes to respond to discovery requests. Millions of superfluous records can decrease the speed of access.  It is quite possible that malicious actors can place the code in this storage area increasing vulnerability to cyberattack.