Future Proof – Protecting our digital future

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

A recent UK survey found that 45% of surveyed SharePoint users have copied sensitive or confidential documents from SharePoint to their local PC or a USB Key, or have emailed them to third parties. Of these, 98% had done so because they needed to work on a document at home or to send a document to someone without access to SharePoint.

While apparently well intentioned, these users’ actions threatened the confidentiality and integrity of the documents. These findings demonstrate how important it is to consider the ways in which people work and the ways in which they will want to access documents or share information with colleagues as part of a SharePoint implementation.As mentioned in a previous post, State Records is working on some guidance about the recordkeeping functionality of SharePoint 2010 and how it can be configured to meet recordkeeping objectives.

I’m excited to be working on this guidance after recently returning to State Records from a stint working for a charity in the UK where I was part of the project team for their SharePoint 2010 proof of concept project. This project involved implementing SharePoint within three sections of the organisation prior to a more widespread rollout. Working as part of the project team gave me an insight into some of the possibilities and pitfalls that SharePoint provides when it comes to recordkeeping.

Because SharePoint can be configured and used in various ways, there are also various ways to manage and protect records within SharePoint sites. As well as identifying the options for configuring recordkeeping functionality in SharePoint, we would like to include case studies of ‘real world’ SharePoint implementations in the guidance.

If your organisation has implemented SharePoint 2010 and would like to share its experiences about what did and didn’t work in relation to recordkeeping, we would love to hear from you. Please email govrec@records.nsw.gov.au.