Standards: Not 'One Size Fits All'

In trying to address business challenges one of the decisions organizations have to make is when and where they should or want to use standards. Until quite recently there was hardly any international standardization in the area of records management. ISO 15489:2001 is the main and overarching standard for records management. It provides an excellent framework and a broad view of the principles and core issues. Having standards is nice, but it is even more important to be able to implement them and that may not be an easy task. The flipside of the use of standards is the need to be able to assess whether an organization complies with them or not. And that is where audit and certification come in. Although standards try to provide some stability in a dynamic environment they are themselves also subject to change. It is therefore very important for any organization to identify and formulate the requirements for accomplishing its business activities before choosing any standard.