I have just taken an entire website and gigabytes of data offline. It covered a highly successful series of conferences on the data economy. It brought together thought leaders and key decision-makers from around the world for annual retreats – over a decade ago. And now it is gone. Every year, some thousands of sites – including ones with unique information – go offline. Countless further webpages become inaccessible; instead of information, users encounter error messages.

Records management is, and always has been, a balancing act. On one side is compliance. It is at the very core of why records management exists. On the other side is the end user experience with creating, capturing and using records. These two sides usually pull in different directions. It is very difficult to manage a record if it is not identified and captured, and it is unrealistic to expect end users to be highly skilled record keepers, with hours of their day devoted to keeping records perfectly. Records management as a profession is under increasing pressure to develop approaches and solutions that perfectly balance these com­peting priorities.