Brian-Hill  By Brian W. Hill

As we get closer to ARMA International's Annual Conference & Expo in Orlando, Florida, later this week, it’s likely that we’ll hear a lot about US Department of Defense (DoD) records management certifications. Some enterprises treat DoD 5015.2-STD V3 certification as a “check box” item for RFPs, but for others, such as US federal government agencies, these certifications are required.

Q3 2009 survey data show that in making future records management purchasing decisions, DoD 5015.2-STD V3 certification plays a key role. Forty-two percent of records management stakeholders rate DoD 5015.2-STD V3 (baseline) certification as "important" or "very important" in buying decisions. The comparable figures for DoD 5015.2-STD V3 (classified) and DoD 5015.2-STD V3 (Freedom of Information Act/Privacy Act) are 24% and 34%, respectively (see Figure 1). The survey data show that these certifications are more important for government (local, state, and federal) organizations, but not dramatically so. In comparison with their non-government counterparts and with some variation across the specific DoD 5015.2 certifications, 5% to 10% more government records management decision-makers rated these certifications as "important" or "very important."

BlogPostCertification

The DoD standard specifies a large number of detailed requirements that electronic record-keeping systems must meet. In order to achieve certification, systems must successfully pass all mandatory requirements. Enterprises, along with vendors, clearly recognize the importance of these neutral, third-party assessments. For example, in July through September, Alfresco, Autonomy, CA, HP, Hyland, Iron Mountain, and Open Text all completed certification testing for DoD 5015.2 V3.

Join me today at 1:00 p.m. Eastern for a Forrester teleconference on the changing records management market. I’ll touch on records management certification and we’ll cover user expectations, market trends, and obstacles along with vendor evaluations, SaaS and hosted deployment trends, and enterprise recommendations. For further information and to sign up, click here.

The Webcast will run from 1:00 p.m. EDT to 2:00 p.m. and will include a question-and-answer session.