Unified Compliance,® the premier provider of compliance mapping and creators of the Unified Compliance Framework® (UCF), announced the mapping of ARMA International’s Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles® into the UCF and the immediate availability of the Principles for all UCF customers.
ARMA International, a not-for-profit professional association and the authority on governing information as a strategic asset, created the Principles to provide away for organizations to benchmark and improve their information governance programs.
The UCF team has worked with ARMA to provide the ARMA information governance assessment controls and audit guide in UCF XML format. This allows any UCF licensee to add an ARMA license and incorporate ARMA's information governance audit guidelines.
“The UCF has always been focused on helping businesses know exactly what they need to do to comply with all applicable regulations and standards, and how to do it,” said Craig Isaacs, CEO of Unified Compliance. “Integrating the Principles into our framework makes it much easier for our mutual customers to both manage their information and use their records to make good business decisions.”
The Principles identify the critical hallmarks of information governance, which Gartner describes as an accountability framework that "includes the processes, roles, standards, and metrics that ensure the effective and efficient use of information in enabling an organization to achieve its goals." As such, they apply to all sizes of organizations, in all types of industries, and in both the private and public sectors.
Multi-national organizations can also use the Principles to establish consistent practices across a variety of business units.
“As a key resource in the operation of any organization, information must be created, organized, secured, maintained, and used in a way that effectively supports the activity of that organization, said Marilyn Bier, ARMA International chief executive officer. “By adopting the Principles into their framework, the UCF has made significant strides towards becoming the most all-encompassing framework an organization can have to measure information governance maturity, compliance, and risk.”
Recently honored with a 2014 GRC Technology Innovation Award by independent governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) analyst firm GRC 20/20, the UCF provides targeted, harmonized research on what an organization needs to do — and not do — to achieve and maintain compliance with industry, government, and best practice demands.
The UCF's architecture was specifically designed for the delivery of all of the information necessary to establish governance methodologies. Customers using the UCF can document and leverage the links between harmonized controls, records, assets (and their configurations), events, metrics, and roles.
Since 1992, Unified Compliance has developed ground-breaking tools to support IT best practices, with a focus on solutions and processes that further the science of compliance, including harmonization methods, metrics, systems continuity and governance. The UCF was created by Dorian Cougias and his research partner, Marcelo Halpern of the international law firm Perkins Coie, which oversees all legal aspects of the UCF. More information can be found at unifiedcompliance.com.
By applying the scientific method to compliance — rigorously testing best practices and methodologies as well as analyzing and organizing information into a rational format — Unified Compliance has developed a logical approach to IT compliance that reduces cost, limits liability, simplifies the compliance process and leverages the value of related technologies and services across the enterprise.
ARMA International (www.arma.org) is a not-for-profit professional association and the authority on governing information as a strategic asset. Established in 1955, ARMA International is the oldest and largest association for information governance (IG) and the records and information management (RIM) professions with an international membership of more than 27,000. It provides education, publications, and other resources that help organizations and individuals learn how to create, organize, secure, maintain, use, and dispose of information in ways that align with and contribute to the organization’s strategic goals. It also publishes Information Management, a professional magazine that features articles on the hottest IG and RIM trends, as well as marketplace news and analyses. www.arma.org/principles