What’s the Difference Between Information Governance and Records Management?

When the EDRM community of eDiscovery and legal professionals first released the E-Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) in 2006, it highlighted “Records Management” as an integral component of the eDiscovery process. Today, the EDRM focuses on “Information Governance”, as opposed to records management. Moreover, the EDRM has even been supplemented with the Information Governance Reference Model (IGRM), which offers an outline for how organizations should go about managing information related to potential litigation. 

In 2005, attorney George Socha and technology expert Tom Gelbmann founded the EDRM community of eDiscovery and legal professionals. The aim of this new group was to improve standards in the eDiscovery industry and lay down specific guidelines—and one of the first results was the now-iconic E-Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) diagram.