The purpose of a records and information governance assessment is to provide an overview of the current state of records management in your organization and a brief outline of the questions that need to be answered and decisions that need to be made on the way to a healthy records management program that is compliant with all provincial and federal statutes, increases productivity and effectiveness of all staff, and ensures the retention of corporate memory.

An overview will typically start with identifying the most relevant record owners in the organizations’ business units, and then conducting information-gathering sessions and following other testing methodologies with each one to establish the current health of the organization as rated against the Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles, an industry-recognized set of standards and metrics that function in the records and information management world in the same way that the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles function in the financial world, except they govern your information assets instead of your financial assets.