The world is changing fast. Changes in technology are having a profound effect on the role of records management. The purpose of this blog is to give records managers and others interested in this area a 'heads up' as to what these changes might mean and how the profession needs to adapt to keep pace and maintain its relevance in the years ahead.
Tuesday, 5 August 2008
An admirable summary of Managing the Crowd
I am indebted to James Lappin at TFPL for posting as succinct a summary of the main points contained within Managing the Crowdas you are ever likely to find.
In fact, it makes me wonder what I wasted the other 60,000-odd words on...
Hi Steve, I have not read your book, but from the summary and your RM 2.0 principles .... but is your thinking/solutionising along the Enterprise Content Management lines? (wiki enterprise content management)
No, not really. This largely relates to what James summarises in his second point: 'organisations will not be able to bring Web2.0 entirely in house'. My doubts about taking the ECM route stem from the fact that it is still based on a underlying premise of an organisation-centric model which seems at odds with the ethos of Web 2.0.
Most current ECM offerings seem to be based on the fact that users will use the organisation's own blog, wiki etc. For a variety of reasons (restriction of user choice, development 'lag') etc I just don't see this as the answer, though it might be a good compromise candidate in the short term.
Instead, my idea is based on creating a Web2.0 based RM service whcih allows individual users to manage the entirity of their online information.
Ok, I see the train of your thought. Although isn't this the same challenge as RM has always faced - internal paper records needs to be stored in the repository (not at your desk) / external paper records need to be purchased and stored in the repository (not at your desk). - internal electronic records (word, excel, labels, batch cards, etc) need to be stored on the EDRMS/ECM (not on your desk top, file share) / external electronic records need to be linked, purchased or stored centrally as well. - surely the same for web 2.0. There can be no conceivable way to manage the original YouTube file stored on the 'YouTube' servers within your organisation. The link... then yes. Are we not just talking about individual governance to ensure data is stored/linked in/at the right place and deleted at the right time.... as we have in the past?
No, I think there is a critical difference emerging that will require a new approach. Services such as YouTube, Flickr and GoogleDocs have already established themselves as the tools of choice for many users in their private lives but are now increasingly beginning to play an active role in their work life too (either formally or informally).
The fact that these Web2.0 services not only offer the means for creating information, but also the storage repository as well adds to this complexity as we now have a combination of work and domestic information existing side-by-side on the same servers in a host of user accounts. Not an easy situation to unravel.
Policy may well play an important role in this, but I don't think a blanket 'thou shall not' approach will work for long.
I'm grateful to James Lappin because I am still awaiting Managing the Crowd from Amazon--and in the process of preparing a presentation derived from the argument that before Desktop 2.0 ever appeared, Desktop 1.0 had already given knowledge workers the freedom to pile and not file, thereby supporting their creativity: PARC built the kind of creative environment they all wanted in the 1980s, and the world shortly benefited from it. At any rate, I hope I get the book before I have to complete the paper in October!
Thank you very much for your generous comments. It is easy enough to summarise someone's work: you did the hard part of coming up with an original line of argument, developing it, and getting it into the public domain.
It is very rare for a book to be published about records management that isn't either a text book or a how-to guide, but is instead a contribution to a debate. It is great for our profession that you have succeeded in doing this.
Hi Steve, thanks for your comments. I have to disagree that a new approach is needed
ECM deals with propriety software, whether that is a pharmaceutcial label machine, batch record generator, SAP HR, Sharepoint, outlook, EDRMS and manages all these records in the "RM layer".
The records which typically want to spend their life in their cosy software are now exposed.
The "ECM RM" layer will delete these when necessary.
In order not to have similar threads running in too many different places I thought I would reply on the RM2.0 Ning network to the similar comments you left there.
8 comments:
Hi Steve, I have not read your book, but from the summary and your RM 2.0 principles .... but is your thinking/solutionising along the Enterprise Content Management lines? (wiki enterprise content management)
Hi Edgar,
No, not really. This largely relates to what James summarises in his second point: 'organisations will not be able to bring Web2.0 entirely in house'. My doubts about taking the ECM route stem from the fact that it is still based on a underlying premise of an organisation-centric model which seems at odds with the ethos of Web 2.0.
Most current ECM offerings seem to be based on the fact that users will use the organisation's own blog, wiki etc. For a variety of reasons (restriction of user choice, development 'lag') etc I just don't see this as the answer, though it might be a good compromise candidate in the short term.
Instead, my idea is based on creating a Web2.0 based RM service whcih allows individual users to manage the entirity of their online information.
Ok, I see the train of your thought. Although isn't this the same challenge as RM has always faced
- internal paper records needs to be stored in the repository (not at your desk) / external paper records need to be purchased and stored in the repository (not at your desk).
- internal electronic records (word, excel, labels, batch cards, etc) need to be stored on the EDRMS/ECM (not on your desk top, file share) / external electronic records need to be linked, purchased or stored centrally as well.
- surely the same for web 2.0. There can be no conceivable way to manage the original YouTube file stored on the 'YouTube' servers within your organisation. The link... then yes.
Are we not just talking about individual governance to ensure data is stored/linked in/at the right place and deleted at the right time.... as we have in the past?
No, I think there is a critical difference emerging that will require a new approach. Services such as YouTube, Flickr and GoogleDocs have already established themselves as the tools of choice for many users in their private lives but are now increasingly beginning to play an active role in their work life too (either formally or informally).
The fact that these Web2.0 services not only offer the means for creating information, but also the storage repository as well adds to this complexity as we now have a combination of work and domestic information existing side-by-side on the same servers in a host of user accounts. Not an easy situation to unravel.
Policy may well play an important role in this, but I don't think a blanket 'thou shall not' approach will work for long.
I'm grateful to James Lappin because I am still awaiting Managing the Crowd from Amazon--and in the process of preparing a presentation derived from the argument that before Desktop 2.0 ever appeared, Desktop 1.0 had already given knowledge workers the freedom to pile and not file, thereby supporting their creativity: PARC built the kind of creative environment they all wanted in the 1980s, and the world shortly benefited from it. At any rate, I hope I get the book before I have to complete the paper in October!
Hi Steve
Thank you very much for your generous comments. It is easy enough to summarise someone's work: you did the hard part of coming up with an original line of argument, developing it, and getting it into the public domain.
It is very rare for a book to be published about records management that isn't either a text book or a how-to guide, but is instead a contribution to a debate. It is great for our profession that you have succeeded in doing this.
Hi Steve, thanks for your comments. I have to disagree that a new approach is needed
ECM deals with propriety software, whether that is a pharmaceutcial label machine, batch record generator, SAP HR, Sharepoint, outlook, EDRMS and manages all these records in the "RM layer".
The records which typically want to spend their life in their cosy software are now exposed.
The "ECM RM" layer will delete these when necessary.
Web 2.0 next??
Hi Edgar,
In order not to have similar threads running in too many different places I thought I would reply on the RM2.0 Ning network to the similar comments you left there.
Cheers
Steve
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