tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65127427995322476612024-03-14T03:06:41.986+00:00Records management futurewatchThe 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.Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.comBlogger88125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-18959845715750221852014-09-24T10:57:00.001+01:002014-09-24T10:57:26.839+01:00Finding the SharePoint sweet spot
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I have written in the past about the importance of
information professionals placing a higher priority on user needs, and even
perhaps preferences, than has traditionally been the case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Citing the failure of many an EDRMS
implementation as primarily being down to these having been a technology
designed around meeting the needs of the information manager rather than (and
arguably even at the expense of) the end user.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the same time there are, of course, limits as to how far
any system designed to serve the needs of the many – perhaps even an entire
organisation – can be successful in meeting the needs of each and every
user.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Creating a hundred different
systems, all based on individual user whim and with no sense of underlying
unity or consistency will obviously and inevitably just create its own set of
problems: not least the failure to create something which can in any way be
classed as an ‘enterprise wide’ solution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">One of the reasons I like SharePoint is that it does give
you the potential to try to span these competing demands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The concept of Team Sites allows you to
create solutions that can be bespoke to each function or team: upping the
structure and controls where they are required, but easing them off where they
are not; whilst doing so within the context of a shared enterprise wide
‘tenancy’ and within a general underlying framework that is yours to
define.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This ability to customise and to
push hard or to ease off the information management controls as local
circumstances dictate seems to me to be one of the main distinguishing features
between SharePoint and some of the EDRMS of old.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course the challenge for the information manager is still
in achieving the correct balance between local freedom and required central
management: wherever on the spectrum the particular function in question may
exist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be able to find the ‘sweet
spot’ that makes your system at least as attractive as the personal solutions
they have devised for themselves, whilst not compromising further than you know
is wise in terms of corporate information governance and management.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Push too far in one direction and you risk
creating an elegant and robust corporate solution on paper but which no one
actually uses; push too far in the other and you risk just replicating existing
problems in a new environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’ve had cause to consider these issues in recent weeks as
we have made the decision to reverse our previous system governance rule that did
not allow the use of folders within SharePoint Document Libraries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is plenty of <a href="http://sharepointmaven.com/12-reasons-folders-sharepoint-bad-idea/" target="_blank">literature</a> out there
confirming that our original ban is the sound way to go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of the reasons cited have a logical
technical basis (the risk of creating lengthy URL’s that break in built system limits,
for example).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But beyond this one of the
main reasons repeatedly cited is that use of folders for resource discovery and
content organisation purposes is not as good, as flexible and as sophisticated
as using metadata, columns and views to achieve the same results.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This may well be true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Use of metadata etc does open up a host of
possibilities that folders do not and for those prepared to take the leap of
faith and immerse themselves in this way of working it is undoubtedly
beneficial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The problem is that (in my
experience at least) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>only a small
minority of users are prepared to abandon the folders based approach to working
that they have spent the past decade or so working perfectly happy with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I had a pound for every time a potential
or new user has asked me how they create a folder in their team site I would be
a happy man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same would also be true
if applied to every user who was left looking disappointed and (to varying
degrees, sceptical) when told that the combination of metadata and views make
folders redundant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The actual catalyst for us making the decision to allow
folders (with caveats) within Team Sites was not, actually, just the weight of
user opinion, but a growing requirement for site owners to be able to restrict
permissions to certain content within their site.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, there are other ways this can be done
and we do prefer this to be done at a Document Library level but this does seem like overkill for what is often just a handful of 'restricted' items. But we eventually came to the conclusion that in most cases the use of folders
with unique permissions within a document library was the most straight forward
and proportionate approach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also had
the effect of giving us the opportunity to re-evaluate our previous position.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In short, the conclusion we came to was that for us and our
users the pros of using folders <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in
certain circumstances </i>outweigh the cons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We are cautioning restraint and still pushing the importance of metadata
and views as the primary route but concede that folders do have a valuable role
to play in our SharePoint implementation: not least in terms of user engagement
and the perception of SharePoint as a familiar and useful environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Here's a list of the caveats and cautions we have communicated to our Site Owners:</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><ul>
<li><div class="Paragraph SCX79328460" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-size: 6pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 48px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX79328460">Don’t create sub-folders (folders within folders). This creates long URLs which will break SharePoint’s in built maximum URL length and cause errors</span></span><span class="EOP SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"> </span></div>
</li>
<li><div class="Paragraph SCX79328460" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-size: 6pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 48px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="EOP SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"></span><span class="TextRun SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX79328460">Whilst you can drag and drop items </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 19px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX79328460">into</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX79328460"> folders it is then not easy to move items </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 19px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX79328460">between</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX79328460"> folders</span></span><span class="EOP SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"> </span></div>
</li>
<li><div class="Paragraph SCX79328460" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-size: 6pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 48px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="EOP SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"></span><span class="TextRun SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX79328460">Moving an item will change its URL, breaking any direct links to it that you may have created and shared </span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div class="Paragraph SCX79328460" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-size: 6pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 48px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX79328460"></span></span><span class="TextRun SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX79328460">Once contained within a folder it is harder to incorporate the individual items within any Document Library-level retrieval or sorting by metadata</span></span><span class="EOP SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"> </span></div>
</li>
<li><div class="Paragraph SCX79328460" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-family: "Segoe UI",Tahoma,Verdana,"Sans-Serif"; font-size: 6pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 48px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="EOP SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"></span><span class="TextRun SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX79328460">SharePoint will </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 19px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX79328460">not</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX79328460"> prevent the same item being uploaded into multiple folders, increasing the risk of duplicate information existing within the system.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX79328460" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 19px;"> </span></div>
</li>
</ul>
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Is there a risk that users will forget our
caveats, abandon metadata wholesale and replicate entire filing systems within
SharePoint?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Possibly, though (we think)
unlikely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is certainly something we
shall keep an eye on and work with Site owners in the months ahead to nip in
the bud if it looks a risk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Will it help
increase the general usability of SharePoint to the end user and its
attractiveness as an information management environment? Definitely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, for now at least, that makes it a sweet
spot worth seizing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-16194087165865048912014-09-05T09:31:00.001+01:002014-09-05T09:31:59.859+01:00SharePoint and the 'continuum of control'<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So, for the past year or so I have been heading up a
SharePoint implementation project within Jisc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It has proved a very interesting task and has got me thinking in all
sorts of directions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has also been an
extremely useful opportunity to refresh whatever professional skills and
knowledge I may have and to reacquaint myself with life at the sharp end of
records and information management.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As some of you will know, a recurring area of interest of
mine for some time has been the shifting foci of power that we have witnessed
in recent years when it comes to information creation and control: away from
the organisation and towards the user and what, if anything, our professional
response should be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SharePoint, it appears to me, sits at an interesting point
along this continuum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, more
interestingly still, can potentially be made to sit at pretty much any point
along it from ‘bolted down corporate repository’ (mandatory metadata, records
declaration and retention management etc) to ‘free and easy user-focused
solution’ (create a Team site, store content, share it with who you like).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is this range of potential management,
control and usage options that interests me as I suspect it is pretty unique
within this landscape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, if you
let all your users loose with Dropbox or Googledocs, you are always going to be
limited in the range of centrally defined management controls that you can put
in place across it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alternatively it
would be difficult to try to turn a full blown EDRMS into a collaborative tool
which is entirely at the user’s discretion when it comes to information
creation and management.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So the benefit, in theory at least, of SharePoint is that it
does at least give you as the information manager the potential to find your
own ‘sweet spot’ on this ‘continuum of control’: to decide which elements you
want to enforce and which you wish to leave to the user’s discretion; to
determine how much information management policy and rigour you wish to
implement, and how much you want to leave to individual whim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finding exactly where this sweet spot is for
your organisation is, it seems to me, half the key to success when it comes to
implementing SharePoint: enforce too much control and you may find it a near
impossible feat to convince your users that they should abandon their
GoogleDocs accounts for it; but include too little and you may find you are
simply replacing one unmanaged and ungoverned mess of information with
another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And, of course, if our experience is anything to go by, you
are likely to discover different sweet spots exist from department and
department and function and function <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">within
</i>your organisation with some users demanding a level of rigour and
governance that others would find totally off putting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trying to be ‘all things to all men’ may seem
like a tall order, and perhaps it is from a practical perspective but at least
it is theoretically possible within SharePoint.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Yesterday I took part in a <a href="http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/groups/cisg/Events/2014/webinar.aspx" target="_blank">UCISA Webinar</a> that explored some
of these themes and which explained a little about the decisions that we have
taken here at Jisc with regards to managing information and records within
SharePoint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I started with <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0lO7eQaRCE3NGFXRGpIdTM2bFU/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">a brief(ish)overview of some of the history that has shaped the interplay between user andorganisation</a> with regards to the management of information and a copy of the
script for this is available.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also
gave a<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0lO7eQaRCE3U0hSNXNTNWo5Z2s/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank"> presentation which explored how we have approached SharePoint withinJisc</a>, and in particular how we have implemented the types of records management
controls that we consider appropriate for our needs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The whole Webinar is also available for
<a href="https://ca-sas.bbcollab.com/site/external/recording/playback/link/table/meeting?suid=M.24C6F37A38DA52239895B6A4E59E7B&sid=2009077" target="_blank">downloading</a> (1.5 hours) if interested and which not only includes the above with narration,
but also a presentation on University of Highlands and Island’s experience of using SharePoint and all the
questions and discussions surrounding the presentations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now that I have got the blogging bit between my teeth again I’ll
perhaps elaborate a little more on the approach we have taken in future posts
in the near future but think this is probably enough to be getting on with for
now…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-45445039613918419102012-11-21T09:49:00.000+00:002012-11-21T09:49:11.099+00:00Encouraging user participation in RM projects
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Its been a recurring theme of mine for the last couple of
years now that records management needs to find better ways of connecting with
users; of thinking a little less about ‘the organisation’ and a little more
about ‘the individual’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For without the
support and enthusiasm of those on the ground even the most ambitious and
robust of RM implementations is pretty well doomed to failure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Human Computer Interaction and User Centred Design based
approaches certainly have a great deal of potential in this regard and the more
I have researched these areas the more convinced I become that we need to find
ways to bring such techniques more fully into the RM canon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would certainly be interesting to know
just how many EDRM/ERM systems have ever undergone any robust, independent
usability testing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The change in tack
from some vendors away from the “our product integrates ‘seamlessly’ with your
users desktop” message of the past to the “our product integrates seamlessly with
Sharepoint so your users never even know its there” message of today suggests a
certain recognition that this was largely a battle lost.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I suspect many of those involved in RM projects might
protest that user consultation and engagement has been an important facet of
their projects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Focus groups, ‘model
offices’, and user representatives on project teams are all well established
mechanisms for ensuring the user voice isn’t lost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But how effective are they?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are these channels which really proactively
encourage free thought and honest reflection, or are they (perhaps
subconsciously) designed to only produce a narrow range of responses with most
of the important decisions already made: more a question of ‘Which user
interface do you like best: A, B, or C’ than ‘What could we do to improve your access
to the information you need to do your job more easily’?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereas the former already assumes a new
interface is needed, whether the user likes it or not; the latter makes no such
assumptions and could elicit a broad spectrum of ideas that go far beyond
changes to a system interface.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As part of my role at JISC infoNet I’ve been increasingly
engaged with participatory techniques and stringing these together to run
participatory workshops.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are
simple, creative exercises that are designed to get groups of people working
together, raising issues, sharing ideas and forming a consensus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are the polar opposite of most of the
workshops I’ve ever encountered in terms of the energy and enthusiasm they
generate and the results they generate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Just this week we’ve released an online guide to how to conduct such an
event through our <a href="http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/participatory/">Planning a participatory workshop infoKit</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We’ve been using these techniques extensively with project
teams, College leadership teams and internally within our own team for over a
year now and I increasingly think they have an important role to play as part
of any information or records related project.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of course, just getting running a participatory workshop or two or
livening up a meeting with some of these exercises alone isn’t going to
guarantee a successful RM project, but it might just represent one of the
pieces of the records management puzzle that I’m increasingly convinced is
missing at the moment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-76902231762069490922012-02-15T14:05:00.004+00:002012-02-15T14:05:48.888+00:00Process Modelling – A missed opportunity?<em>“Staff working on the project did not have experience of defining business processes or of translating metrics into monetary terms. It was difficult at first to think of the management of personnel files and employee records as a business process."</em><br />
<em><br /> </em>So reported one of the projects piloting our Impact Calculator back in 2010. I stumbled on this by chance just the other day whilst preparing for a workshop on the Impact Calculator but the reason for my interest actually relates to some thoughts I have been having recently about process mapping and in particular the tools and standards that records managers adopt when carrying out process mapping for their purposes and how these compare with the ‘industry standards’ employed by those for whom business mapping is core to what they do. <br />
<br />
To this end I sent an email to the UK records management jiscmail list, acknowledging that:<br />
<br />
<em>“functional analysis has long been considered an important aspect of the records management canon. We understand the importance of taking a ‘functional approach’ to record keeping and for having classification schemes, retention schedules and other RM controls determined by a function-based structure.</em><br />
<em><br /></em><br />
<em>What I would be very interested to know, however, is what tools and/or standards do people tend to use when it comes to undertaking this analysis and capturing the outputs?”</em><br />
<br />
To be fair I received a fairly limited response, but what I did receive struck me as interesting. In essence a pattern seemed to emerge where by the records manager reported that they use Powerpoint or Mindmap or something at what could be described as the ‘basic’ or ‘non-specialist’ end of the spectrum whist at the same time pointing out that ‘the organisation’ uses something else (usually something more specialised). Obviously it’s all very anecdotal and based on a small sample but I wonder whether it suggests some potentially missed opportunities?<br />
<br />
What do I mean? Well, use of different tools and individualised (non standard) approaches to modelling may make it harder for the records manager to add their outputs to whatever models are being compiled throughout the rest of the organisation. If so, is there a risk that by not ‘talking the same language’ as our business analyst and IT colleagues that we are making it harder for ourselves to add RM controls and services to the enterprise’s architecture? Does a lack of adoption of accepted standards and tools also mean we are limiting our capacity as records managers to start sharing and joining up our process models between organisations working in the same sectors, limiting the opportunity for their reuse and for collaborative work? And finally, are the Mindmaps, Powerpoint slides and non-standard Visio notations really fit for our own purposes, or have we just grown accustomed to accepting the limitations of what we can achieve within these tools, rather than exploring the benefits that greater knowledge and use of more sophisticated tools could bring to our own daily work?<br />
<br />
I’m not really sure where, if anywhere, any of this is leading or whether its not really an issue at all, but cant seem to shake the nagging feeling that there is some trick being missed by a lot of us at the moment.<br />
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<br />Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-36808128163061526832011-12-08T11:21:00.001+00:002011-12-08T11:28:12.075+00:00The behaviour of the crowd: a new era for appraisal?Very interesting to see that the folks in charge of the UK Web Archive at the British Library are planning to <a href="http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/webarchive/2011/12/twittervane.html">adopt a crowd-sourcing approach to informing their selection of websites to archive</a> <br />
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<br />When I wrote <a href="http://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/title.php?id=641-1&category_code=817">Managing the Crowd</a> back in 2008 I put forward the view that agreeing appraisal decisions largely on the basis of user opinion of the worth of a record was likely to be the only way to go. Here we not only see an example of this being attempted in practice, but an interesting explanation for the decision: <br />
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<em>“we recognise that this manual selection process can sometimes be time consuming for frequent selectors. It’s also inevitably subjective, reflecting the interests of a relatively small number of selectors.”</em><br />
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This reflects two of the major tensions informing my own thinking on this back then (and now). That is that the kind of manual approaches to selection and appraisal traditionally adopted, ie manual processes undertaken by a relatively small number of trained professionals simply isn’t sustainable in the face of the ever growing onslaught of information being created. This will come as no surprise as an issue to any information professional even if solutions to it – this initiative aside - still seem rather thinner on the ground…<br />
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The admission of subjectivity within existing approaches to appraisal and the implication of ‘selection bias’ that underlies it is less widely discussed, perhaps because until now we’ve had no alternative. It stands to reason that despite our best efforts any selective appraisal process must inevitably be biased in some way, whether the appraiser is conscious of it or not. But having appraisal decisions based at least in part on user behaviour promises to go along way to resolving some of these issues. What would of course be fascinating would be a comparative study which compares the websites which would have been selected for capture by existing manual methods with those that are captured by the Web Archive according to ‘the crowd’ to go some way to seeing how closely (or not) the two are aligned. <br />
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A counter argument to all this may run along the lines of ‘but what if the sites the public are viewing most are not the most important ones.’ In short: ‘do the public really know best?’ Perhaps wisely the British Library are also incorporating “<em>curatorial input to this approach, so we’ll be asking curators from the Library to assess the quality and relevance of resulting selections</em>”. But it does pose and interesting question: should we be seeking to capture as accurately as possible the sites which the public believed to be of interest/use to a particular topic or those that we as information professionals believe they should have been interested in? The former of these may lead to the capture of some surprising, perhaps even ‘unsuitable’ sites, whilst the latter would perhaps provide a more informed, maybe a more ‘official’ version of events. But which would be the most accurate?<br />
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Its also interesting to note that this approach to crowd-sourcing isn’t just relying on user opinion but on the results of actual user behaviour. They aren’t just asking people to collectively vote for sites they wish to see included in the archive, but are analysing data from twitter regarding which sites were linked to at the time. Using user behaviour to inform appraisal wasn’t something I considered back in 2008 but have done quite of thinking about since, notably in a paper in the <a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/rmj">Records Management Journal</a> in 2009 (Vol 19 No.2) titled ‘Forget electronic records management, its automated records management that we desperately need’. That is that we use the data about user behaviour generated by business systems (which records they have opened, whether they edited or just read it, what they looked at next etc) as the means to help inform our records management policies based not on what we believe to be organisational need, but on actual patterns of behaviour. This is something we are all familiar with through sites such as Amazon and their ‘users who looked at this item also looked at these items…’ functionality. Use of such ‘behavioural analytics’ is also gathering momentum within academia with institutions for example using library usage patterns to identify at an early stage which students may be disengaging from their studies. To my mind the ability to closely monitor and analyse user behaviour in this way has the potential to not only increase the scalability of much of records management but also to increase the level of sophistication in which it can operate.<br />
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Maybe there is hope yet.<br />
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<br />Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-69121489266486434992011-09-01T10:42:00.000+01:002011-09-01T10:45:14.171+01:00The storage addictionThe link between a story about people's apparent addiction to paying to store old sofas, records, magazines that they no longer have room for at home and a critique of email management strategies over the past 15 years or so is not, perhaps, immediately obvious. And yet I was certainly struck by many of the same underlying trends that I alluded to in a recent paper I gave to the Digital Preservation Coalition's Email Preservation Workshop entitled: <i>Email management: Fifteen wasted years and counting </i>and the the piece featured on today's BBC website about <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14718478">'The self storage craze'</a> <br />
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If you can't be bothered to read the <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q2KQpWG0w2uGoFSQzGOeraJuYD8v0nSfqy4_MKHT97M/edit?hl=en_US">full text of my paper</a> then Chris Prom has neatly <a href="http://e-records.chrisprom.com/?p=2284&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=email-management-fifteen-wasted-years-and-counting-steve-bailey">summed up the main thrust of my argument </a>in his own blog post. Basically, it is that our users are now strongly influenced in their approach to information management by the external tide of technology which leads them to expect near-infinite storage at their finger tips as a given. Our users like to keep 'stuff'. They may not always know why, or for what purpose it is being kept but want to keep it nonetheless and this apparently applies just as much to battered old bits of furniture and betamax videos we can no longer play as it does to emails and other records. <br />
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What I argued in the paper to the DPC was that we as records professionals seem to have either ignored or dismissed this impetus and have spent the best part of fifteen years trying, virtually always unsuccessfully, to fight against it and to impose rules regarding the retention and disposal of emails and other records which not only runs counter to the overall direction of technological development but to human nature. As i say in the paper: <br />
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<i>"Trying to sell the concept of manual disposal of emails is a bit like telling the driver of a Porsche that he still has to have a man with a red flag walk in front of him."</i> <br />
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This appears to me to be another example, perhaps <i>the</i> classic example of how we have failed to understand how our users think and act and have instead tried to impose management solutions on them which may suit the corporate agenda but which singularly fails to meet user requirements. And then we wonder why users fail to engage with the solutions we provide... <br />
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All this is very dear to my heart at the moment as I am currently working on producing a new infoKit for the <a href="http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/">JISC infoNet website</a>: "Implementing information management technologies" which aims to fuse records management and Human-Computer Interaction approaches to create a methodology for implementing information managment techologies which gives equal weight to meeting the needs of the users as it does to the organisation. I doubt it will be the complete answer, but at least it will hopefully mark a step in the right direction. It won't be released until early next year so watch this space...Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-56622374968306714682011-06-09T11:28:00.001+01:002011-06-09T11:31:01.142+01:00Paying lip service to the userSince my <a href="http://rmfuturewatch.blogspot.com/2011/05/its-user-stupid.html">last post</a> on the need to rebalance our approach to records management around the needs of the user I have been doing a little research of the RM literature on the subject. Admittedly this has been confined to the Records Management Journal (as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board I have easy access to it!) but looking through the back issues of 20 years for articles relating to RM system implementation has still proved an interesting exercise. I guess I should say at the outset (if not already obvious) that this was no formal literature review, but it at least helped contextualise some of my own thoughts, observations and anecdotatal evidence. <br /><br />I found 7 papers relating to RM system implementation; most, if not all, it has to be said, relating specifically to EDRMS and I guess this focus has to be borne in mind when making any generalised assumptions. But that aside they nearly all make the point that ‘user buy-in’ is critical to the success of the project and that projects are largely doomed to failure without it. <br /> <br />There is also a remarkable consistency regarding how this can best be achieved: ‘Involve users early’, ‘’invite user representatives onto the project board’, ‘invite user representatives to try it out in a model office’, ‘give users plenty of training and support’ etc etc. All perfectly sound advice you might think and indeed it’s difficult to argue against any of them but at the same time I can’t shake the feeling that despite all these good intentions they are all missing the real point.<br /><br />It’s a little like we are saying ‘when forcing a pedestrian to learn to drive a car its important to include them in the decision making process from the beginning; invite them to help choose what make and model; let them decide the colour; be sure to offer them plenty of training first and then be prepared to sit with them during their first few trips’. Great. But what if they didn’t actually want to drive a car in the first place? What if walking or taking the bus really suits their lifestyle? In short rather than simply asking them what colour car they would like, why not ask them how we could best improve their journey to work, however they decide to make it?<br /><br />Biagio and Ibricu (RMJ Vol 18 No.3) inadvertently made an interesting point when they stated:<br /><br /><em>“users often fail to understand the corporate perspective of an EDRMS implementation and tend to remain focused on how the system will help them perform their jobs more efficiently and which tangible benefits and improvements it will bring”</em><br /><br />Is it me, or do I detect a note of criticism of the user’s values here? Almost as if being censured for daring to put how they perform their own roles above what is of benefit to the organisation and its records managers. Well, welcome to the real world. Of course users are going to put their own working practice and working lives first. You’d have to be a pretty strange beast to volunteer to make your own work less efficient and less enjoyable just so someone else can benefit.<br /><br />This question of just who the EDRMS is for also rears its head in another article by Ganesh Vednere (RMJ Vol 19, No.2) when he states:<br /><br /><em>“some people have been known to say ‘oh we are not that familiar with the technologies, so we let the technology team do the selection for us’ – well, that’s fine, but remember that ultimately it is the records management team that has to live with the platform”.</em><br /><br />Now Ganesh was making a different point here about the need for records managers to get involved in the technical selection process rather than just delegating it to IT but what is striking here is the overt assumption that is the ‘records management team’ who have to live with the consequences of a poorly chosen system. A fair enough point, but what about the poor users? They don’t even get a mention. Doesn’t the same logic apply to them as well? Aren’t we asking them to ‘live with a platform’ that in all likelihood they had little or no input into choosing and configuring?<br /><br />So my point? That the literature is absolutely right to highlight the importance of user engagement but that they seem to be fundamentally misjudging when in the process this needs to occur and the weight that needs to be placed upon their feelings. And that this process can probably best be started by replacing the question ‘how can we configure this system to try to meet your requirements? With ‘how can we help you do your job better?’Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-32294162427654004962011-05-23T15:24:00.003+01:002011-05-23T15:29:20.124+01:00Its the user, stupidTake a look through ISO-15489 and see how many of its requirements are directed at meeting the needs of ‘the user’. Now I’d hesitate to say “none” as its quite possible that I’ve overlooked one or two, but I think I’m pretty safe in suggesting “precious few” as an accurate answer. Reading through it soon becomes clear who records management’s primary stakeholder is assumed to be – and its clearly <em>not </em>the user with virtually every recommendation defined in terms of what “the organisation” requires and what is in “the organisations” best interests. <br /><br />This probably doesn’t come as a great surprise, after all RM has long strived to be acknowledged as an established ‘corporate function’ with an enterprise-wide remit. Indeed all the benefits that RM can offer as stated in Part 1 of 15489 are described by the way in which they “enable organisations to…”. <br /><br />Most RM technologies follow this lead and seek to deliver benefits to ‘the organisation’. But where does this leave the individual users of which the organisation is comprised? Can we automatically assume that what is in the best interests of the organisation will also be so for its staff? Taken to its logical conclusion the answer must inevitably be yes; after all the organisation that fails to make a profit or continually finds itself in the law courts will soon find itself unable to pay the salaries of its present staff or the pensions of its former. But how strong a connection is this really seen by many? Might it be that the vast majority of staff simply wants to turn up in the morning, complete their allotted tasks as quickly and easily as possible and leave at a reasonable time in the evening with as few complications and hurdles as possible? <br /><br />Few record managers have the authority to compel users to adopt the procedures or systems they introduce. Instead we rely on a mixture of inspiration and perspiration to encourage adoption – with varying degrees of success. My review of the existing literature is still in progress but from what I have read so far a recurring theme when it comes to RM system implementation failures is lack of staff engagement. As Rachel Maguire stated in her ‘Lessons learnt from implementing an electronic records management system’ (Records Management Journal, Vol 15 No.3, pp.150-7) <br /><br /><em>“In spite of extensive training, most staff never got to grips with the system” </em><br /><br />From the literature and anecdotal evidence this seems a common occurrence, but why should it be so? Is it that the solutions we offer simply don’t meet the requirements of our users? Do we even know what their requirements are? Or have we been guilty of paying lip-service to such considerations whilst instead focusing our attention of trying to deliver solutions which benefit the organisation entire but at the users’ expense? <br /><br />Outside of the RM sphere disciplines such as HCI (Human-computer interaction) and User Centered Design are well established and important aspects of the design and implementation of IT systems and technologies and help to deliver devices and applications that users actively want to use, partially because they have had a very real and active role in the design process and because this has led to solutions that make their lives a little bit easier. Myself and <a href="http://www.jayvidyarthi.com/tech.php">Jay Vidyarthi </a>(a Human-Computer Interaction specialist from Canada) wrote a paper for the Records Management Journal (<a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1891679">Human-computer interaction: the missing piece of the records management puzzle?, RMJ, Vol. 20 No.3, 2010</a>) looking into some of these very issues but inevitably that only scratched the surface.<br /><br />Now as part of my role at <a href="http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk">JISC infoNet </a>I am hoping to build on this work by producing a resource which seeks to redress this balance and to find ways of integrating aspects of HCI and User Centred Design into the design and implementation of information management technologies. As such I would be really grateful to hear of any examples that you know of or have been involved with of information or records management projects which may have explored any of these issues and sought to apply these principles; or (perhaps more likely) to hear of projects which have stumbled or failed due at least in part to failings in this area. <br /><br />Of course none of this is meant to suggest that ‘the organisation’ doesn’t matter, or that we should lose sight of the bigger picture whilst attempting to solve the specific problems of every member of staff – but merely to recognise that without the genuine and positive engagement of the latter we will never truly be able to serve the interests of the former.Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-89904525965071418352011-04-18T11:44:00.003+01:002011-04-18T11:49:15.368+01:00Calculating the impact of the Impact CalculatorBack in October 2009 I <a href="http://rmfuturewatch.blogspot.com/2009/10/evolution-of-impact-calculator.html">posted on the launch of our new Impact Calculator</a>, a tool designed to address the worrying dearth of reliable evidence supporting the various claims that are often made in favour of investment in records management (‘increasing productivity’, decreasing overheads etc’). Well, here we are, 18 months, 270 registered downloads (and lots more unregistered) of the Impact Calculator, 6 completed pilot projects and 1 published research paper later.<br /><br />Hopefully, the paper in question – based on the findings from 6 UK universities all of whom used the Impact Calculator to measure the return on investment (or not) realised through improvements to records management – within the Records Management Journal (Vol. 21 No.1, 2011) will finally drive a stake in the heart of that oft-quoted but seemingly completely mythical previous ‘source’ of ‘data’: “the Coopers & Lybrand study” which has been doing the rounds of lazy records management presenters and authors for about the past decade!<br /><br />Of course data based solely on the experience of 6 universities is always going to be limited in terms of its broader applicability and the evidential weight we can place upon it, but at least their methodology and the workings of the calculator are transparent and consistent and therefore a considerable step forward on what has gone before.<br /><br />And the conclusions from this work? Well, there are several and its difficult to summarise them adequately in a blog post, but the following statements all feature in my RMJ paper’s conclusion:<br /><br />- There is no single absolute threshold of data purity and evidential rigour appropriate when measuring the impact of records management<br />- the cost effectiveness of records management is closely linked to questions of volume<br />- measuring impact represents a challenging new role for records professionals <br />- There are pros and cons to judging the impact of records management in terms of the tangible benefits realised<br /><br />And the following statements, also based on the outputs from the same pilot projects have also featured in presentations on the Impact Calculator that I have given to post-graduate students at both University of Aberystwyth and San Jose University, California:<br />- retrospective appraisal projects rarely deliver a financial return on investment<br />- implementing a retention schedule ‘from this point on’ can deliver cost savings<br />- RM is only cost effective above a certain scale of operation<br />- investment in better processes and systems is more cost effective than increased reliance on cheaper labour<br /><br />Although the full text of my RMJ paper is only available via the Records Management Journal from Emerald Publishing, the full results of the 6 pilot projects with commentary is publicly available from the <a href="http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/records-management/measuring-impact/impact-calculator/pilots">JISC infoNet website</a>.<br /><br />As noted above, the jury is still out as to whether seeking to measure the impact of records management purely in statistical terms is a good thing or not and certainly there are lots of other reasons (legal, regulatory, historical etc) as to why it makes sense to appraise legacy records even if the evidence suggests that it will never recoup the money you spend on doing it. But at least now there is a tool and the beginnings of an evidence base out there for those who do feel that the business case for investment in records management within their organisation would be strengthened through the addition of some relevant and reliable data regarding its financial worth.Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-80782815305165734032010-12-06T14:44:00.001+00:002010-12-06T14:49:01.515+00:00Records management: the plasterer's hammer?<em>“For a field largely reliant on the active participation of the individual users responsible for creating, using and managing records to achieve its aims, much of records management appears sorely lacking in the depth and sophistication of its knowledge about those same user s, their needs and objectives”.</em><br /><br />So begins the conclusion of the paper written by myself and <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Jay/Vidyarthi">Jay Vidyarthi </a>and published in the latest volume of the <a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=0956-5698">Records Management Journal</a>. (Vol 20, No 3)<br /><br />The paper discusses the way in which records management has focused almost exclusively and to the exclusion of virtually all other considerations on the needs of ‘the organisation’ often to the detriment of the users we are so reliant upon. Records management is a discipline which strives for standardisation, consistency and uniformity; for example in the form of functional classification schemes attempting to map activities across the entire organisation with a view to constructing a ‘corporate file plan’ or shared metadata schemas. This drive to standardisation isn’t just evident within organisations, but across them – be it in the guise of ISO 15489 or any of the specification standards for an EDRMS – all of which have at their heart the desired goal of uniformity of approach. <br /> <br />Read any section of 15489 and it’s abundantly clear who the main beneficiary of records management is intended to be – and its not the user. Virtually every section defines its objectives in terms of the benefits it will provide to ‘the organization’ with the user(s) getting barely a mention. Now none of this may strike the user as particularly surprising, nor in any way negative. After all, records management has long strived to be acknowledged as a ‘corporate function’ alongside HR, finance etc and clearly many of the drivers for it (accountability, governance, regulation etc) tend to apply at the organisational, rather than the individual level. <br /><br />None of this is intended to criticise, but to shed some light on why it is that records management often struggles to satisfy the requirements of the individual users it relies on for success and why it could be argued that it has given up even trying. At its most extreme this disparity between the design of many records management systems and the needs of the individual user is most succinctly summed up in a quote made by one EDRMS user to me once that ‘making me use an EDRMS is like asking a plasterer to use a hammer’!<br /><br />This clearly puts records management and the technology we rely on to implement it (whatever that technology may be) in something of a quandary. Is it really possible for it to successfully serve two equally demanding masters? Can we really hope to find ways of meeting the myriad, highly specific, highly personal demands of our user community in a way which not only pleases each individual user but also in a way which continues to meet the obligations and interests of the organisation as a whole? <br /><br />Carry on as we are and I fear the answer will continue to be ‘no’; but open our eyes and ears to some radical new perspectives and it could yet be a ‘yes’. Human-Computer Interaction, or HCI is a combination of computer science, cognitive psychology, sociology, information science and design which might just represent the ‘missing piece of the puzzle’. A blog post doesn’t provide the space to explore the detail – that’ what Jay and I start to do in the RMJ paper. Here it suffices to describe it as a structured approach which puts the users first to ensure that they can interact with the system in ways which meet their needs whilst also continuing to meet the needs of the organisation. By shining a light on the behaviour, needs, opinions, tendencies and motivations of end-users it’s the first step towards achieving truly effective records management systems. After all, give somebody a tool that patently saves them time, energy and frustration and they would be foolish not to embrace it; but so too we must acknowledge that the reverse is true and that to try to make somebody use a tool that promises to only help someone (or something) else but at their own personal expense and surely we must concede that they would be a fool to use it. <br /><br />The implications of such a shift in emphasis are profound, for records management as traditionally conceived is a house built from the top down determined by the needs of the organisation, and not one built from the bottom up based on the needs of its users. But it also offers some tantalising prospects: not just RM systems that users actively want to engage with, but also the possibility that we could start to use this new found knowledge of user behaviour to design and create records management systems that can actually manage records ‘automatically’ (at least in part) based on this behaviour – in a way similar to that used by Amazon et al to organise their content to aid the user experience. Desirable? Definitely. Possible? Who knows, but what this space…Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-69719656807885372432010-08-25T11:08:00.003+01:002010-08-25T11:21:31.068+01:00Is the Cloud aware that it has 'the future of digital archiving in its hands'?As anyone in the audience at the <a href="http://www.ica.org/en/2010/04/28/8th-european-conference-digital-archiving-geneva-2010">ECA conference in Geneva </a>earlier this year will be aware, one of issues which I’ve been mulling over in recent months relates to roles and responsibilities in ‘the cloud’. The question I was asked to address in Switzerland was ‘in whose hands does the future of digital preservation lie?’ and my succinct response was: ‘Google's’. This was (for reasons evident in <a href="http://www.vsa-aas.org/de/aktuell/eca-2010/2010-04-29/">the paper I gave</a>) meant both literally – given their increasing dominance of the cloud space but also metaphorically, as an encapsulation of all cloud service providers.<br /><br />And certainly when my colleague, <a href="http://dougbelshaw.com/">Doug Belshaw</a>, pointed me in the direction of this <a href="http://redgloo.sse.reading.ac.uk/ssswills/weblog/3951.html">post regarding Facebook’s archiving policy </a>it became clear that I’m not the only one thinking about the (unintended?) consequences for all parties of where this might lead us.<br /><br />Its tempting to see things only from our (by that I mean the archival community) side of the fence – to lament the inevitable decline in our future professional role that the handing over of content to commercial external service providers for its long term preservation will entail and to worry about what it may mean for the archives (and their users) of the future.<br /><br />But maybe we should also pause to reflect on what it may mean for these service providers themselves and whether they actually have as much concern about the implications of this new found responsibility on their side as we do on ours.<br /><br />For as I concluded my paper in Geneva:<br /><br /><em>"Perhaps we should actually stop to ask Google and their peers whether they are indeed aware of the fact that the future of digital preservation lies in their hands and the responsibilities which comes with it and whether this is a role they are happy to fulfil. For perhaps just as we are in danger of sleepwalking our way into a situation where we have let this responsibility slip through our fingers, so they might be equally guilty of unwittingly finding it has landed in theirs. <br /><br />If so, might this provide the opportunity for dialogue between the archival professions and cloud based service providers and in doing so, the opportunity for us to influence (and perhaps even still directly manage) the preservation of digital archives long into the future". </em> <br /><br />To again quote from the conclusion of my paper:<br /><br /><em>"Maybe the interconnection of content creation and use and its long term preservation need not be as indivisible within the cloud as it might first appear. Yes Google’s appetite for content might appear insatiable, but that does not necessarily mean that they wish to hold it all themselves – after all, their core business of search does not require them to hold themselves every web page they index, merely to have the means to crawl it and to return the results to the user. Might we be able to persuade them that the same logic should also apply to the contents of Google Apps, Blogger, YouTube and the like? If so, might the door be open for us, the archival community through the publicly funded purse to create and maintain our own meta-repository within which online content can be transferred, or just copied, for controlled, managed long term storage whilst continuing to provide access to it to the services and companies from which it originated? <br /> <br />That way they get to continue to accrue the benefit of allowing their users to access and manipulate digital content in ways which benefit their bottom line, the user continues to enjoy the services they have grown accustomed to and the archival community can sleep soundly, safe in the knowledge that whilst service providers are free to do what they want with live content, its long term preservation and safety continues to lie in our own experienced and trusted hands".</em><br /><br />I wonder if such dialogue is already occurring between Google, Facebook et al and the likes of <a href="http://www.archives.gov/">NARA</a>, <a href="http://www.naa.gov.au/">NAA</a> and <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/">TNA</a>. Lets hope so…Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-26309223004197002612010-07-01T15:08:00.003+01:002010-07-01T15:33:06.766+01:00Wisdom of the citizen?Very interesting to see the new government initiative launched today by Nick Clegg which calls on the public to help decide which laws they want scrapped. <br /><br />Now I should point out from the beginning that I'm not passing any political judgement here on its relative merit. What interested me was how the proposal reflects the whole 'wisdom of the crowd' ethos which as many of you will know I have long been advocating as a model for ensuring records management. <br /><br />The idea is explained more fully in the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7864847/Nick-Clegg-calls-on-public-to-help-scrap-bad-laws.html">Daily Telegraph </a>and elsewhere, but in summary (and to quote from Nick Clegg)<br /><br /><em>"Today we are taking an unprecedented step. Based on the belief that it is people, not policy makers, who know best, we are asking the people of Britain to tell us how you want to see your freedom restored"</em><br /><br />Certainly echoes there of my belief that the creators and users of records are often far better placed than Records Managers to understand their records and how we should be looking for innovative ways of extracting this knowledge and using it for management purposes. <br /><br />And how is this to be done? To quote from Nick Clegg again:<br /><br /><em>"We are calling on you for your ideas on how to protect our hard-won liberties and repeal unnecessary laws... we're hoping for virtual mailbags full of suggestions. Every single one will be read, with the best put to Parliament"</em><br /><br />Again, interesting to see an example of how technology can now be employed to gather and quantify information from a large cross-section of interested people and then used to <em>inform </em>the deliberations of those whose formal role it is to make such decisions. <br /><br />Now whether this is just political gimmick or a genuine attempt at change is not for me to comment on. But as a high profile example of how technology now has the potential to empower individuals (be they 'citizens' or 'users') and how decision makers can and should now make use of such decision does seem worthy of comment.Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-79512068695683659332010-05-02T20:24:00.002+01:002010-05-04T10:10:57.997+01:00Is digital preservation now routine?It’s been a while since I attended a conference specifically themed around digital preservation / electronic archiving and having spent a few days last week in Geneva at the excellent <a href="http://www.bar.admin.ch/eca2010/index.html?lang=en">European Conference on Archiving</a> I was struck by the change. Not many years ago such conferences were dominated by debate about the technical complexities it posed, about the relative merits of competing theoretical approaches such as emulation and migration and the risks we faced if and when we got it wrong. The fragility of digital media was stressed and compared unfavourably to the durability of their traditional counterparts (encapsulated by seemingly endless comparisons between the original Domesday Book and its 1980s electronic equivalent). <br /><br />I heard none of this at ECA, at least not in the sessions I attended or the conversations I was party to. Instead there were plenty of case studies from around Europe of organisations who are quietly and successfully getting on with it. On the evidence of the past few days we seem to have found ourselves in the situation where our ability to actually preserve this stuff indefinitely and to continue to provide access to it seems, without much triumph or fanfare to now be taken as read. This is not, of course, the same as saying that no more problems or challenges exist, but they seem to be of a more prosaic, ‘routine’ nature revolving around the need to secure budgets and improve the user experience etc. <br /><br />More interestingly still if a single concern dominating the conference can be identified it seemed to be one related to the volume of information being created and stored today and estimated to be created tomorrow. I lost count of the number of presentations which contained jaw-dropping predictions of the amount of data soon to be at our fingertips and the challenges this will pose in terms of resource discovery, legal discovery and overall management. But interestingly virtually never its preservation. So, based on the evidence of this conference alone, it seems as though within a few short years we have jumped from a situation where we used to worry obsessively that we were in danger of losing everything to one where we now stress about how to manage a world where we will lose nothing, with barely a pause for reflection on this change.<br /><br />My other observation was that (<a href="http://www.vsa-aas.org/de/aktuell/eca-2010/2010-04-29/print/">my own meagre contribution </a>to one side) there was little or no discussion about the growing impact of the web as a storage ‘repository’ as heralded by the rise of ‘the cloud’. The unspoken assumption behind most of the debate and the projects and initiatives they represented seemed to be that these organisations will always have physical control of the electronic information they wish to preserve both prior to and after its ingest into their electronic archive, but as I tried to stress in my paper, I wonder how safe an assumption that will prove to be?Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-90800188517170866822010-03-05T15:28:00.002+00:002010-03-05T15:35:59.056+00:00'Big data': big potential, big challengesThis week’s Economist has an excellent <a href="http://www.economist.com/surveys/downloadSurveyPDF.cfm?id=15560360&surveyCode=%2555%254b&submit=View+PDF">special report on managing information entitled ‘Data, Data everywhere’</a>. It looks at the changes, opportunities and challenges posed by our new found ability to create and manipulate vast quantities of data – big data. There are lots of impressive/daunting (depending on your point of view) statistics about just how much data we are now talking about (40 billion photos on Facebook for example) during this “<em>industrial revolution of data</em>”. It also explores the concept of ‘data exhaust’ the trail of clicks which users leave behind them and which Google and others have been able to put to such incredible use: from search to speech recognition and from spell checking to language translation. All made possible not by attempting to training computers the rules which determine how these concepts work, but instead by tracking the activities of billions of user transactions which do the work of refining, correcting and adding relative value to words. Those who have heard my ‘Meet the future of Records Management: Amazon.com’ conference paper will know that I have long suspected that we could and should be making use of this exact same ‘exhaust’ to help us manage information, as well as profit from it - what I describe as 'Automated Records Management' (See also Records Management Journal Vol 19 No.2 2009 for a paper I wrote on this entitled 'Forget Electronic Records Management its Automated Records management that we desperately need')<br /><br />There’s also interesting stuff in the Economist supplement on the problems of how to make sense of all this data, including new ways of visualising it and the prediction that statistics will soon be one of the coolest jobs around(!). It also makes some interesting points about the need for management to be trained in how to make sense of all this data. This chimes with a conversation I had with a Chief Exec a few weeks ago who also made the case for ensuring that senior management were aware of good old fashioned archival concepts such as provenance and context to give them a better appreciation of what the data they are looking at is actually telling them or how much it can be relied upon (rather than what they <em>wish </em>it was telling them and how much faith they may <em>wish </em>to place in it).<br /><br />To give the Economist its due it does also look beyond the potential and address some of the challenges (and not just in relation to security – see <a href="http://rmfuturewatch.blogspot.com/2010/02/information-management-forgotten-issue.html">previous post</a>). Admittedly it does appear a little confused about the subject of data retention stating that ‘<em>current roles on digital records state that data should never be stored for longer than necessary because they might be misused or inadvertently released</em>’. It then goes on to state that ‘<em>in future it is more likely that companies will be required retain all digital files, and ensure their accuracy, rather than to delete them</em>’ – a vision of the future likely to strike fear into every records managers heart. There are some immediate flaws obvious in this logic (in the EU at least) where current data protection laws prevent this in relation to personal data, and elsewhere the Economist itself draws attention to the problems that storing such massive amounts of data is causing to the existing technical and resource infra-structure that Google et al rely on which would seem to favour a more selective approach to data retention on pragmatic grounds if nothing else. But whether such concerns are considered enough to stop the ‘lets keep and exploit everything’ bandwagon which lies behind much of this report is at best debatable and at worst, I suspect, distinctly unlikely.Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-73793831674035031172010-02-24T15:05:00.003+00:002010-02-24T15:16:14.715+00:00Information Management: the forgotten issue of the cloudThere was an interesting supplement on Cloud Computing from <a href="http://www.mediaplanet.com/">MediaPlanet</a> within this Saturday’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/">Daily Telegraph</a> (Ok I know it’s now Wednesday, but it takes me most of the week to wade through the weekend papers!).<br />The supplement - of which I can sadly find no English language online version - appears to be aimed at a senior management audience and is deliberately light on the technical detail, choosing to focus more on the benefits to the organisation which moving towards cloud-based computing can bring (institutional agility, flexibility and cost saving seem to be the main arguments in favour). It also includes ‘5 steps to making the most of cloud’ which are:<br /><br />1. See the possibilities<br />2. Consider security<br />3. Use it to your advantage<br />4. Push the boundaries<br />5. Consider logistics <br /><br />It would be hard to disagree with any of these, but its steps 2 and 5 which interested me most. For whilst steps 1, 3 and 4 (and, indeed, the rest of the content in the supplement) is designed to articulate the advantages and to push the potential it is these two steps which are designed to sound a note of caution and to instil the need for a cautious, managed approach to the management of the risks involved.<br /><br />But if you were to rely solely on this supplement for guidance you’d be mistaken for assuming that data security should be your only concern when adopting a cloud-based computing environment (especially as the ‘logistics’ which Step 5 encourages you to consider relate to issues of security and mobile devices so is, in effect, just an extension of Step 2: Consider Security). <br /><br />Aside from a passing mention of data protection and the potential need for some organisations to keep certain data within ‘certain geographic boundaries’ (which I’m assuming is again essentially related to the requirements of the Data Protection Act) what is entirely missing is an appreciation of the information management implications of moving data to the cloud. There is no acknowledgement of the need to ensure that current levels of record and information management control, say in relation to resource discovery or retention, must be continued into the cloud; nor any recognition of the potential problems of ensuring that this is so. <br /><br />Interestingly, some of the issues which may come to the surface if these concerns are ignored are obliquely and inadvertently acknowledged – for example the point is made that in the cloud you pay as you consume, but the point is not expanded to its logical conclusion that it therefore pays to know exactly what information you still need to store (and pay for) and what can safely be destroyed. Likewise, the point is made that one of the biggest advantages foreseen for the ‘G Cloud’ (the UK Government Application Store which is currently being trialled) “could be allowing departments to share non-sensitive data so paper work is reduced and processes sped up” but no consideration is given as to how ‘sensitive’ and ‘non-sensitive’ data might be appropriately identified and controlled within the cloud.<br /><br />On a more positive note Mark Taylor from Microsoft draws attention to the need for increasing standardisation so that the cloud ‘runs along the same principles and business models no matter who is managing the hosting’. Might the development of such standards and interoperability offer a potential means by which a single management layer can be placed on top of the cloud to allow organisations to consistently manage their information wherever it happens to reside in the cloud? And in doing so might it help address some of the management information issues which this supplement failed to acknowledge?Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-33773028318726887872009-11-18T11:54:00.000+00:002009-11-18T11:55:51.600+00:00Practicing what we preachThere are not many days where I end up thinking, ‘God, why do I bother’, but today just happens to be one of them.<br /><br />Few records and information managers would surely disagree that a large part of what we preach to others are:<br />- managing information appropriately<br />- providing access to information to only those who require it<br />- describing information appropriately to facilitate easy resource discovery<br />- limiting the amount of information being created, circulated and stored to a required minimum<br /><br />I suspect that even fewer of us would disagree that the number of emails we all receive represent a major burden for us all as users. Indeed, I suspect many of us have produced guidance material or run training events designed to encourage our users to manage email appropriately and broadly in line with the aims I stated above.<br /><br />So why, in the name of all that is holy, is it that a group of information and records managers seem singularly unable or unwilling to apply these same principles to their own activities?<br /><br />Those who are not a member of a closed jiscmail list for information and records managers and compliance officers working in the UK FE/HE sectors will not know what I am talking about, but those who are most certainly will!<br /><br />Here’s how it goes. One of the important functions of the list which has evolved over time is for institutions to check with colleagues whether other institutions have received the same FOI request (so called ‘round robins’ where one person sends a blanket request to a large number of institutions are surprisingly common and it can clearly be useful to know if the request received falls into this category). Now I clearly see the value in this and have no wish to interfere with this function at all. At the same time, the amount of email traffic this generates is quite considerable and usually consists of one person asking ‘has anyone received a request relating to X’ followed by somewhere between a dozen and twenty or more people replying saying ‘received here’ or ‘no, not received here’. Useful for the requestor and those others interested in such things, extremely irritating for those already snowed under by email and who have no need for such information. <br /><br />After one particularly busy day of such email I suggested applying a little bit of information management to this problem (a radical idea I know). How about we agree a consistent subject heading for such requests? How about the person who originally sends the request uses the prefix ‘Round robin:…..’. Then those who do not wish to receive these emails can simply use the ‘rules’ functionality within their email client to automatically route such messages to their deleted items folder without troubling them. Those that are happy with the status quo and who wish to keep receiving these messages need to nothing at all. It doesn’t even require an action from those who reply to the original message as when they hit reply their message will automatically use the original subject heading containing ‘round robin’. <br /><br />Not rocket science I know, but simple, unobtrusive and effective. <br /><br />But not, apparently acceptable to the members of the list who, I believe decided not to adopt this radical step at a meeting last Friday. Now I wasn’t able to attend the meeting so do not know why not. Maybe I have overlooked some fundamental flaw in my reasoning, but if so no one has bothered to tell me what it is. All i do know is that it does rather make one despair about the profession. <br /><br />Are we really that conservative that we are unable to countenance the concept of such change? Or are we so arrogant that we feel that the rules we seek to apply to others do not apply to us?<br /><br />Either way such a minor and trivial issue has utterly depressed me on a wet and windy daySteve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-30329377321143652342009-11-12T11:35:00.001+00:002009-11-12T11:42:22.267+00:00The making of a maturity modelWhere to start when asked to produce a ‘maturity model’ for records management within the HE/HE sector? Maturity models and other benchmarking tools certainly seem to be popular at the moment in all sorts of areas, especially in relation to ICT. On the plus side they allow an organisation to think objectively and comprehensively about the subject in question. They encourage investigation and reflection and through the picture they paint allow organisations to celebrate their strengths and to address their weaknesses. Maybe it’s no surprise that such approaches are gaining in popularity at a time when budgets are being squeezed as a much clearer idea of spending priorities should emerge as a result of working through such a model. On the minus side I’m always slightly concerned about the terminology and the (unintended) slight which may be felt by those who cannot demonstrate full maturity in a particular area and who might, justifiably, be reluctant to admit to being ‘immature’. <br /><br />I’m hopeful, however, that the emergence of maturity models for records management is, in itself, evidence of a new phase in the profession’s development. For these are not tools attempting to demonstrate the need for records management or to justify expenditure in it, they assume (rightly or wrongly) that that stage has already passed. No. The maturity model assumes that whatever it is that is being assessed – records management in this instance - is an accepted and valued function of the organisation and that what is required is an assessment of how well it is performing and the impact that it is having. Thus hopefully the very existence of such models are evidence of a new level of maturity for records management as a discipline. <br />But to return to my opening question: ‘where to start’ when asked to produce one? My first thought was that this is a potentially risky endeavour. After all, in order to assess ‘maturity’ this implies that you have a clear idea of what ‘mature’ records management should look like. <br /><br />Starting from scratch in this regard seemed especially foolhardy. After all, it would be a pretty bold claim to assume that I alone or even we as a service were in a position to define what this would look like. Getting together a working group or consultation panel would have been another approach and would certainly have increased the chances of producing a more rounded model, but wouldn’t we then be in danger of trying to reinvent the wheel? After all, what we are talking about in terms of this picture of ‘mature’ records management is surely pretty similar to defining a ‘standard’ for records management – and, as we all know, there are plenty of those around already (as someone once said: the great thing about standards is that there are always so many to choose from!). And we certainly didn’t want to try to produce a <a href="http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/">JISC infoNet </a>standard for RM for people to start comparing with and mapping against 15489 et al. <br /><br />The most logical approach therefore seemed to be to make use of an existing definition of a mature RM system; one that is current, authoritative and which has been developed collaboratively. And this is where fortune smiled on us by allowing us to combine two parallel, but related agendas. For just at the time we were planning the maturity model so I was part of the working group helping the <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/">National Archives</a> to revise the <a href="http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/foi-guidance-codes-practice.htm">s.46 Code of Practice on records management</a> which accompanies the UK Freedom of Information Act. Not only was this a statement of what RM should look like in a public authority in order to ensure compliance with the legislation which ticked all those boxes mentioned earlier, but was also an initiative that we would want to be supporting for the sector anyway. When the original COP was published <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.jisc.ac.uk">JISC</a> produced the <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/supportingirm/reportsmodelaction.aspx">Model Action Plan for FE/HE Compliance with the COP</a>. We could have taken a similar approach and produced another sector-specific Model Action Plan for the updated Code but felt that a Maturity Model better reflected the fact that the sector is now nearly a decade further down the line and would better appreciate tools to help assess how they are doing, rather than one which assumes they are still yet to get started!<br /><br />So although firmly based on the National Archive’s Code of Practice and developed with their knowledge and assistance it should be noted that this Maturity Model was developed separately to it and any mistakes or omissions are very much ours not theirs. It also therefore follows that this Maturity Model is quite specific in its focus and the model of mature records management that it represents – i.e. a model appropriate for UK further and higher education institutions who want to be able to ensure compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. Of course the benefits of achieving such a model should be felt much further and deeper than this and in many more contexts but this remains at its core. <br /><br />The <a href="http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/records-management/measuring-impact/maturity-model/index_html">Maturity Model </a>and <a href="http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/records-management/measuring-impact/maturity-model/guidance">guidance for its use </a>are available from today and we look forward to hearing of your experiences in using it. We also hope that as many institutions as possible will <a href="http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/records-management/measuring-impact/maturity-model/submission">submit their completed forms </a>to us to enable us to get an overview of the current maturity of RM within the sector as a whole and thus help inform how we can best tailor our own efforts to continue to support it in the future.Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-40811788883770230002009-10-23T15:09:00.003+01:002009-10-23T16:08:23.907+01:00The evolution of an Impact CalculatorIt’s a well known truism that it is easier to criticise something than it is to solve it. Certainly anyone who has heard me at any of a number of workshops and conferences over the past year or so ask questions of speakers regarding the evidence base for the ‘facts’ and figures they have quoted citing the alleged benefits to be realised through investing in records management will be aware that I have not shied away from the criticism side of things. Though I should, perhaps, add that these questions have always been asked not to try to trip up or embarrass the speaker concerned, but as part of a genuine attempt to understand whether the numbers concerned -: whether it be regarding how much time senior managers spend looking for information or how many copies of the same document exist in the same organisation - are (as I always hoped) based on sound, empirical evidence or (as I always feared) were as mythical as the ‘Coopers & Lybrand’ study that so many seem to reference. Regrettably, if not unpredictably, it seems as though the latter of these scenarios is more often than not the case – as demonstrated in more rigorous fashion by the <a href="http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/records-management/measuring-impact/literature-review">literature review </a>we published last month. <br /><br />But as I said at the outset of this piece, lamenting the lack of any reliable, objective, empirical data demonstrating the quantifiable benefits of investing in records management is one thing. The real question facing us was: what to do about it?<br /><br />After spending a little time wandering up and down blind alleys investigating (and quickly discounting) a ‘Time and Motion’ based approach to measurement we soon settled on a focus on the process as the basis for measurement. After all, records management is surely only ever a means to an end? We spend resources on it to improve how we run our organisations, to improve the service we offer to our stakeholders, to improve our standards of governance and accountability and to ensure we are legally compliant. Surely if we could find ways of measuring how effective a process is <em>before</em> we improve it and then again <em>after</em> we’ve improved it we should have some means of quantifying the impact we have made. Then take away the costs involved in making the change and an even more illuminating set of results emerge. <br /><br />But what to measure? After all, if you were to automate a previously paper-based process you might expect to see a reduction in both time taken processing information and the space required to store records. We can’t know what it is that you want to measure so we leave it up to you to define what and how many metrics you want to include: be they square metres of storage space, pounds and pence, staff time or C02 emissions - the choice is yours. <br /><br />A real turning point in the project came when we started to think about the role of RM in a process improvement. After all, there must be few occasions (if ever) when it can be asserted with confidence that records management alone is responsible for achieving an improvement. Indeed, how would we even define what is ‘records management’ in this context? To take our previous example, the introduction of an electronic workflow system to replace a previously manual process clearly has a strong RM influence but it’s also about a technology change. So should it defined as an improvement caused by a new system or RM or both? <br /><br />The answer (eventually) was obvious. There would be no arbitrary distinction between what aspects of the process improvement RM was responsible for and which were due to other factors. Nor any attempt to classify what counts as RM in this context and what does not. Again we let the user decide. This wasn’t a question of ducking the issue, it was an acknowledgement that process improvements are complex and multifaceted and that individual organisational drivers may differ markedly. The consequence of this decision has been to develop a tool which not only better reflects the complexity of real life, but also broadens its potential scope enormously. Yes, you can measure the improvements realised as a result of RM according to however you choose to define ‘records management’ but equally you can apply the same focus to whatever other element of process improvement that your organisation happens to be interested in measuring the impact of, be that people, IT, equipment or the combination of them all.<br /><br />All of a sudden we no longer have a tool which might help fill the current dearth of facts and figures regarding the impact of RM, but also a way of deconstructing and measuring process improvement across the board. <br /><br />But in some ways the hard work still remains to be done. We are well aware that using the Impact Calculator is not a trivial task. In the spirit of ‘garbage in; garbage out’ you can only get reliable, detailed data out if you are prepared to gather raw data of a similar kind in the first place. That, I’m afraid, is down to you.<br /><br />We are also happy to acknowledge the Impact Calculator as ‘work in progress’. We’re hopeful of funding some pilots studies within the UK HE sector soon and would be very interested to hear the experiences of all those who make use of the tool, wherever they be, so that we can incorporate any improvements into a Version 2 in the near future<br />. <br />Finally, I should like to pay credit to my colleague, Joanne, whose statistical skills, sound judgement and commitment to the project have all helped turn my rather sketchy and notional idea of just how such a tool might work into this finished and infinitely superior end product. Nice one.<br /><br />So do please take the time to download the tool, make use of it and let us know how you get on (if you do post anything online about your experiences we would be grateful if you use the tag ‘impact-calc’ to enable us to track it). <br /><br />Its available now at <a href="http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/impact-calculator">www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/impact-calculator</a>Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-7440774717014672352009-10-16T09:29:00.001+01:002009-10-16T09:33:48.932+01:00What is Sharepoint for?From the speakers and discussion at the <a href="http://www.tfpl.com/networks_events/sharepoint.cfm">TFPL 4th Sharepoint Summit </a>I attended in London yesterday the answer to the question in the title seems to be ‘for collaboration but not for records management’. This is hardly breaking news, after all any records manager will happily explain how MOSS falls down as a specialist records management system. But what was more surprising (and potentially worrying) was that people seemed to view collaboration and the kind of controls that records management should provide as two completely different and unrelated beasts entirely.<br /><br />I’m certain there are no sinister motives for this and that it simply reflects a genuine organisational requirement to be able to share ideas, work creatively in teams and to ensure ready access to the right information – but why are these goals and the functionality used to achieve them thought of as not requiring records management nor of having any records management implications in themselves? Is it really possible to separate the two? Surely all this collaboration is in aid of something, is designed to further the strategic aims of the organisation or to meet a genuine business need? If so, aren’t we straying pretty darn close to records management territory?<br /><br />And even if we were to ignore the fact that the outputs of most of this collaboration does result in some form of evidence of a business transaction and were, for the sake of argument, to assume that all of this collaboration is in fact the end in itself, then surely this would still require the existence of some RM controls to work effectively (authentication, version control, access control, audit trails etc spring to mind)? Otherwise aren’t we in danger of straying down the information equivalent of ‘sofa government’: all cosy chats over a latte and no accountability. Of course it may be that MOSS does offer most, if not all, of the above as part of its collaborative tools (I’m afraid I’m not enough of a MOSS expert to know), but if so its interesting how nobody present at the event seemed to equate these controls with records management.<br /><br />Part of the problem here lies, I think, in RM’s image problem. Whereas everyone wants collaboration so no one wants records management. Some may (reluctantly) realise they need it but only in the same way that someone with toothache knows they need (rather than wants) a trip to the dentist. There are undoubtedly many reasons why this is so, ranging from our rather impenetrable terminology through to a decade of pushing a rather negative compliance-based spin on what we have to offer. I suspect it also lies in our failure to demonstrate the relevance of RM to current, live, active records and the information streams and processes that will form them. What the views at the workshop yesterday seemed to confirm was the prevalence of the idea that RM only needs to happen way down the line as a means of dealing with the accumulated backlog. A completely separate process divorced from day to day business functions and the technology they employ. So much for the Records Continuum.<br /><br />I had hoped that, despite its flaws, Sharepoint represented a way of making real steps towards closing this gap between business processes, information creation and records management but unfortunately I fear this optimism may well have been misguided.Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-55789124269150559282009-08-26T14:41:00.003+01:002009-08-26T15:43:58.445+01:00Measuring records management in the 'post-compliance era'I think few records professionals would argue that their profession has largely been dominated by the compliance agenda over the past decade or so, especially here in the UK with first the Data Protection Act and then FOI. Having compliance based arguments to rely upon was great. After decades of records professionals trying to get the message out that records management was important we now had far more powerful voices (government, regulators, auditors etc) saying the same thing. Okay, so none of these Acts explicitly mandated the need for ‘good records management’ (whatever that may mean) but it was certainly clear from reading the Act and from the guidance that surrounded them that it would be very difficult to demonstrate compliance without it. <br /><br />This certainly helped simplify the business cases for records management we presented to management: “we have to because the law says so”. It also helped simplify how to sell records management to users: “you have to because the law says so”. Okay, so this is a deliberate over simplification but even so is probably not a million miles wide of the mark. If the number of new records management posts within public authorities over this period is anything to go by we also shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss its effectiveness as a strategy. But we should also be aware of the limitations and risks implicit in an over reliance on any one message – particularly one dominated by legal and regulatory compliance, namely:<br /><br />• The ‘big stick’ approach rarely results in the kind of positive and constructive buy-in from users that records management requires<br />• Managers will understandably be reluctant to spend anymore than the bear minimum to ensure compliance<br />• And may even decide against the bear minimum, preferring to favour instead more ‘positive’ investments – especially if the perceived risk of detection or subsequent punishment appears low.<br /><br />This is not to say that compliance-based arguments have no place in our professional repertoire as clearly they do (and to a degree that will vary according to the sector and appetite for risk in question; but does serve to remind us that putting all your professional eggs in one basket is always a risky tactic, especially if the basket in question is not necessarily a particularly attractive one in the first place. This would be true in times of economic plenty but becomes even more so in periods of economic downturn where budget cuts mean much harder investment decisions and a necessarily more hard-nosed attitude to risk. <br /><br />‘Impact’, ‘return on investment’ and ‘business benefit’ are now the order of the day. Organisations need to know not only that they will get ‘bang for their buck’, but also how big the bang will be and for how many bucks. This is not new territory for many records managers, but at the same time it is not necessarily where we are most comfortable – not least because so many of the benefits we have previously prided ourselves on delivering (compliance, maintenance of the ‘corporate memory’ etc) have all been largely ‘intangible’ in nature and therefore, by definition, virtually impossible to measure. <br /><br />But I doubt there are few records professionals who have not also made claims at some point in their careers of the more tangible benefits to be had: reduced overheads, increased efficiency, more productive use of staff time etc and have found figures to support these claims. Indeed open any industry whitepaper or article in the professional literature and you are likely to come across all manner of statistics confirming how long senior managers waste looking for information or how much time can be saved by digitising your entire physical record collection. But how reliable are such sources? How was the data gathered? Who gathered it and why? (And, indeed, in one or two notable cases – does it even exist??).<br /><br />If records management is to be able to survive and thrive in difficult economic conditions it is essential that is has confidence in the evidence base supporting the claims that it makes, but is this currently the case? <a href="http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk">JISC infoNet </a>today launches the first deliverable from its ‘Measuring the Impact of Records Management’ project – a <a href="http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/records-management/measuring-impact">selective literature review </a>which aims to look at the extent of evidence available to support claims of efficiency savings made by the records management. This literature review is the prelude to an ‘Impact Calculator’ to be released in November which will provide a framework for organisations to be able to address these apparent shortcomings for themselves and to establish their own empirical evidence demonstrating the costs and return on investment associated with whatever record or information management initiative they are undertaking. Further information on both is now available from our newly revamped <a href="http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/records-management">Record & Information Management Portal Page</a>, also launched today, which also provides links to all our other resources in this area.<br /><br />The findings from the literature review confirm that there is both a growing appetite for and a current shortage of ‘impact evidence’ in relation to records management. Hopefully this project will help address both of these.Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-56837377260976381802009-08-19T10:53:00.003+01:002009-08-19T10:59:01.177+01:00Business archives in the pressIt was good to see a <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/00166816-85f1-11de-98de-00144feabdc0.html">piece on business archives </a>and the positive contribution that archivists can play within commercial organisations in the <a href="http://www.ft.com/home/uk">Financial Times </a>last week. Hopefully such positive press reminds senior decision makers that the effective management of its records is not just a ‘nice to have’ extra - useful for pulling together exhibitions of attractive curios to help decorate their foyer, but actually represents their company’s ‘corporate memory’ and as such has the potential sharpen its competitive edge and increase its profit margins. Certainly now, more than ever, such messages can only help strengthen the position of the corporate archive and its archivists.<br /><br />What was, alas, a little more disappointing was not to see any mention within the piece of the vital role that records professionals (archivists and records managers) can play - and are playing - in ensuring the effective, efficient and legally compliant conduct of business operations. Nothing about the business benefits to be gained from knowing what information assets you hold and for introducing measures to ensure that such information is retained for as long as it is required (and no longer); nothing about the risks and costs (legal, financial and environmental) of retaining vast quantities of information for too long; nothing about how we can help tackle the increasingly high profile problems surrounding information security – particularly in relation to personal data or the role we can play in identifying and protecting vital records as part of disaster recovery and business continuity planning.<br /><br />Of course there are limits to what can be covered within one newspaper article and it is clear that in this particular case the FT’s ‘angle’ was deliberately focused elsewhere. My concern is just that such a piece may still leave the CEO of a relatively young company or one without a rich visual heritage to plunder wondering ‘why is this relevant to me?’ whereas the reality is, of course, that it should be of relevance too all CEOs with an interest in how their business functions.Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-85967662171832387922009-06-29T10:41:00.001+01:002009-06-29T10:48:49.039+01:00The lost art of problem solvingA Tweet from @Northumbria_RM caught my eye the other day. It was a quote from a contributor to their <a href="http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/sd/academic/ceis/re/isrc/themes/rmarea/erm/">AC+erm</a> e-Delphi Study along the lines that “<span style="font-style:italic;">RM is something that should be done not something that can be bought and installed</span>.” Nothing too controversial there you might think, after all its what we records managers always say: ‘no quick fixes’, ‘get the processes and standards right first’, ‘try to install a system on a mess and you just have an expensive mess’ etc etc<br /><br />But what if we are wrong? What if this conventional wisdom is more a reflection of the nature of most records management technologies than representing a universal truism? Sure it’s a certain recipe for failure to attempt to rollout an EDRMS without having prepared every inch of organizational, procedural and cultural groundwork in advance but maybe that’s because of their nature: their size, the (unrealistic) scale of their ambition and their sheer (over?) complexity. But need it be so? After all, most of the technology which is transforming our organizations and our lives seems to be heading in the other direction. We now live in a widget-led world with people designing simple specific apps to solve very specific problems or achieve very specific end results. Take the recent Apple i-phone advertisements extolling the eclectic range of apps available for download, or the simplicity of something like Twitter.<br /><br />It seems to me that what our users actually want and that we should be finding ways of providing are simple, specific ‘RM apps’ that can be quickly, cheaply and simply ‘bought and installed’ to solve specific problems. Maybe the underlying problem is that we have spent the last decade looking at the problem from the wrong end of the telescope. We’ve been focusing on trying to fix the entire organization whilst hoping that eventually some of the benefits might trickle down and be felt by the ordinary user; where, with hindsight, we might have been better off working out what the problems were that were holding back individual users and building specific solutions to fix them. <br /><br />When I first started out in records management in 1996 it seemed to me that records management was about finding creative and practical answers to genuine and specific problems in relation to how people managed their records. We needed a means of coordinating retention actions across multiple systems, so we designed one. We needed a way of maximizing the storage space we had available so we designed a location control module that meet our needs. Now of course the talk is of enterprise-wide solutions and international standards. I have no problem per se with either of these but do wonder if together they have unwittingly led us to a situation where all we have to offer is a homogenized, ‘one-size-fits all’ version of records management where we have little choice but to try to shape our problems around the available solutions and where our only route to success lies in trying (and largely failing) to first achieve organizational and cultural change on a scale which is frankly beyond both our reach and our pay-grade. <br /><br />So it was with rather envious eyes that I read about the forthcoming <a href="http://wiki.repositoryfringe.org/index.php/The_Challenge">Repository Fringe Challenge</a> with a bunch of repository developers fired up to come up with genuine, workable solutions to an actual specific problem that is taxing their user community. This isn’t sitting back and hoping that the standards bodies and vendor community eventually acknowledge the problem and build in functionality to their products that are designed to suit everybody. This is a bunch of enthusiastic guys sat round PCs, thinking the unthinkable and finding cool ways of making it happen and then giving it out to the community to use as they see fit. <br /><br />It’s a way of working and thinking which records management seems to have lost, and I think we are all the poorer for it.Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-13238178705029998402009-06-09T16:24:00.002+01:002009-06-09T16:28:07.623+01:00It's the conversation, stupidThe thing l like most about Google Wave (at least from the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ ">YouTube presentation</a>) is about how everything is geared around the content. Technologies and even concepts that we take for granted as essential, distinct entities in their own right such as email, blog posts, word processing software - even the document itself- all start to seem strangely artificial and inconsequential: what matters is the content and, most importantly of all, the conversation that it represents. It is this conversation or, to be more accurate, these multiple and ongoing conversations that are central to the Wave philosophy with everything else built to enable, support and manage them.<br /><br />Now from the records manger’s perspective this might all sound like a bit of a nightmare: seamless, perpetual conversations with everyone free (by default) to edit everything. Where is the record? Heck, what is the record? But just as some of the concepts underpinning Wave require us to rethink most of what we take for granted about information creation so too it will its management.<br /><br />Funnily enough this is similar to a point I made yesterday during a Podcast discussion with James Lappin, Elizabeth Lomas and Stephen Dale (I’ll provide a link when it’s up) which was made before I had any real knowledge of what Wave was about. That is that records management in the future will not be about managing individual objects all with finite and predictable lifespans but about capturing the numerous links between them as part of an ongoing thread if, when and how they are used. <br /><br />It’s about the context. It’s about the conversation.Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-42699380313161632762009-06-04T14:45:00.002+01:002009-06-05T09:14:57.770+01:00A step closer to making Records Management2.0 a reality?Readers of ‘<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Managing-Crowd-Rethinking-Records-Management/dp/1856046419">Managing the Crowd</a>’ will be aware that I ended the book with some suggestions regarding how records management functionality could be successfully integrated into and applied to Web2.0 content. One of these was to create “<span style="font-style:italic;">a folksonomy service that can penetrate ddep content, at an individual content level, across multiple service providers</span>". I argued that the logic underpinning social bookmarking tools such as Delicious already took us many steps forward in this direction. Obviously at present they are only used for resource discovery but (I argued) there was no reason why this functionality could not be extended to also allow the individual user and the ‘crowd’ to which they belong to also assign retention and management criteria alongside search metadata.<br /><br />At the time of writing the book the main factor preventing this from making the leap from theory to practice was that “<span style="font-style:italic;">at present, Delicious works at a level above that required for our purposes. It may allow users to tag individual web pages, but does not extend this functionality to enable tagging of ‘deep web’ content, for example documents within a Google Docs account and presentations within Spresent</span>.” (pg 131).<br />Earlier this week I was sent the following email announcement being sent to all owners of lists hosted by the JISCmail service.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">“From Tuesday 16th June, every list homepage and every posting stored on the JISCMail online archives will include a bookmark/share button which will have links to a selection of social bookmarking/sharing sites.<br /><br />Social Bookmarking allows you to share, store, organise, search, tag and manage webpages you would like to be able to revisit in the future, or share with others. For example if a posting is made to a JISCMail list that you know will be of interest to someone else you can email a link to that person using our button. Alternatively you can choose one of the social networking sites you are registered with, e.g. Twitter or Facebook, to share the link with a group of people. You might use the sharing button to bookmark a link to your list homepage or a particular posting on a list that you can revisit at a later date on a site such as Delicious.”</span><br /><br />So there we have it: it is now possible to extend the reach of social booking down to an individual file level (in this case the millions of emails archived on the JISCmail website). Now, of course there may be many other technical, professional or practical obstacles preventing the realisation of my idea but it seems to me that one potentially major one may just have disappeared…Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6512742799532247661.post-91995060727384826732009-05-28T13:31:00.000+01:002009-05-28T13:38:05.700+01:00Is it worth investing in records management?Regular readers of this blog will know of my concerns regarding the state of the evidence-base supporting the quantifiable benefits of investing in records management. Lots of claims have been made (and endlessly repeated) over the years, but scratch beneath the surface and most turn out to be flawed in methodology, years old, biased in approach or simply apocryphal (or, in some cases, all three!!). <br /><br />I won’t rehash the dangers of this here as I have <a href="http://rmfuturewatch.blogspot.com/2009/04/budget-cuts-and-back-office-functions.html">posted on this not long ago</a>. Instead I wanted to point readers to work that colleagues and I from <a href="http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk">JISC infoNet</a> are doing to attempt to address this apparent void.<br /><br />One of our first tasks is to try to ascertain whether the picture concerning the current evidence base is really as bleak as I have just portrayed. True, the literature review that we are currently conducting seems to be doing little to alleviate these fears, but of course to rely only on published papers and articles would be to ignore the fact that many organisations may well have conducted their own work in measuring the impact of records and information management initiatives for their own, internal reasons. As a result, loads of potentially invaluable data, plus the experiences from those who obtained it may be lurking behind closed doors.<br /><br />In an attempt to unlock these doors we are currently running an online survey, open to all who have attempted to quantify and measure the impact of records management initiatives on their organisation, regardless of the sector or country you operate in. <a href="http://jiscinfonet.jiscinvolve.org/2009/05/28/is-records-management-delivering-a-return-on-investment/">Further details and links to the survey are available from a post published today on the JISC infoNet blog</a>.<br /><br />Hopefully the results of this survey will provide a truer impression of the current evidence-base and, perhaps, provide us with a few leads to follow up on from those who seem to be really active in this area. All of which will help inform the framework that we are hoping to develop and release over the summer which will help those who wish to measure the impact of their records management activities and demonstrate if and when they achieve a return on their investment.Steve Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197noreply@blogger.com0