The 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: Email management: Fifteen wasted years and counting and the the piece featured on today's BBC website about 'The self storage craze'
If you can't be bothered to read the full text of my paper then Chris Prom has neatly summed up the main thrust of my argument 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.
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:
"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."
This appears to me to be another example, perhaps the 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...
All this is very dear to my heart at the moment as I am currently working on producing a new infoKit for the JISC infoNet website: "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...
Showing posts with label information management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label information management. Show all posts
Thursday, 1 September 2011
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
Information Management: the forgotten issue of the cloud
There was an interesting supplement on Cloud Computing from MediaPlanet within this Saturday’s Daily Telegraph (Ok I know it’s now Wednesday, but it takes me most of the week to wade through the weekend papers!).
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:
1. See the possibilities
2. Consider security
3. Use it to your advantage
4. Push the boundaries
5. Consider logistics
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.
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).
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.
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.
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?
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:
1. See the possibilities
2. Consider security
3. Use it to your advantage
4. Push the boundaries
5. Consider logistics
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.
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).
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.
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.
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?
Tuesday, 21 August 2007
JISC infoNet Innovation in Records Management Award
Regular readers of this blog will be aware of my concerns that despite its growth in recent years, the records management profession seems to have lost some of its desire to innovate and to find new solutions to both old and new problems.
It was partially to help recognise, reward and encourage those bucking this trend in the UK Higher and Further Education sectors that JISC infoNet have today announced the launch of the inaugral JISC infoNet Innovation in Records & Information Award sponsored by Facet Publishing.
We also hope that this award and especially the intention to make publicly available the content of the nominations we receive may itself play a small part in helping to stimulate further research and development in the future.
If you and your project meet the criteria we look forward to receiving your nomination!!
It was partially to help recognise, reward and encourage those bucking this trend in the UK Higher and Further Education sectors that JISC infoNet have today announced the launch of the inaugral JISC infoNet Innovation in Records & Information Award sponsored by Facet Publishing.
We also hope that this award and especially the intention to make publicly available the content of the nominations we receive may itself play a small part in helping to stimulate further research and development in the future.
If you and your project meet the criteria we look forward to receiving your nomination!!
Thursday, 7 June 2007
Records vs Information
Not surprisingly there has been abit of debate sparked by some of my earlier posts about the whole records vs information/knowledge debate.
Of course one answer to this whole ‘march of web2.0’ debate might be to take refuge in the fact that by and large the content created by such systems do not represent business records and therefore are not our problem.
As records managers we have traditionally been in the fortunate position of only dealing with a small proportion of the information created by an organisation: that which fulfils the criteria of a ‘record’. Could we not just dismiss the vast majority of the outputs of Web2.0 applications and services as mere ‘information’ and leave it to its own devices? In theory I guess we could, but my strong feeling is that we shouldn’t.
Firstly, I would point to the fact that the traditional divisions between records and information are beginning to become less clear cut and of less relevance than they once were. An example? Consider the Freedom of Information Act. It is just that – a freedom of information act. It makes no distinction between whether the text is held within the context of a formal business record or on the back of a fag packet. Both are covered by the same conditions and both may well be treated as being of equal significance by the recipient.
Secondly, it can act as a distraction to the main issues. Look at email, we spent (and still sometimes spend) a great deal of time and intellectual effort trying to determine whether an email did or didn’t count as a record instead of just trying to work out how to manage the damn things.
Thirdly, unless we start to cast our professional net as wide as possible we risk becoming less and less relevant to our organisations. Let me illustrate what I mean with some spurious statistics but ones which will hopefully explain my point. Forty years ago in the days of typing pools, formal registry systems and memos the percentage of an organisation’s information that we would acknowledge to be ‘records’ may have been around 80-90%. Twenty years ago with the birth of the PC this may have dropped to 60% (as the amount of informal drafts and ‘documents’ etc increased). Ten years ago with the birth of email, rise of relational databases etc the percentage of the total information within our organisations that we considered to be within our professional remit may have dropped to 30%. Now with the exponential rise in information being created with terabytes of research data, geo-spatial data, image files, multi-media files etc our records management programmes may only be covering less than 5% of our total information holdings.
Now you and I may know that not all information is equal and that our 5% is actually the most important – but is that something widely understood by the rest of the organisation? There is a very real risk that senior management might start to look at this from a risk management perspective: ‘okay, so I know that your tiny percentage of ‘records’ are more important than some of this other stuff, but getting value out of the other 95% of our information (the stuff that represents our intellectual capital) is a far bigger priority which adds value and promises a return on investment. I’ll spend my money there and take the risk thanks…."
Where the challenge (and the opportunity) now exists is in the fact that this other 95% of the information we hold does needs many of the management and governance controls that form the basis of records management to be applied to it. The trick for us is to work out which bits and most importantly how given the radically different environment in which this needs to operate.
Of course one answer to this whole ‘march of web2.0’ debate might be to take refuge in the fact that by and large the content created by such systems do not represent business records and therefore are not our problem.
As records managers we have traditionally been in the fortunate position of only dealing with a small proportion of the information created by an organisation: that which fulfils the criteria of a ‘record’. Could we not just dismiss the vast majority of the outputs of Web2.0 applications and services as mere ‘information’ and leave it to its own devices? In theory I guess we could, but my strong feeling is that we shouldn’t.
Firstly, I would point to the fact that the traditional divisions between records and information are beginning to become less clear cut and of less relevance than they once were. An example? Consider the Freedom of Information Act. It is just that – a freedom of information act. It makes no distinction between whether the text is held within the context of a formal business record or on the back of a fag packet. Both are covered by the same conditions and both may well be treated as being of equal significance by the recipient.
Secondly, it can act as a distraction to the main issues. Look at email, we spent (and still sometimes spend) a great deal of time and intellectual effort trying to determine whether an email did or didn’t count as a record instead of just trying to work out how to manage the damn things.
Thirdly, unless we start to cast our professional net as wide as possible we risk becoming less and less relevant to our organisations. Let me illustrate what I mean with some spurious statistics but ones which will hopefully explain my point. Forty years ago in the days of typing pools, formal registry systems and memos the percentage of an organisation’s information that we would acknowledge to be ‘records’ may have been around 80-90%. Twenty years ago with the birth of the PC this may have dropped to 60% (as the amount of informal drafts and ‘documents’ etc increased). Ten years ago with the birth of email, rise of relational databases etc the percentage of the total information within our organisations that we considered to be within our professional remit may have dropped to 30%. Now with the exponential rise in information being created with terabytes of research data, geo-spatial data, image files, multi-media files etc our records management programmes may only be covering less than 5% of our total information holdings.
Now you and I may know that not all information is equal and that our 5% is actually the most important – but is that something widely understood by the rest of the organisation? There is a very real risk that senior management might start to look at this from a risk management perspective: ‘okay, so I know that your tiny percentage of ‘records’ are more important than some of this other stuff, but getting value out of the other 95% of our information (the stuff that represents our intellectual capital) is a far bigger priority which adds value and promises a return on investment. I’ll spend my money there and take the risk thanks…."
Where the challenge (and the opportunity) now exists is in the fact that this other 95% of the information we hold does needs many of the management and governance controls that form the basis of records management to be applied to it. The trick for us is to work out which bits and most importantly how given the radically different environment in which this needs to operate.
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