The future of records management
RM as a discipline is seeking new orthodoxies: we are at a crossroads.
One possible future orthodoxy is the “records repository model” – where a business
classification scheme is held in a back end system (above item), and applied to content held in the various
applications used by colleagues (item level).
As more and more applications come on stream in organizations individuals and
teams have increased choice as to how and where they keep their records. This
makes it problematic to insist on one corporate records system, and to apply
retention and access rules. That's the impact of the individual orange world (incl. social Media)
on the corporate blue world.
We have to live with the fact that Organizations have an information archaeology, not an information architecture (p. 254 Lappin). Digital landfill specialists ... is also a good term.
Dump and pick will be the paradigm in big organizations as transparency is not even a required principle from a legal perspective.
RM is the art of throwing things away. Therefore we have to focus on the enforcement of our disposition policy.
This is not about losing confidence in the RM profession as records are generated every day and we have no choice to keep them.
But we have to retreat from some orthodoxies (e.g. EDRMS as the only solution and centralizing paradigm which has brought us to a vendor-led profession) as James Lappin explains in his excellent article.
This refers to Lappins article in the latest issue of the Records Mgmt Journal, p.252-264
(Vol.20, Nr.3 2010): What will be the next records management orthodoxy?
I also recommend to read the
blog post
entitled "How to keep records in the 21st century?"
JH
One possible future orthodoxy is the “records repository model” – where a business
classification scheme is held in a back end system (above item), and applied to content held in the various
applications used by colleagues (item level).
As more and more applications come on stream in organizations individuals and
teams have increased choice as to how and where they keep their records. This
makes it problematic to insist on one corporate records system, and to apply
retention and access rules. That's the impact of the individual orange world (incl. social Media)
on the corporate blue world.
We have to live with the fact that Organizations have an information archaeology, not an information architecture (p. 254 Lappin). Digital landfill specialists ... is also a good term.
Dump and pick will be the paradigm in big organizations as transparency is not even a required principle from a legal perspective.
RM is the art of throwing things away. Therefore we have to focus on the enforcement of our disposition policy.
This is not about losing confidence in the RM profession as records are generated every day and we have no choice to keep them.
But we have to retreat from some orthodoxies (e.g. EDRMS as the only solution and centralizing paradigm which has brought us to a vendor-led profession) as James Lappin explains in his excellent article.
This refers to Lappins article in the latest issue of the Records Mgmt Journal, p.252-264
(Vol.20, Nr.3 2010): What will be the next records management orthodoxy?
I also recommend to read the
blog post
entitled "How to keep records in the 21st century?"
JH
jhagmann - 6. Jan, 15:17
Just Some Thoughts
In terms of a new RM orthodoxy I think we may be at a point where we have to regress to move forward. Consider that the information management world is now all about collaboration and sharing (compliance & risk management are not core business for non-legal organizations) in day-to-day operations and we may be able to state a case for providing RM as a shared service to organizations.
You and Lappins are both correct in stating that the vendors have pushed us down this path (may Larry E. forgive me) to the situation we are now in, but who tried to stop us? The biggest mistake that the leading vendors made (with client complicity) was to try and provide all-things-to-all-users solutions to their clients and prospects. It's time, I think, that we de-couple RM from the other functions that ECM solutions are built to provide. Leveraging CMIS and other SOA tools ought to provide a mechanism for RM to be provided as a service for managing the information assets of an organization.
Two other items are, in my opinion, critical to getting the RM profession to the next stage: 1) re-think the importance and concept of "record" in the context of having to manage information regardless of its status; 2) Records Management ought to be renamed and re-conceptualized as Information Management and the leaders ought to be in the CIO's office.
Referring to Lappins' article on MOSS:
- in place or move to declare is not an either-or proposition. Good tools can accomodate either;
- an enterprise implementation of MOSS2010 is likely at least as costly as any of the other Magic Quadrant solutions;
- MOSS2010 for large enterprises is, in my opinion, a really bad idea because of the limitations of the db.