Managing Electronic Records by NARA

The National Archives and Records Service, in terms of its statutory mandate, requires governmental bodies to put the necessary infrastructure, policies, strategies, procedures and systems in place to ensure that records in all formats are managed in an integrated manner. The National Archives and Records Service endorses the SANS (ISO) 15489 Records Management Standard, SANS (ISO) 23081 Metadata for Records and SANS (ISO) 15801 Trustworthiness and Reliability of Records Stored Electronically. These are benchmarking tools for sound records management. The primary benchmark for creating and managing electronic records in office environments which is endorsed by the National Archives and Records Service is contained in the suite of publications Principles and Functional Requirements for Records in Electronic Office Environments adopted by the International Council on Archives in 2008.Module 2 of these publications, Guidelines and Functional Requirements for Electronic Records Management Systems relates to structured records systems such as those in which records are managed according to a file plan. A product that complies with these standards would possess the records management functionality required by the National Archives and Records Service.

The National Archives and Records Service requires governmental bodies to implement and maintain Integrated Document and Records Management Systems that provide as a minimum the following records management functionality:

• managing a functional subject file plan according to which records are filed;
• managing e-mail as records;
• managing web-sites as records;
• maintaining the relationships between records and files, and between file series and the file plan;
• identifying records that are due for disposal and managing the disposal process;
• associating the contextual and structural data within a document;
• constructing and managing audit trails;
• managing record version control;
• managing the integrity and reliability of records once they have been declared as such; and
• managing records in all formats in an integrated manner.

Not many governmental bodies have the capacity to implement fully automated Integrated Document and Records Management Systems. This does not however mean that they should not manage their electronic records. If these records are created to aid in decision-making and to perform transactions that support the governmental bodies' activities, governmental bodies are responsible for the proper management of those records. If records generated in such an environment are not managed properly it can lead to the possible illegal destruction of records. To enhance their accountability, bodies should ensure that, even without the benefit of an Integrated Document and Records Management System, they exercise effective records management.

Detailed information regarding the management of electronic records is contained in the National Archives and Records Service's two publications 

• Managing Electronic Records in Governmental Bodies: Policy, Principles and Requirements
• Managing Electronic Records in Governmental Bodies: Metadata Requirements 

Both publications are available on the National Archives and Records Service's website or can, alternatively, be requested in hard copy from the Records Management Division of the National Archives and Records Service.

Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage-courtesy by UNESCO

The General Conference,
"Considering that the disappearance of heritage in whatever form constitutes an impoverishment of the heritage of all nations."

From UNESCO
Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage

First thing first!! About Record Management...

Records management (RM), you need to understand that, RM is process or practice of maintaining the records of an organization from created until disposal. 

Basic Life Cycle of Records:

• Creation
• Use & Distribution
• Maintaining, Storing & Security
• Disposition (Transfer to Archive or Destruction)

A record can be either a tangible object or digital information,means printed or non printed materials.

Printed

• Birth certification
• Medical report
• Printed document
• Blueprint
• Contracts
• Personnel files 

Non Printed 

• Computer file
• E-mail
• Sound Recording
• Video
• Application Data

Learn More With...
Record Management for DUMMIES

Records Management Principles and Standards by AIIM Information Certification

Encouraging user participation in RM projects - courtesy by Steve Bailey

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’.  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. 

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.  It would certainly be interesting to know just how many EDRM/ERM systems have ever undergone any robust, independent usability testing.  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.

I suspect many of those involved in RM projects might protest that user consultation and engagement has been an important facet of their projects.  Focus groups, ‘model offices’, and user representatives on project teams are all well established mechanisms for ensuring the user voice isn’t lost.  But how effective are they?  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’?  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.

As part of my role at JISC infoNet I’ve been increasingly engaged with participatory techniques and stringing these together to run participatory workshops.  These are simple, creative exercises that are designed to get groups of people working together, raising issues, sharing ideas and forming a consensus.  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.  Just this week we’ve released an online guide to how to conduct such an event through our Planning a participatory workshop infoKit.

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.  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.