A record is evidence of a business transaction. Records are created in the course of conducting business activities - they provide proof of what was done, decided, describe what happened, who was involved, when did the action take place? Records can be in any format. We usually think of records as documents, reports, papers, minutes, or content but records can be data in a business system, videos, photographs, maps, plans, diaries, transcripts and recordings, in fact the fastest growing volume of records are now records in digital and visual formats.

Records have content and context. Content is the information value. Context is the characteristics of a record that give the content meaning and authenticity. For records to be authentic they need:

• Information about agents - who sent or created the record, which organisation, where are they and are they authorised
• Information about the business being conducted - links to business process description or classification
• Fixed in time - when did the transaction occur, in what sequence, who knew what, and when?

These bits of context must be retained in association with the content to make records meaningful. These are the metadata that allow us to assess the authenticity of a record - which is critical for both paper and digital records, but especially so for digital records.

The volume of records is increasing rapidly. This leads to questions about what records to keep. Not all records include important evidence. Any record that provides evidence of action, advice given should be kept to provide accountability and support actions in case questions arise later. A risk based approach is needed to determine what records to keep. High-risk areas of the business should be prioritised and more controls designed for early capture and safe keeping. This is a pre-action system where the records must be created before the business is conducted - think of examples like contracts or where money is exchanged or something is paid for, someone seeks government permission, such as licensing. In other cases, records are made after the business is conducted, such as transcripts or minutes of meetings - evidence of what decisions where made and who made the decisions.

A key question is when a record should be made - from the moment someone starts creating a record, or only when it has been completed and transmitted. And do you need to capture internal transactions or only external transactions? This is an important decision in the design of an electronic recordkeeping system. This is frequently part of a business or customer relationship system, or might be designed into a workflow in a process known as business automation. As more business is being conducted via the web, businesses are designing automated business processes which increase the number and capture of records.

Link

Podcast Excerpt

Does records management=information management?

Records management is a PART of information management - an important part, and the part that we have a particular professional responsibility for - but it is not the whole. 'Records' may suffer an image problem associated with being paper based and old fashion, but this is about perception, and perceptions can be changed with changing practice.

Records are not just the same as other information resources. For information to be trusted as records, they need to be persistently linked with that business action and actors (organizations, roles and people) who performed the action.

While some other information resources share some of these requirements, the whole of the notion of evidence of action (i.e. a record) depends on it. It's not an optional add on. And it's that set of understandings that we have to offer to the broader information management agenda.

What this particular, and very clearly definable set of requirements, provides us with is certainty. Recordkeepers have a sound disciplinary base. It's one that draws on over 200 years of conceptual thinking.

Contextual understanding is of incredible importance in the digital world. In comparison to some of our other information management colleagues, such as the librarians and data managers, recordkeepers are in a very strong disciplinary place. We aim to articulate a very strong message about how we need records resources to be managed, that is different and distinct from other 'information' requirements.

The Records Continuum is a new way of thinking about records. In this approach to recordkeeping, archives and records practice are joined - both are records, just different instances. At different points in time and in different cultures, different methods and techniques of recordkeeping will develop. None are wrong - each has to be understood within the social and technological conditions that apply. The records continuum provides an analytic framework to approach different recordkeeping contexts. It allows records management to develop and grow from the deep knowledge set of archival science. It allows archival science to reinvent itself for application in environments where records created today need to be managed as archives if they are to survive for the future.

Records continuum thinking uses dimensions of interaction - create, capture, organise and pluralise. It enables specialty -for example current recordkeeping, historical recordkeeping, regulatory recordkeeping - flavours of the same profession operating in different environments at any one time. This approach is particularly relevant to fostering creative approaches for digital recordkeeping. Records are dynamic, constantly being created and re-created, weaving in and out of states of interaction. The records continuum approach of Frank Upward and his colleagues at Monash University have developed out of Australian practice and continue to inform innovation in Australian recordkeeping thinking.

Links

from Records Continuum Research Group Page Monash
http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/research/groups/rcrg/publications

Frank Upward
First published in Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 24, no. 2, 1996, pp. 268-285
Structuring the Records Continuum - Part One: Postcustodial Principles and Properties

Frank Upward
First published in Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 25, no. 1, May 1997, pp. 10-35
Structuring the Records Continuum, Part Two: Structuration Theory and Recordkeeping

Sue McKemmish
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: A Continuum of Responsibility
First published in Proceedings of the Records Management Association of Australia 14th National Convention, 15-17 Sept 1997, RMAA Perth 1997, 1997
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: A Continuum of Responsibility

Podcasts

Lecture on Records Continuum, December 2008, School of Library and Information Science San Jose State University
http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/slis/colloquia/2008/colloquia08fa.htm#reed_barbara

'WikiLeaks and the archive' Comments to Recordkeeping Rountable Forum on After WikiLeaks, is it all over for The Archives? March 23, 2011
http://recordkeepingroundtable.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/barbara-reed.mp3

Journal articles

'Reading the Records Continuum: Interpretations and Explorations' Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 33, no. 1, May 2005, pp. 18-43
Reading the Records Continuum

'Beyond Perceived Boundaries: Imagining the Potential of Pluralised Recordkeeping' in Archives and Manuscripts, Vol 33, No 1, May 2005
Beyond Perceived Boundaries

With Frank Upward and Sue McKemmish 'Archivists and Changing Social and Information Spaces: a continuum approach to recordkeeping and archiving in online cultures' Archivaria 72 (Fall 2011)
Link forthcoming

This is the burning question for many organisations today. Do staff save their emails and attachments in the email application? If so how does anyone else get access to relevant documents and records, if they are not the owner of the inbox?

Staff must be encouraged to:

• Save business emails and attachments to the corporate recordkeeping system.
• Business rules should give guidance on when to capture emails and who should do it particularly in relation to email strings;
• Link email inboxes to a corresponding folder in the recordkeeping system to automate the capture of emails, and
• Inbox size could be restricted to force emails to be saved to the corporate recordkeeping repository.

If an organisation does not have a recordkeeping system, encourage staff to save emails to the shared drive in network folders classified by business function.

Links

Jason R. Baron ' The future of email preservation' RACO 2010, May 2010, NARA
http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/pdf/baron-raco2010.pdf

State Records NSW 5.1 Managing email
http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/recordkeeping/government-recordkeeping-manual/guidance/guidelines/guideline-22-managing-digital-records/5-1-managing-email

National Archives of Australia, Managing email
http://www.naa.gov.au/records-management/systems/email/index.aspx

Public Record Office, Email as records
http://prov.vic.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/PROVRMadvice3.pdf

Scanning is now commonplace in both our offices and personal lives. We often assume that once we scan, we don't need to keep the original. Often this is true, but what are the exceptions?

Good rules for approaching this are:

• If the record was created and auctioned in paper form, then the paper is the record that we need to manage
• If the record was created in paper, but scanned before any action took place and the action took place on the scanned image, then the scanned image is the record that we need to manage.

The record (regardless of whether it is paper or a digital image) needs to be managed according to the rules of the jurisdiction/organization.

Once you are managing scanned images as 'the record' (the one you will rely on for reference, for further action, in case of disputes, or to prove compliance/accountability), you are actively doing digital recordkeeping and you need to be aware of the complexities of digital preservation.

Some quick tips:

• Keep your records in as open a format as possible.
• Use robust storage standards.
• Be careful that the record cannot be manipulated or changed after the fact.
• Make sure that any subsequent additions, comments or amendments are also kept, i.e. if plans are annotated, then the annotations also have to be scanned or captured electronically.

Technically there is no reason that paper records have to be kept. And this includes signed records, and contracts. Most jurisdictions have 'Electronic Transactions' legislation, which gives electronic transaction equivalence to paper based transactions. There are some specific exceptions to this rule in most jurisdictions (for example, in NSW

Links

Archives New Zealand's Digitisation Standard:
http://archives.govt.nz/advice/continuum-resource-kit/continuum-publications-html/s6-digitisation-standard

Public Record Office Victoria: Standards, Advice on digitisation
http://prov.vic.gov.au/government/recordkeeping-standards-project/capture

Federal Agencies Digitisation Initiative (US): Digitisation resources
http://www.digitizationguidelines.gov

Record Nations Publishes Document Scanning Industry Trends of 2010
http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2011/02/prweb5064544.htm

Changing the culture of an organisation is a very difficult thing to do but worth all the effort when more efficient recordkeeping practices can be implemented. But how do we do this?... We have to involve our users to affect a culture change. Organisations must have a framework for educating, informing, involving and communicating with users; involving them in forums that enable them to provide input into:

• how records are classified,
• how systems are configured, and
• how processes could be better delivered.

This involvement in the decision making process develops a sense of ownership and satisfaction that a significant contribution is being made to the organisation. If users can see that their input is being taken on board or they are given reasons why some suggestions could not be implemented this helps to reinforces the acceptance of a change in work practice ultimately affecting a change in corporate culture.

Links

Elizabeth Shepherd and Geoffrey Yeo, Managing Records:A Handbook of Principles and Practice Facet Publishing, London and Neil Schuman Publishers, Inc., New York, 2003, Chapter 8 Implementing Records Management: Practical and Managerial Issues
http://www.mybestdocs.com/shepherd-e-yeo-g-managrecords-ch8.htm

There's a recordkeeping myth that all records should be kept for 7 years. Is it true?

The 7 year limit comes from the statute of limitations, which says that in civil and commercial transactions, a party has a restricted time to seek redress before the courts. So this applies to most financial and accounting records - invoices, payments etc. The statute of limitations is one of the key recordkeeping requirements documented in the law. But, it is not enough to meet the needs of most business and government operations.

Records disposal has become increasingly complex as the number of acts and regulations has increased. There is now a body of study documenting all the recordkeeping requirements in legislation across international jurisdictions. The International Standard on Records Management ISO 15489, states that agencies should undertake a legislative analysis to understand all their legal obligations. This is the work of identifying mandates - a key recordkeeping requirement.

The time required to keep records varies - from temporary records (e.g. 2 years, 5 years, 7 years - 75 years) to archives with continuing value, i.e. for as long as needed. Archival records document rights and entitlements; they include key environmental data (see Climategate) and document waste treatment and storage, health and scientific data.

So, the answer to how long should I keep records is: it depends on the needs.

All government archival institutions provide generic guidelines in the form of retention and disposal guidelines. All businesses should develop disposal guidelines to meet their risk profile and retention needs.

Remember that once destroyed, records cannot be re-created. Don't assume that because its more than 7 years old, it is not needed.

Metadata is data about data. In other words, it is a structured set of information that describes the data. Metadata includes, but is not restricted to, characteristics such as the content, context, structure, access, and availability of the data.

One of the commonest problems in the metadata world is that there are so many metadata standards. Each of them is perfectly valid for what they are trying to do. But the purposes and animating principles for each of the different approaches need to be understood first. So, for many in the information community, search and retrieval is what metadata is all about. That is not the animating purpose of recordkeeping metadata, which is to do first with protecting the essential characteristics of records, and then dealing with search and retrieval. So it poses a different view to other information community sets, and we cannot assume that one approach is right and one wrong - it depends on what you're trying to do.

The commonly accepted definition is derived from State Records NSW's definition:

"Structured or semi-structured* information which enables the creation, management, and use of records through time and within and across domains in which they are created. Recordkeeping metadata can be used to identify, authenticate, and contextualize records; and the people, processes and systems that create, manage, and maintain and use them."

* Structured metadata, such as the Dublin Core, provides a fixed scheme for organization. Semistructured metadata, on the other hand, does not require a fixed structure. XML is an example of semi-structured metadata. It is an extensible set of tags that can accommodate unique configurations.

From David Wallace, 'Proceedings of the Archiving Metadata Forum' June 2000
http://www.interpares.org/display_file.cfm?doc=ip1_dissemination_cons_amf-rkmw_proceedings_2000.pdf

Why Is it Important?

The future of records and archives administration is through good robust recordkeeping metadata. Our recordkeeping requirements are concerned with the creation of authentic and reliable records, and their maintenance over time. In the digital world, if we don't create and maintain records with appropriate metadata, we won't have records that we can rely on, and we won't have records that are sustainable. It's that simple!

Metadata for recordkeeping is required for a range of purposes. Among other things, metadata is used to provide information about:

• the content of individual record objects to support the conduct of agency business, for example a title or description of the content
• the context of the record objects - who performed what action on the record (for example created or edited it), in pursuit of what business activity, and in relation to which mandate or business rule, its relationships to other records, people, or functions
• the structure of the record objects - their documentary form, such as an invoice, and behaviour, such as any automatically inherited rules on workflow, format, creating application
• the permissions associated with record objects and security requirements, for example, accessible only by a restricted group of people until a press embargo is lifted, at which time it may be publicly available
• projected events - for example when record objects require migration, disposal, or access revision
• the recordkeeping processes applied to the record objects - for example classification, use, amendment etc.

Recordkeeping metadata applies to more than just records. It applies to those entities that we use to provide the context of records - for example, people associated with recordkeeping actions.

Recordkeeping metadata is particularly critical in digital environments, where the authenticity and reliability of the record is dependent on maintaining persistent logical linkages between the record object and the recordkeeping metadata.

Recordkeeping metadata is not intended to be manually created, with the exception of a small number of elements created by the user at the point of capture. Rather, the majority of recordkeeping metadata is already present in systems or applications. The recordkeeping aim is to identify this metadata, capture it, assign it standardised terms, and enable its use or reuse for management and business purposes.

Links

Describing Records in Context in the Continuum: the Australian Recordkeeping Metadata Schema. Sue McKemmish, Glenda Acland, Nigel Ward, Barbara Reed, Archivaria, vol. 48, Fall 1999, pp. 3-43
http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/research/groups/rcrg/publications/archiv01.html

Barbara Reed: Recordkeeping Metadata Standards, the International Context
http://archives.govt.nz/recordkeeping-metadata-standards-international-context

Archives New Zealand Technical Guide: Implementing Recordkeeping Metadata in EDRMS: Tailoring the Technical Specifications for the Electronic Recordkeeping Metadata Standard
http://continuum.archives.govt.nz/G14.html

ISO 23081 Information and Documentation - Records management processes - Metadata for records. ISO 23081 Parts 1 and 2, available from
http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=40832

Firstly, you need a strategy supported by one or more operational plans. The strategy is your vision of what your software will do for your organisation. Things the strategy must resolve include:

• Will the system handle all records created/received in your organisation, or only in selected areas?
• Which existing records do you intend to migrate into your system; all records or only those from a cut off date?
• How will it integrate with other systems, network drives, and email?
• Will staff continue to use network drives along with the system or will network drives be deactivated?
• If network drives are not to be closed off, what change management techniques will you use to staff give up using existing network drives for content storage in favour of the new system?
• How will your users interact with the system, directly, via a web interface etc.?
• How will you manage the mix of hardcopy and electronic records in the system?

Secondly, you need to put in place control frameworks to manage the records you create or put into the system. This includes,

• control forms for documents so that they collect and can be linked to appropriate metadata,
• lists of keywords and indexing points for efficient retrieval and navigation of content,
• retention and disposal controls to ensure nothing is inappropriately destroyed or kept longer than either legally required or permitted (under privacy law for instance),
• organisational structure tables to relate content to its owners and creators to maintain their context links to organisational roles and
• a well thought out access and security model that both protects your information from unauthorised access or external release and prevents information silos from developing that stop staff from collaborating and lead to duplication and inefficiency.

Without this kind of contextual framework, your new system will not provide you with any more added value than your existing networks drives already provide.

Links

State Records NSW Implementing EDRMS
http://futureproof.records.nsw.gov.au/implementing-edrms/

Queensland State Archives Guidelines for the Planning of an EDRMS
www.archives.qld.gov.au/downloads/eDRMS.pdf

Disasters are…. well, unexpected events with disasterous consequences. Yes, we can plan and test how we respond and recover, and there are a number of business continuity guides available on techniques for assessing the risks and consequences of losing records and information.

Most business continuity or counter disaster plans rely on the restoration of digital records to restore business in another location. This is fine if you are already operating in 100% digitial records workplace, but this is not the reality for most agencies. Recent wide scale disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the Japanese Tsunami have shown the limitations of restoring from backup tapes. In New Orleans, the evacuation of hundreds of elderly and vulnerable sick patients from hospitals without their medical records and prescriptions required already overstretched US medical facilities to run hundreds of new tests to determine what medications patients needed. When welfare recipients applied for benefits, their inability to produce identification, birth certificates or licenses severely hampered the US government's ability to deliver relief to people most in need. In Japan the search for survivors was hampered by the loss of thousands of government records on citizens, land title records and government administrative records - they might never really know how many people were lost, because all official records were completely destroyed.

But it's not until a disaster happens to you, that you understand just what's involved and what the successful (and unsuccessful) coping mechanisms were. Click on the links below to see how organisations cope with a catastrophic event and what's involved in recovering paper documents from a provider of restoration services.

Links

A fire is every records managers worst nightmare – read what happened to Liverpool Council and how they addressed the challenges this created.
http://www.idm.net.au/article/008341-liverpool-city-council-looks-back-after-inferno

The Tsunami in Japan has caused untold devastation and grief to thousands of people. Click on the link below to read what the disaster has meant for public records.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUvlfvt56Ao&feature=player_detailpage

Cologne archives collapse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb1iqpdCT-w

The benefits of sentencing and disposing of records are:

• Saving money by not storing hardcopy records longer than they are needed
• Improving the efficiency of searching by filtering or eliminating inactive records from the search results
• Identifying archival records early, especially digital records, ensures they can be preserved.

But electronic storage is cheap, and sentencing is complex, so why not just keep everything - at least in digital format?

For digital records storage is cheap, but migrating records as hardware and software is replaced and updated is complex and expensive, and there is the concern for making sure records are accessible and readable over time due to rapid technology changes. Making records disposal cost effective requires a systematic, planned approach and software to support the evaluation and documentation of disposal decisions. Starting with a retention authority based on regulatory requirements for records retention is essential. Storing unnecessary digital records increases the risks of unauthorised access.

Recent debate on the longevity of internet content has led to concerns about inappropriate personal information being used in the future by employers to the detriment of today's young and sometimes indiscrete internet users. Organisations will also be faced with the possibility of breach the privacy of their clients and customers if they retain all information about transactions forever. Some records are clearly time bound. Organisations need to take a disciplined approach, review and destroy unwanted records and preserve their valuable records. Trying to keep everything, risks losing everything.

Links

Robert Neumayer and Andreas Rauber 'Why Appraisal is not 'utterly' useless and why it's not the way to go either' digital Preservation Europe, Provocative Position Paper 2007
http://www.digitalpreservationeurope.eu/publications/appraisal_final.pdf