Making Records Management Invisible

1. Making Records Management Invisible J. Timothy Sprehe Sprehe Info. Mgmt. Assocs., Inc. Email: jtsprehe@jtsprehe.com Phone: 301-657-2481

2. Records Are Essential! • No enterprise can function without records. • Why? Today’s decisions and actions build on yesterday’s. • Why? Every enterprise is accountable to some constituencies. • Every enterprise must be able to provide evidence of what it did in the past. Making RM Invisible

3. Records and Accountability 1. Organizations are legally accountable. - Threat of litigation - Costs of “discovery” 2. Organizations are financially accountable - Corporations pay taxes! - Threat of financial liability 3. Organizations are publicly accountable - Stockholders, the electorate 4. Organizations are accountable to history. - Keep records for research purposes. Making RM Invisible

4. What Is a Record? Records Management “Record” • ISO 15489: Records – “information created, received, and maintained as evidence and information by an organization or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transaction of business.” • Computer “record” • Anything saved by a computer • In database management, a record is a set of values; a set of records makes up a file; a set of files makes up a database. • Other meanings? Making RM Invisible

5. Problem: Keeping Records Can Be a Painful Nuisance • Why? Because records must have authenticity, reliability, integrity, and usability. • I.e., Must be captured and maintained so that they cannot be altered and must be properly disposed of (destroyed, transferred) at the appropriate time. • If not, then they are not records. Making RM Invisible

6. End Users Will Not Keep Records • It’s not their job! It’s the job of records managers • It’s a nuisance distraction from users’ primary jobs. • As a matter of fact, users do not comply with directives to keep records. • Users comply unevenly if at all. • Result: Little or no records captured. Making RM Invisible

7. Solution: Take RM Out of Users’ Hands • Devise ways to make records capture “in background,” transparent to end users. • Use info already in IT system and business rules to decide when to copy something to recordkeeping system. • For example: User’s title, place in organization, nature of business process and place an action occurs in workflow. Making RM Invisible

8. TWO CASE STUDIES • The U.S. Government Accountability Office and its “big bucket” approach. • The World Bank and its approach to “pushing RM upstream into document management.” Making RM Invisible

9. Making Records Management Invisible J. Timothy Sprehe Sprehe Information Management Assocs. jtsprehe@jtsprehe.com 301-657-2481 Making RM Invisible