Making Records Management Invisible J. Timothy Sprehe Sprehe Info. Mgmt. Assocs., Inc. Phone:

June 15, 2006Making RM Invisible2 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.

June 15, 2006Making RM Invisible3 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.

June 15, 2006Making RM Invisible4 What Is a Record? 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? 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.”

June 15, 2006Making RM Invisible5 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.

June 15, 2006Making RM Invisible6 End Users Will Not Keep Records 1. It’s not their job! It’s the job of records managers 2. It’s a nuisance distraction from users’ primary jobs. 3. As a matter of fact, users do not comply with directives to keep records. 4. Users comply unevenly if at all. 5. Result: Little or no records captured.

June 15, 2006Making RM Invisible7 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.

June 15, 2006Making RM Invisible8 TWO CASE STUDIES 1. The U.S. Government Accountability Office and its “big bucket” approach. 2. The World Bank and its approach to “pushing RM upstream into document management.”

June 15, 2006Making RM Invisible9 Making Records Management Invisible J. Timothy Sprehe Sprehe Information Management Assocs