Making Electronic Records EASY within NASA Full presentation can be downloaded from

IMPEDIMENTS TO USER ACCEPTANCE Findings: “It’s too hard” “I have my way of doing things and don’t have time doing it over again the RMA way in the RMA system!” “The RMA system is a burden to use.” “I don’t understand the need, terminologies or processes.” “I don’t have the time, I have a real job to get done here.” “That’s the records manager’s job.”

IMPEDIMENTS continued Findings: “NASA priorities don’t make it easy” Usually only one or two formally trained Records Managers per thousands of users. Little or no traditional RMA help desk support that is extremely knowledgeable. Document and Records Management Systems do not seamlessly integrate. When you consider that nearly everyone of your professional staff generates records, RMA systems are just too hard to use for these average users.

Marketing 101 You can’t change end user motivations But, you can find out what motivates end users and exploit that motivation by matching and helping to fulfill that motivation. In other words – Scratch their itch

RMA a necessary evil? Big problem: We find most end users have little or no strong motivations that coincide with the act of Record Management and thus exploitable. Ray of sunshine: We find most end users have some, if weak, motivation to do the right thingRay of sunshine: We find most end users have some, if weak, motivation to do the right thing. This reinforces the fact that we must make systems EXTREMELY easy to use.

Lemons call for making Lemonade RMA mandates on end user are usually not very welcomed, however they want to do the right thing. We, system designers and RMs must make records management easy. If possible the end user should not even know they are doing RM.

A few must haves for NASA’s end users Not a separate RMA module add on, but fully integrated RMA/DMS/MMS/SCAN/DAM for ease use and security consistency for ITAR/EAR/SBU information. Easier to use than native file sharing using Microsoft, Apple, Samba, or NFS. Target structured and unstructured data. Use different user interfaces for end users versus records managers, end users should see minimal or no RMA lingo. Folders have different meaning to end user as compared to records manager – allow different folder structures and views for same date when seen from the user versus records manager.

More must haves Documents and digital assets should be allowed to inherit all attributes as defaults from the document type. Documents and digital assets should be allowed to inherit all attributes as defaults from parent folder or cabinet. The RM or end user should be able override defaults if privileged. Outlook ( ) should have a plug-in to directly copy e- mails to the document repository and establish record attributes and defaults.

Heresy Against the conventional wisdom We are not getting hung up on DOD5015. NARA says DOD5015 is a way but not the only way. We have implemented the features of DOD5015 that make sense or plan to. We HAVE NOT implemented features of DOD5015 that make the system difficult to use and DO NOT plan to. Instead, we have implemented features with equivalent outcomes or the are in the development queue. We will continue our efforts to fully meet ISO15489 and any additional intents of DOD5015. We see full DOD5015 certification as a negative. We strongly feel just meeting the standard will render a system user unfriendly. We feel there are significant but needless burdens imposed by this standard. Instead we are focusing on making our systems meet the requirements ISO15489 as it applies to NASA.

Disclaimer These are our opinions and requirements shaped over 15 years of Document Management, Digital Asset Management, Metrics Management, Records Management, and Scanning Service Bureau software development. It works for us. If you find it useful you are free to take from our experiences. What works for us may or may not work for you. However; whatever you do must be easy for the end user.