International Council on Archives Congress: Coming to Brisbane in August! July 31, 2012 No Comments
The International Council on Archives (ICA) is an organisation dedicated to the effective management of records and the preservation, care and use of the world’s archival heritage through its representation of records and archive professionals across the globe. For more information about the work of ICA see: www.ica.org
From 20-24 August this year, Brisbane will play host to the ICA’s Annual Congress, A climate of change. This is the first time the Congress has been held in Australia so we are very excited about it!
Guidance on the recordkeeping capabilities of SharePoint 2010 – exposure draft now available! July 19, 2012 No Comments
As foreshadowed in previous posts, State Records has released an exposure draft of our guidance on the recordkeeping capabilities of SharePoint 2010. SharePoint 2010: recordkeeping considerations is available from the State Records website where you can also find information about how to provide comments. The deadline for comments is Friday 26 October 2012.
While developing this guidance we’ve taken the opportunity to meet with agencies that are implementing (or thinking about implementing) SharePoint to talk about some of the decisions they’re making regarding how records will be created, captured and managed in a SharePoint environment. We’ve met with a range of agencies, including from the local government and university sectors, and have been really impressed and inspired by some of the work these agencies are doing.
Once upon a time – share your stories about records management July 10, 2012 2 Comments
http://www.flickr.com/photos/catnipstudio/3852732117/
A couple of weeks ago Janet and I went to a great conference run by the NSW Knowledge Management Roundtable. There were a range of excellent speakers but the last speaker of the day, Shawn Callahan, the founder of Anecdote, spoke about the value of storytelling. His presentation really resonated with us.
Shawn said humans are story-telling creatures and we are hard-wired to share and remember stories. He entertained the audience with a range of stories that demonstrated how much more memorable a story is than a dot point or a statistic. He argued that stories set up several memory pathways in the brain, including visual memories and emotional responses. These multiple pathways mean that if one memory connection breaks, others remain. This creates a much more resilient and powerful memory.
Shawn had more great anecdotes about how stories are powerful vehicles for information dissemination. We like to share stories and the right story has the power to spread quickly. Stories tend to make sense of things. In all areas of business, so much communication is based on the abstract, but stories are concrete. They give a real examples and minimise confusion or misunderstanding by translating the abstract into reality.
So humans are born to tell stories, we like sharing stories and we remember the lessons from stories much more clearly than others forms of information presentation. But storytelling is not a part of most formal business communication.
We think it’s time to bring the story back! Read the rest of this entry »
Our manifesto for good recordkeeping and key ways to achieve it! July 4, 2012 2 Comments
Kate and I spoke at the NSW Records Managers’ Forum yesterday.
We had a lot of interest in our blog post for International Archives Day, Our Our top 5 – Why recordkeeping is awesome! So, for the Forum, we chose to expand on this theme, and develop a bit of a ‘manifesto’ for good recordkeeping and to give our top 10 tips on what recordkeeping professionals need to do to achieve good recordkeeping.
Some organisations wanted to get a copy of the manifesto for use internally in their organisations. Some wanted all the information we presented. So we promised that we would make the information available on this blog.
The Happiness Manifesto
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Key digital recordkeeping enquiries June 2012 July 3, 2012 1 Comment
In May 2012 we posted a summary of what key digital recordkeeping enquiries we had received from NSW agencies in the month and what responses we gave. We thought that perhaps it might be helpful to others pondering the same issues.
A number of people viewed this post, so we have decided to do a similar post each month. This month we give advice on SharePoint, social media, digitisation and metadata.
Note: Advice is relevant to the NSW public sector.
Read the rest of this entry »
Using recordkeeping to support high risk business and to mitigate information risks June 28, 2012 No Comments
http://www.flickr.com/photos/katerw/4566825653/
30 June 2012 marks the end of the phased implementation timetable of State Records’ Standard on digital recordkeeping. Under the terms of the Standard, records now need to be made and kept of the high risk business operations that are performed in all your relevant digital business systems.
It is important to be aware that you should not be implementing the standard purely because State Records says you should, or because there are mandatory compliance requirements built into the Standard. And it is also important to not see the Standard as a cost burden, or an inhibitor to business process and innovation.
The Standard was designed and implemented because there are genuine risks that are threatening the ongoing useability and accessibility of government’s digital business information. And, for key business information, these threats must be mitigated. So this is what the Standard is designed to do. It is really a risk management standard that requires you to assess and mitigate the risks that may threaten your organisation’s business information, now and over the long term. The Standard seeks to ensure that whatever business applications your organisation is using, you have ensured that these systems can create, maintain or export the information your organisation needs to support its business operations. Read the rest of this entry »
Final version of Managing digitisation programs and projects is now available June 26, 2012 No Comments
As those of you who regularly follow our Future Proof blog will know, we released an Exposure Draft of guidance called Managing digitisation programs and projects on our website in February 2012.
We did not receive many comments on this guidance, but the comments we did receive were excellent. So thank you to those who took the time to comment. A special thanks to the staff at Queensland State Archives who gave us some thought provoking ideas and suggestions.
The final version of the guidance is now available on our website. 
Read the rest of this entry »
Recordkeeping innovation award for Crown Solicitor’s Office June 12, 2012 No Comments
L-R: Alice Rideout, Maria Kepreotes and Laurie Glanfield, Director General
We were delighted to learn recently that the Information Services Team at the NSW Crown Solicitor’s Office won an Award for Innovation at the Department’s Annual Achievement Awards.
In 2011, Maria Kepreotes and her Information Services team, in conjunction with IT and the Training units and technical developer KRECS, developed an email integration tool, called KMail. This tool enabled CSO staff to seamlessly capture email into their electronic document and records management system (EDRMS), bringing efficiency and cost savings.
Our top 5 – Why recordkeeping is awesome! June 8, 2012 No Comments
June 9 is International Archives Day and together with our blog sisters at Archives Outside, Future Proof is celebrating! Go and check out Archives Outside’s Archives are Awesome post while here at Future Proof we are celebrating all things recordkeeping.
Here are our top 5 reasons why we think recordkeeping is awesome.
Number 1: Good recordkeeping promotes efficiency
My dear, never confuse efficiency with a liver complaint. (George Banks to Mrs Banks, Mary Poppins, 1964)
The financial crisis means that everyone is scrambling to do business more efficiently. Good recordkeeping can promote efficiency by reducing the time you take to search for and access information you need.
It also means your organisation doesn’t have to waste precious resources and time managing information it doesn’t need.
Future Proof 100th blog post! The past, present and future of Future Proof June 7, 2012 3 Comments
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This is the 100th post on the Future Proof blog! In this post we thought we’d use the opportunity to give you a quick history of Future Proof, an overview of the slight changes we have made to it to coincide with our 100th post, an insight into what the blog analytics reveal about the last 4 years of Future Proof, where we would like the blog to go in the future, and a big round of thank yous! Read the rest of this entry »
