A belated ‘Happy New Year’ from all the staff at State Records. We hope you all had a safe and relaxing festive season.

What is Future Proof update?

Welcome to the very first edition of Future Proof update. We envisage that Future Proof update will be a monthly blog focusing on digital recordkeeping issues and developments. We can tell you what State Records’ staff have been doing regarding digital recordkeeping, but can also discuss interesting initiatives or projects being undertaken by specific public offices. So subscribe or visit our blog at the start of each month to read the latest news, and post your own comments in relation to anything we cover.

New guidelines

Our exciting news for the New Year is that we have released our new guidelines Managing digital records. These guidelines are designed to assist records managers and information technology specialists to deal with the unique challenges of the digital world.

Managing digital records is available from our Future Proof site under ‘Resources’ and also forms part of the Government recordkeeping manual.

Need for guidelines

As we all know, digital records provide a huge amount of opportunities but also a variety of unique challenges. One of the most important concerns from our perspective is that digital records will simply not survive intact if particular strategies are not in place to protect their authenticity and accessibility. Without trustworthy business records that survive for as long as they are required, public offices will find it increasingly difficult to perform their core functions, and litigation is a constantly looming threat. Valuable information of the State’s activities and history may also be lost forever.

Therefore, our aim was to update and revise our old Future proof guidelines to ensure they support the new Standard on digital recordkeeping and continue to assist public offices in future-proofing their digital records.

Preparing the new guidelines

As this was our initial goal, we started with a firm focus on digital preservation issues. We researched the latest developments in addressing technological obsolescence and technologies and methods to try to ensure that digital records survive in the long term. We discussed issues of planning, metadata, migration and the need for capturing records in recordkeeping systems, including using EDRMS or IAMS technologies.

In August 2008, we sent an exposure draft of the new guidelines to our Digital Records Advisory Group. We also sent them to a number of records and information technology specialists to see if their needs were addressed.

Feedback on the draft made us significantly reconsider our approach. The information technology specialists, in particular, indicated that the guidelines were too long and dense. They were too focused on long term preservation issues, failing to address some of the immediate and pressing problems in the management of digital records.

After considering this feedback we decided that what we really need was to provide broader guidelines on managing digital records – advice to help public offices deal with the immediate challenges they face, but also strategies to ensure that digital records can remain authentic and accessible well into the future.

To address the comments received about the guidelines being overly long and dense, we changed the presentation of the document. Now there is a summary document which introduces you to the guidelines. It contains a number of sections, and each section hyperlinks to further information. As a result, you can ‘dip’ into the guidelines and extract guidance about particular topics that are relevant to you, rather than having to read them from start to finish.

We also added a new section called ‘Target specific formats that are causing you problems’ where we addressed some of the major issues facing information technology and records specialists today. Currently, this discusses managing email, digital photographs, CAD files and web records. If you require advice on other formats please let us know as this section can be expanded over time.

Useful resources

While researching the guidelines we came across a number of useful articles regarding digital recordkeeping, many available online. If you are interested in further reading we suggest you use our annotated bibliography as a starting point. We will add to this as we discover new resources. Feel free to let us know about other resources you discover.

Updates

The reality of the digital world is that it is ever-changing so advice provided today may not address the challenges of tomorrow. So to remain relevant and helpful, Managing digital records will need to evolve as technologies, challenges and solutions evolve. We encourage you to provide feedback or suggestions now or in the future via this blog.

Until next month,

The Future Proof team

We all know that putting a case for information management projects can be challenging, especially when resources are scarce. However there are many tangible and intangible benefits that can be realised from the implementation of an Information Asset Management Software system such as an EDRMS. These benefits might fall under broad areas such as finding information, managing risk, enabling business efficiencies or meeting a variety of legal and compliance requirements. Benefits can be realised by organisations all levels of the Information Asset Management Maturity Model, from basic hardcopy records and information control to full EDRMS implementation with scanning, collaboration and knowledge management.

A business case for an IAMS project requires solid evidence-based descriptions of these benefits so there is a clear indication of how the IAMS will enable better service delivery and savings. The Government Chief Information Office is interested in gathering examples of benefits identified by agencies in their past or current business cases for information asset management projects – such as the purchase and roll out of a new EDRMS, implementing scanning or using collaborative workspaces. The results will be analysed and collated, and made available by GCIO.

By responding to this post you can share your examples with others or you can respond directly to GCIO’s Kate Harrington, at: kate.harrington@commerce.nsw.gov.au

Most organisations run business systems for core business such as case management systems, as well as supporting systems for finances, HR etc (eg SAP). For document management and recordkeeping purposes, integration of these systems with an EDRMS is often required. Challenges of doing these integrations can include how to capture and reuse metadata rather than duplicate it, designing the flow of information between them to preserve its integrity or simple compatibility issues. NSW govt organisations who have tackled these types of integrations are invited to share their experiences.

Here at State Records we have heard from several agencies who have invested in the development of a ‘bridge’ from their Web Content Management System to their EDRMS, in order to capture website records. In some cases the CMS is an open source solution such as Plone or MySpace. We would love to hear from you if you have developed such a ‘bridge’ or if you are interested in doing so.

Making the decision to implement an EDRMS is not a decision that should be taken lightly by any organisation. Directing a project to undertake such an implementation is a big commitment and the effort required to ensure the final product will be adopted by users should not be underestimated. EDRMS projects often fall apart due to inadequate funding and resources as well as using inappropriately skilled staff.

The most successful implementation projects are those that are adequately planned, funded, and supported by senior management. One could also argue that the next most important aspect of a successful implementation project is the development of a comprehensive change management plan.

There are many issues to consider when implementing a new recordkeeping / information asset management system. One decision that must be decided on early in the project is whether to go forward from day one or convert your back (old) files?

For example –  employee files in a medium sized organisation are in paper form linked by a number to the current recordkeeping system. With the introduction of a new system should all of these files be closed and digital parts are opened for each employee and hence the organisation goes forward with a digital folder and a closed paper folder (hybrid files)? Or should the contents of the paper folder be scanned and loaded into a new digital folder for each employee?

The decision to select a product to manage digital records must be driven by an organisation’s needs and closely linked to business benefits. Generally an organisation will develop a specification document which identifies the functionality and requirements for the organisation.

Various software products may have different strengths in various functions (such as document management and records management) and it is important to be aware of the different strengths of different products and have a clear understanding of the business needs of the organisation.

In June 2008 the NSW Government Chief Information Office developed an Information Asset Management Maturity Model to assist public offices in determining their current capability of capturing information assets as well as assess their future requirements.

For more information on selecting records management software, see State Records’ RIB 2 – Selecting Records Management Software

Requirements for destroying digital records

The destruction of digital records is different to the destruction of hardcopy records. In particular, simply pressing ‘delete’ does not necessarily mean that the records are completely gone; while the link used to access them may be removed, they may still exist in a data store or on a server in the organisation. In other words, the deletion of a file or the reformat of a hard drive may not always be adequate. As far as possible the destruction of records should be irreversible with no reasonable risk of the information being recovered again.

As it is increasingly difficult and expensive to completely destroy a digital record, methods of digital records media ‘sanitisation’ have been devised to help organisations to implement digital records destruction.

The new Department of Commerce contract for Information Asset Management Systems (IAMS) has been issued. The vendors listed on the new contract have provided the most competitive prices so far for their products for NSW Government agencies. The contract can also be used by Councils, State owned corporations and even NGOs!

The User Guide, which has all the details and a contact for Vendor Management at Department of Commerce who can advise on the process of buying off the contract, is available now. GSAS IAMS User Guide [Note: this link no longer works. Please see The Information Asset Management Assessment Tool and The IAM tool instead.]