Australian Society of Archivists
1999 Conference
RECORD KEEPING SYSTEMS
- Lessons Learned from the Experience of the Canadian Federal
Government -
John McDonald
Senior Advisor
National Archives of Canada
Given the breadth of the session, I was wondering what direction I
should take and what perspective I should be offering for my
presentation. I also noticed that I am supposed to offer an
international perspective. While I can speak on the Canadian scene and
as chair of the International Council on Archives Committee, on
Electronic and Other Current Records I do have some understanding of
what is happening internationally, I am far from being an expert.
Nevertheless, I did notice an expression which seemed to crop up
throughout the description of the session. And that was the term “record
keeping system”. We’ve had some experience with record
keeping systems in Canada and there has certainly been some experience
gained at the international level including here in Australia. These
systems do more than help government departments and, by extension,
archives, manage the records that document the functions and
activities of organizations. They mark an important milestone in the
evolution all of us are experiencing as we move from theory to
practice (and tools). As we witness reality emerging from concept,
however, I think we need to examine very carefully how prepared our
organizations are to take advantage of these systems not just for
managing the electronic records of today but for helping us align
ourselves to deal with the changing shape of the electronic work
environment in the future.
Based on this context, I would like to use our experience with
record keeping systems in the Canadian federal government to offer
some observations on what we have learned from this experience. Then I
would like to use this together with my knowledge of initiatives
elsewhere around the world to offer some observations concerning where
we are today and what direction we might want to take in the future.
In Canada, we seem to have followed the same evolution as many other
developed countries with respect to the use of personal computers.
During the early 1980's they were generally used to enhance the
productivity of individual office workers. By the late 1980's,
however, developments in the telecommunications industry led to the
introduction of increasingly sophisticated computer based networks and
communication among public servants grew in complexity. Brief e-mail
messages of only marginal substance from a business perspective gave
way to comprehensive often highly complex memos complete with attached
reports, correspondence, briefing notes and other potential records of
government business. Increasingly the defacto way of conducting
business became electronic. In fact, in some areas of our government,
paper records gradually became viewed as convenience or reference
copies of “original” records in electronic form.
The emergence of the electronic record as the dominant form of
recording government business and the associated concerns of
government institutions regarding the manner in which these records
should be managed reached a critical point in the mid 1990's. Public
servants at all levels began to realize that the “personal
support tools” located on their desk tops could not provide the
records management services they had depended upon in a paper based
environment. The significant cutbacks in records management programs
coupled with the inability of the technologies to manage electronic
messages and so-called office documents in a manner that would ensure
their authenticity, reliability, accessibility and overall integrity
through time, was creating frustration across the government. The
following questions were becoming a cry heard by public servants at
all levels across most government institutions: “Where can I put
my e-mail messages and documents so that I can retrieve them again in
the future”?; “What does ‘draftrp.six’ mean?”;
“What was the last version of the document we were working on and
who has it?”, “Can I throw out my e-mail messages?”; “Why
can’t I find the two other documents I need to develop this
briefing note?”; “Is this e-mail message subject to the
Access to Information Act”?
These were real issues demanding real solutions. No longer were
archivists and records specialists having to knock on the doors of
senior government officials to plead their case about the threats to
the electronic record, corporate memory and collective societal
memory. They were listening. The “push” had become a “pull”
and because of its lead agency role in facilitating the management of
government records, the National Archives probably felt this “pull”
to the greatest extent. Fortunately we had already gained experience
from work completed in earlier initiatives established in the 1980's.
The Office Communications Field Trial program at the Department of
Communications(1) was a building block
of experience which helped to guide two important partnership projects
called FOREMOST and IMOSA (Information Management and Office Systems
Assessment project)(2). Both projects
resulted in three important products: a set of functional requirements
for the management of records in an electronic work environment; an
enhanced understanding of the nature of records creation, capture,
maintenance, and retrieval in the modern office; and prototype
software that formed the basis for a made-in-Canada product which
eventually found its way onto the international marketplace.
The results of these projects in combination with the increased
pressure from government clients pleading for guidance set the stage
in 1996 for the development of the National Archives’ Guideline
on the Management of Electronic Records in the Electronic Work
Environment(3).
The guideline and its supporting documents were developed in
response to the questions and concerns being raised about the
management of electronic records in the electronic work environment.
In the past I have referred to this environment as the wild frontier
because, in rather simplistic terms, it is a landscape dominated by
autonomous office workers, who, in being given powerful “personal”
computers, and in the absence of corporate rules of the road, have
been left to their own devices with respect to the creation,
transmission and storage of electronic messages, word processing
documents, spreadsheets and so forth(4).
As with any wild frontier that is evolving, however, the exhilaration
associated with the freedom that such a landscape engenders has
eventually turned to frustration in the face of the chaos produced
through poor or non-existent document and records management
practices.
This is what the guideline was designed to address. Not the records
generated in large corporate licensing or social benefits systems
where policies, business rules, standards, systems and accountability
frameworks for records were, to a greater or lesser extent, already
established. It was for helping government institutions resolve
immediate problems connected with the filing and protection of
electronic “office” documents generated through the use of
personal computers sitting on the desktops of individual office
workers. This is important, because as I will point out later, it was
always assumed that whatever solutions were offered today would have
to be tailored to account for the expected evolution of the wild
frontier into a landscape designed to be much more supportive of
organizational goals. Whether or not such a landscape would be based
on benevolent rules of the road and the use of sophisticated workflow
technologies remains to be seen but it would certainly be different
from what we are experiencing today.
The Guideline begins with some fundamental guidance on what it means
to create and manage records as opposed to documents in this
environment. It continues by emphasizing that a pre-requisite to the
implementation of any of the proposed strategies for managing
electronic records should be based on policies which address issues
such as the assignment of accountability for record keeping, the
definition of roles and responsibilities, the expression of rules for
record keeping (an enormous challenge in an electronic work
environment where it is difficult to define the latent work processes
upon which such record keeping rules can be defined), the
incorporation of archival considerations, the development of
functional requirements not to mention the standards, practices, and
systems for facilitating the implementation of the requirements, and
education and training strategies. In my view these policy statements
were the most important elements of the guideline. And yet, as I will
mention later, their absence has been a key factor in the difficulty
government institutions are facing in implementing record keeping
systems in the electronic work environment..
Let me turn to the guidance itself. In the guideline, the National
Archives proposed a number of strategies beginning with the most
advanced where institutions were encouraged to incorporate record
keeping requirements into the automated applications supporting their
work processes. In order to promote this advanced strategy, the
National Archives attached two documents to the Guideline. The first,
Electronic Work Environment (EWE) - Vision, described a
future environment viewed from the perspective of the user at his or
her desk top. The vision was based on the integration of previously
separate applications such as library and records systems with
automated work processes. The second document, Record Keeping in
the Electronic Work Environment - Vision, complemented the EWE
vision by describing an environment where the records of automated
work processes were captured automatically, based on rules built into
the design of the processes. Some subsequent work to develop
prototypes reflecting this vision was undertaken in 1997 and the
results were published as part of the proceedings of an electronic
records conference organized by Archives and Museums Informatics in
the Spring, 1997(5). Other efforts in
the Canadian government, most notably in the Therapeutic
Pharmaceutical Licensing area of Health Canada and the regulatory
filing area of the National Energy Board, have also undertaken
workflow driven record keeping initiatives. Undoubtedly work is
underway elsewhere as well.
The Guide acknowledged, however, that many organizations were far
from having defined let alone automated the work processes in their
office environment. As a result, the Guide suggested that if business
processes were not automated (i.e. they were still experiencing the
wild frontier), institutions should consider the following interim
strategies:
- the first was to consider establishing shared space at the level
of the entire organization, based on the use of automated records
management systems or document management systems that address the
filing and retention of electronic records. In support of this
strategy, the guideline included the document, “Records/Documents/Information
Management: Integrated Document Management System (RDIMS) for the
Government of Canada - Requirements”. These functional
requirements, which I will speak about in a minute, were used in a
shared systems procurement initiative led by the Treasury Board
Secretariat in partnership with the National Archives and over 20
government institutions. The initiative led to the selection of a
single solution which will be acquired and implemented by the
cluster of institutions participating in the initiative.
- The second suggestion was to establish shared space at the level
of the work group, based on features already available in many
software applications used in office support systems. In support of
this strategy, the guideline included the guide, Managing
Shared Directories and Files. This guide was produced to help
work groups structure their file directories, establish naming
conventions, develop retention and disposition procedures and assess
options concerning who should look after the group space and to what
extent, and under what circumstances it should be used to hold those
records of the group that need to be retained for the corporate
memory of the institution.
If it was not possible to design shared space at either the level of
the work group or the entire organization, the Guideline suggested
that significant e-mail messages and electronic documents should be
printed onto paper and stored in the corporate paper filing system.
That was the Guideline. Now what was the reaction across government?
First of all people seemed to be very pleased to see the guide.
Several liked the guideline on managing shared space and a number of
implementations have emerged. Very few, however, ever considered the
policy statements.
On the other hand, a number of enterprising individuals including
several at the Treasury Board saw the potential of the functional
requirements, at the enterprise wide level, in responding to the
growing demands by office workers in the wild frontier to find a
solution to their document and records management concerns. They also
saw the requirements as a way of accomplishing this objective in a
cost effective manner based on a single Request For Proposal (RFP) for
a “shared” system which could be used by government
institutions in managing records in all forms and formats. The
Records/Document/Information Management System (RDIMS) initiative got
underway in July 1994 with the establishment of the Director-General
level Electronic Work Environment (EWE) Management Board. The Board
provided guidance and direction while Treasury Board, in cooperation
with Public Works and Government Services, managed the procurement
process. The process was supported by over 20 departments and agencies
which had expressed an interest in investing in such a shared system.
It took nearly four years until the Fall of 1998 before a contract
with CGI Inc.of Montreal (Conseiller en gestion de l’informatique)
could be signed. CGI is a management consulting firm which drew on the
services of companies such as PC Docs and Provenance Systems to bid on
the contract.
Some of the 20 departments have embarked on pilot projects designed
to work out the “bugs” connected with implementation of the
system. They are drawing on each other for support and they are
drawing on the experiences of others who are moving along the same
path, albeit following slightly different strategies. Some have begun
to run into a number of issues related to the implementation of the
system.
The first and probably most important issue is that the introduction
of systems such as RDIMS is a management issue not a technology issue.
While it is true in the Canadian experience that those involved in
some of the pilots have experienced success in installing and
implementing the RDIMS technologies across selected business units,
the difficulties experienced by many users reach back to some
fundamental management issues. Complaints about the time involved in
filing documents, about the inadequacy of the file classification
system, and about not knowing when something is to be filed and why,
or why the system is there at all, point to a lack of connection
between the system and the user, something in my view which demands a
management as opposed to a technology response.
Like too many initiatives such as this, the objective of the RDIMS
initiative became the acquisition of technology rather than the
establishment of an environment for good record keeping which the
technology could help support. Few if any organizations examined the
policy framework within which the technology was to be introduced.
Were new policies required? Were policies related to record keeping,
including the assignment of accountability across the organization
clear? And, if not, what steps would be needed to ensure that they
were there. The technology is only the tip of the iceberg. In the
Canadian example the license for the software is about $450 Canadian
per user. The costs of integration, training, and maintenance,
however, are estimated to be about $1500!(6)
The establishment of policies, business rules, and functional
requirements coupled with a sound understanding of the culture of the
organization and its record keeping requirements (from both the
operational and accountability perspectives) are pre-requisites to the
processes used to identify and acquire the relevant technology
solutions.
And this brings me to the second issue. Some users have suggested
that these systems seemed to represent a business solution looking for
a business problem to solve. In my view I think much of the reason for
this view is because the systems have yet to be aligned with the
implicit and explicit work flows supported in most offices. Record
keeping should not be seen as a separate application. The RDIMS system
should not be seen as solely a place to put one’s stuff - the
stuff you think is important but have no other place to store it.
Record keeping is a natural outcome of a series of related tasks (many
of which are increasingly automated) which themselves are supporting
the business functions and activities of the organization. I think we
have considerable work to do in understanding the nature of work flow
in modern organizations and how the tools emerging to support workflow
can be combined with those developed for record keeping to support
organizational goals more directly.
But we also need to recognize that these work flows will become much
more explicit in the future. They may not look like our conception of
workflow today especially given the rapid changes taking place in
organizational behaviour brought on by new approaches to decision
making, and program and service delivery. But they should become the
catalyst for moving us along the evolutionary path from the wild
frontier to a landscape based on benevolent order and rules of the
road that benefit the user and the organization equally. The increased
pressure for the government to design electronic service delivery
systems and electronic commerce applications and to bring these to the
desktops of individual users will change the way they participate in a
networked environment and perhaps even change the nature of the desk
top itself.
If this is the case then we also need to understand that the nature
of the electronic work environment will vary across business areas and
institutions. Introducing a single solution such as RDIMS into 20
government institutions may be somewhat ambitious. We need to
understand that government institutions and their individual functions
and activities will be at different stages along the evolutionary path
I described earlier. Again, an understanding of this path together
with the understanding we should already have of the nature of the
organization’s business and its record keeping needs, should be a
pre-requisite to any procurement effort.
The fact that we are trying to build systems which will be required
to evolve with the evolution in the electronic work environment, has
made it difficult to develop effective business cases. And here I mean
business cases that address cost savings, opportunity gains, and risk
reduction in a much more comprehensive manner than the more narrow
focus that seems to have been placed on the risk of not being able to
meet Freedom of Information requests or on the costs associated with
searching through unorganized records.
Finally, the greatest issue we face (as with so many initiatives
such as this) has to do with people. We face a major challenge in
enhancing user understanding of and appreciation of the need for
proper record keeping. We face an even greater challenge in finding
the records management staff who have the full range of knowledge and
skills required to implement systems such as these. Modern
organizations need records managers who have a deep knowledge of their
organization, its functions and activities, and its business
processes. They need people who understand the legislative and policy
framework within which the organization operates, understand its
strategic direction and priorities from a records perspective, and
know what it means to maintain the accessibility and understandability
of authentic and reliable records in multiple forms and formats
through time. Electronic records solutions will be slow in coming
without the people in place with the required skills and knowledge.
Add to these the vendors who sell the technology and above all, the
management consulting firms who are supposed to integrate these
technologies into the work place, and one can appreciate why this
issue is as complex as it is pressing.
I believe the issues I have just described are common across many
organizations and to one extent or another they are or will be
experienced by countries around the world. But it is still early in
the game. The standard developed by the US Department of Defense(7),
the shared systems suite developed for the Government of Australia,
and the initiatives developed by the United Kingdom and the European
Commission, as well as other initiatives underway around the world are
just now demonstrating the commonality of both the issues being faced
and the solutions being pursued. I would like to point out, however,
that unless we are vigilant, the common issues and solutions could
also lead us down a common misguided path. Those of us who have taken
the lead have a responsibility to those who will be following,
especially those in the developing world where the costs of mistakes
and failure could mean the survival or extinction of a record keeping
program. But what is the nature of this responsibility. Where are we
heading? Are we heading for a fork in the road where our views on
functional requirements for such systems could be radically different
from what they are today, where the technologies themselves could be
completely transformed from today’s Foremosts, TRIM’s and
RIMS? Is it possible to anticipate the direction in which we are
heading? Of greater importance, is it possible to exercise a
leadership role and actually set the direction? If so, what mechanisms
should we be using to build the kinds of partnerships we will need,
especially at the global level? In an age of globalization, we can’t
afford not to build such partnerships especially if we want to benefit
from systems that can stand the test of time.
Footnotes
(1) Public Archives of Canada, “Report on the
PAC/DOC Project”, Ottawa, 1986.
(2) National Archives of Canada,”Information
Management and Office Systems Advancement: The IMOSA Project”,
Ottawa, 1991.
(3) National Archives of Canada, “Guideline on
the Management of Electronic Records in the Electronic Work
Environment”, Ottawa, 1996,
http://www.archives.ca/exec/naweb.dll?fs&0603&e&top&0
(4) John McDonald,”Managing Records in the
Modern Office: Taming the Wild Frontier”, Archivaria 39
(Spring 1995), pp.70-79.
(5) Archives and Museums Informatics , “Working
Meeting on Electronic Records”, Pittsburgh, 1997,
http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~cerar/er-mtg97.html
(6) From data provided by the EWE Management Board
and the Shared Systems group at Treasury Board Secretariat, Ottawa,
1999.
(7) US Department of Defense, Design Criteria
Standard for Electronic Records Management Software, Applications, DoD
5015.2-STD. |
