Best Practices Exchange, day two

Yesterday was the second day of the 2012 Best Practices Exchange, and the sessions I attended were delightfully heavy on discussion and information sharing. I had some problems accessing the hotel's wifi last night and the BPE is still going on, so I'm going to post a few of yesterday's highlights before turning my attention back to this morning's discussion:

• Arian Ravanbakhsh, whose morning plenary speech focused on the Presidential Memorandum - Managing Government Records and U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) efforts to implement it, made an important point that all too often gets overlooked: even though an ever-increasing percentage of records created government agencies are born-digital, government archivists will continue to accession paper records well into the future. Substantial quantities of paper federal records have extremely long retention periods and won't be transferred to NARA until the mid-21st century, and, judging from the nodding heads in the audience, most state government archivists (l'Archivista included) anticipate that they'll continue to take in paper records for at least several more decades. Sometimes, I forget that we as a profession will have to ensure that at least two future generations of archivists have the knowledge and skills needed to accession, describe, and provide access to paper records. At the moment, finding new archivists who have the requisite interest and ability isn't much of a challenge -- sadly, archival education programs still attract significant numbers of students who don't want to work with electronic records -- but things might be quite different in 2030.

• Butch Lazorchak of the Library of Congress highlighted a forthcoming grant opportunity: the Federal Geographic Data Committee, which is responsible for coordinating geospatial data gathering across the federal government and coordinates with state and local governments to assemble a comprehensive body of geospatial data, plans to offer geospatial archiving business planning grants in fiscal year 2013. The formal announcement should be released within a few weeks.

• Butch also highlighted a couple of tools about which I was aware but haven't really examined closely: the GeoMAPP Geoarchiving Business Planning Toolkit, which can easily be adapted to support business planning for preservation of other types of digital content, the GeoMAPP Geoarchiving Self-Assessment, which lends itself to similar modifications, and the National Digital Stewardship Alliance's Digital Preservation in a Box, a collection of resources that support teaching and self-directed learning about digital preservation.

• This BPE has seen a lot of discussion about the importance and difficulty of cultivating solid relationships with CIOs, and this morning one state archivist made what I think is an essential point: when talking to CIOs, archivists really need to emphasize the value added by records management and digital preservation. As a rule, we simply haven't done so.

• This BPE has also generated a lot of ideas about how to support states that have yet to establish electronic records programs, and in the coming months you'll see the Council of State Archivists' State Electronic Records Initiative start turning these ideas into action. As a particularly lively discussion was unfolding this morning, it struck me that most of the people taking part in established full-fledged programs only after they had completed several successful projects; in fact, intense discussions about the challenges associated with transforming projects into programs took place at several early BPEs. If you don't have any hands-on electronic records experience and are facing resource constraints, it makes sense to identify a pressing but manageable problem, figure out how to solve it, and then move on to a few bigger, more complex projects.  After you've accumulated a few successes and learned from a few surprises or failures, you can focus on establishing a full-fledged program.

Image:  storm drain marker on Randall Street at City Dock, Annapolis, Maryland, 3 December 2012.

2012 Best Practices Exchange, day one

Today was the first day of the 2012 Best Practices Exchange (BPE), an annual event that brings together archivists, librarians, IT professionals, and other people interested in preserving born-digital state government information. The BPE is my favorite professional event, in no part because it encourages presenters to discuss not only their successes but also the ways in which unexpected developments led them to change direction, the obstacles that proved insurmountable, and the lessons they learned along the way.

As I explained last year, those of us who blog and tweet about the BPE are obliged to use a little tact and discretion when making information about the BPE available online. Moreover, in some instances, what's said is more important than who said it. As a result, I'm going to refrain from tying some of the information that appears in this and subsequent posts re: the BPE to specific attendees.

I'm also going to keep this post short. Our opening discussion began at 8:30, the last session ended at 4:45, and I was in a Persistent Digital Archives and Library System (PeDALS) meeting until almost 6:00. The PeDALS crew then hit the streets of Annapolis, Maryland. We started off with ice cream at the Annapolis Ice Cream Company (yum!), and then three of us split off from the group, rested a bit and caught up on the day's e-mail, and had dinner at the Ram's Head Tavern (also yum!) The BPE resumes tomorrow at 8:30, and I'm presenting at the end of the day, so I'm going to highlight the most interesting tidbits of information that I picked up today and then head to bed.

Doug Robinson, executive director of the National Association of Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) was this morning's plenary speaker, and he made a couple of really interesting points:

• CIOs are juggling a lot of competing priorities. They're concerned about records management and digital preservation, but, as a rule, they're not worried enough to devote substantial attention or resources to improving records management or addressing preservation issues.

• Cloud computing is now the number one concern of state CIOs, and CIOs are starting to think of themselves less as providers of hardware and software than as providers of services. Moreover, the cloud is attractive because it reduces diversity and complexity, which drive up IT costs. Robinson suspects that most states will eventually develop private cloud environments. Moreover, a recent NASCIO survey indicates that 31 percent of states have moved or plan to move digital archives and records management into the cloud.

• CIOs are really struggling with Bring Your Own Devices issues and mobile technology, and the speed with which mobile technology changes is frustrating their efforts to come to grips with the situation. Citizens want to interact with state government via mobile apps, but the demand for app programmers is such that states can't retain employees who can create apps; at present, only one state has app programmers on its permanent payroll.

• Cybersecurity is an increasingly pressing problem. States collect and create a wealth of data about citizens, and criminals (organized and disorganized) and hacktivists are increasingly interested in exploiting it. Spam, phishing, hacking, and network probe attempts are increasingly frequent. Governors don't always grasp the gravity of the threats or the extent to which their own reputations will be damaged if a large-scale breach occurs. Moreover, states aren't looking for ways to redirect existing resources to protecting critical information technology infrastructure or training staff.

• Most states allocate less than two percent of their annual budgets to IT. Most large corporations devote approximately five percent of their annual budgets to IT.

I had the privilege of moderating one of the afternoon sessions, "Tearing Down the Borders: Coast-to-Coast Archives; Record-Keeping in the Cloud," in which Oregon State Archivist Mary Beth Herkert discussed her state's development of a cloud-based electronic records management system for state agencies and local governments, Bryan Smith of the Washington State Digital Archives detailed some of the Digital Archives' recent technical innovations. They then discussed their joint, National Historical Publications and Records Commission-funded effort to explore expanding Oregon's records management system to Washington State and ingesting Oregon's archival electronic records into Washington's Digital Archives.

I was really struck by Mary Beth's explanation of the cost savings Oregon achieved by moving to the cloud. In 2007, the Oregon State Archives was able to develop an HP Trim-based electronic records management system for its parent agency, the Office of Secretary of State. It wanted to expand this system, which it maintained in-house, to all state agencies and local governments, but it couldn't find a way to push the cost of doing so below $100 per user per month. However, the State Archives found a data center vendor in a small Oregon town that would host the system at a cost of $37 per user per month. When the total number of users reaches 20,000 users, the cost will drop to $10 per user per month.

Bryan made a couple of really intriguing points about the challenges of serving as a preservation repository for records created by multiple states.  First, partners who don't maintain technical infrastructure don't always realize that problems may be lurking within their digital content.  Washington recently led a National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program (NDIIPP) grant project that explored whether its Digital Archives infrastructure could support creation of regional digital repository, and the problems that Digital Archives staff encountered when attempting to ingest data submitted by partner states led to the creation of tools that enable partners to verify the integrity of their data and address any hidden problems lurking within their files and accompanying metadata prior to ingest.

Second, the NDIIPP project and the current Washington-Oregon project really underscored the importance of developing common metadata standards. The records created in one state may differ in important ways from similar records created in another state, but describing records similarly lowers system complexity and increases general accessibility. Encoding metadata in XML makes it easier to massage metadata as needed and gives creators the option of supplying more than the required minimum of elements.

I'm going to wrap up this post by sharing a couple of unattributed tidbits:

• One veteran archivist has discovered that the best way to address state agency electronic records issues is to approach the agency's CIO first, then speak with the agency's head, and then talk to the agency's records management officer. In essence, this archivist is focusing first on the person who has the biggest headache and then on the person who is most concerned about saving money -- and thinking in terms of business process, not records management.

• "If you're not at the table, you're going to be on the menu."

Image:  Maryland State House, Annapolis, Maryland, 4 December 2012.  The State House, which was completed in 1779, is the first state capitol building completed after the American Revolution, the oldest state capitol that has been in continuous legislative use and the only state house that has an all-wooden dome.

BPE 2011: emerging trends

The 2011 Best Practices Exchange (BPE) proceeds apace, and today I’m going to focus upon yesterday’s plenary session, which featured Leslie Johnston, the Director of Repository Development at the Library of Congress (LC). Johnston devoted a lot of time to discussing ViewShare, LC’s new visualization and metadata augmentation tool, but I’ll discuss ViewShare in a forthcoming post about some of the new tools discussed at this year’s BPE. Right now, I want simply to furnish an overview of her exhilirating and somewhat unsettling assessment of the changing environment in which librarians and archivists work:

• Users do not use digital collections in the same way as they use paper collections, and we cannot guess how digital collections will be used. For example, LC assumed that researchers would want textual records, but a growing number of researchers want image files of textual records.

• Until recently, stewardship organizations have talked about collections, series, etc., but not data. Data is not just generated by satellites, experiments, or surveys; publications and archival records also contain data.

• We also need to start thinking in terms of “Big Data.” The definition of Big Data -- what can be easily manipulated with common tools and can be managed and stewarded by any one institutions -- is rather fluid, but we need to start thinking in these terms. We also need to be aware that Big Data may have commercial value, as evidenced by the increasing interest of firms such as Ancestry.com in the data found in our holdings.

• More and more, researchers want to use collections as a whole and to mine and organize the collections in novel ways. They use algorithms to do so and new tools that create visual images that transform data into knowledge. For example, the Digging into Data project examined ways in which many types of information, including images, film, sound, newspapers, maps, art, archaeology, architecture, and government records, could be made accessible to researchers. One researcher wanted to digitally mine information from millions of digitized newspaper pages and see whether doing so can enhance our understanding of the past. LC’s experience with archiving Web sites also underscores this point. LC initially assumed that researchers would browse through the archived sites. However, researchers want access to all of the archived site files and to use scripts to search for the information they want. They don’t want to read Web pages. Owing to the large size of our collections, the lack of good tools, and the permissions we secured when LC crawled some sites, this is a challenge.

• The sheer volume of the electronic data cultural stewardship organizations need to keep is a challenge. LC has acquired the Twitter archive, which currently consists of 37 billion individual tweets and will expand to approximately 50 billion tweets by year’s end. The archive grows by 6 million tweets an hour. LC is struggling to figure out how best to manage, preserve, and provide comprehensive access to this mass of data, which researchers have already used to study the geographic spread of the dissemination of news, the spread of epidemics, and the transmission of new uses of language.

• We have to switch to a self-serve model of reference services. Growing numbers of researchers do not want to come to us, ask questions of us, and then use our materials in our environment. They want to find the materials they need and then pull them out of our environment and into their own workspaces. We need to create systems and mechanisms that make it easy for them to do so. As a result, we need to figure out how to support real-time querying of billions of full-text items and the frequent downloading by researchers of collections that may be over 200 TB each. We also need to think about providing tools that support various forms of collection analysis (e.g., visualization).

• We can’t be afraid of cloud computing. Given the volumes of data coming our way and mounting researcher demands for access to vast quantities of data, the cloud is the only feasible mechanism for storing and providing access to the materials that will come our way. We need to focus on developing authentication, preservation, and other tools that enable us to keep records in the cloud.

There’s lots and lots of food for thought here -- including a few morsels that will doubtless induce indigestion in more than a few people -- and it’s just a taste of what’s coming our way. If we don’t come to terms with at least some of these changes, we as a profession will really suffer in the coming years. Let's hope that we have the will and the courage to do so.

A bottle of locally brewed Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale at Alfalfa Restaurant, Lexington, Kentucky, 20 October 2011. I highly recommend both the ale and the restaurant, but please note that Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale is approximately 8 percent alcohol. Just like the BPE, it's a little more intoxicating than one might expect.

U.S. Federal Cloud Computing Strategy released

Last week, the Chief Information Officer of the United States released the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy, which outlines how the federal government anticipates saving money, increasing the efficiency of its IT operations, and delivering better service to the public via cloud computing.

This strategy, which will help federal agencies migrate at least some of their IT infrastructure to commercial or government cloud environments, is intended to:

• Articulate the benefits, considerations, and trade-offs of cloud computing
• Provide a decision framework and case examples to support agencies in migrating towards cloud computing
• Highlight cloud computing implementation resources
• Identify Federal Government activities and roles and responsibilities for catalyzing cloud adoption (p. 2)
  

I haven't had the chance to give this document a close reading and likely won't have the chance to do so for a couple of weeks, but I have skimmed it and was pleased to note the following:

Storing information in the cloud will require a technical mechanism to achieve compliance with records management laws, policies and regulations promulgated by both the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the General Services Administration (GSA). The cloud solution has to support relevant record safeguards and retrieval functions, even in the context of a provider termination (p. 14) [emphasis added]

As a state government employee, I'm also intrigued by this statement:

Federal Government contracts will also provide riders for state and local governments. These riders will allow all of these governments to realize the same procurement advantages of the Federal Government. Increasing membership in cloud services will further drive innovation and cost efficiency by increasing market size and creating larger efficiencies-of-scale (p. 29) [emphasis added].

And this one:

To effectively manage these governance issues in the long-term, the Federal Government needs to lay a stable governance foundation that will outlast single individuals or administrations. To the best extent possible, individuals or committees should have explicitly defined roles, non-overlapping responsibilities, and a clear decision-making hierarchy. These steps will empower the government for action, minimize unnecessary bureaucracy, and ensure accountability for results.

The following bodies will therefore have these roles and responsibilities:

• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will lead and collaborate with Federal, State, and local government agency CIOs, private sector experts, and international bodies to identify and prioritize cloud computing standards and guidance . . . . (p. 31) [emphasis added]

I'm looking forward to seeing how all of this plays out.

The infopocalypse is upon us

Last week, the Boston Phoenix published an article by Chris Faraone highlighting how local, state, and federal governments are struggling to manage ever-increasing amounts of digital data. Provocatively titled "Infopocalypse: The Cost of Too Much Data," Faraone notes that:

The United States Census Bureau alone maintains about 2560 terabytes of information -- more data than is contained in all the academic libraries in America, and the equivalent of about 50 million four-drawer filing cabinets of documents.

Other federal agencies have similarly mind-boggling quantities of data, and state and local governments are also amassing vast stores of digital information.

Not surprisingly, "public data remains, by and large, a disorganized mess." Governments don't know precisely what they have or how to make best use of it, and old, paper-centered ways of responding to freedom of information requests and performing other essential functions persist.

Why does this situation exist? In my humble opinion, Faraone has nailed the root causes:

There is too much data. Digital storage is not a natural resource. The amount of information that government agencies may be required to keep — from tweets and e-mails to tax histories — is growing faster than the capacity for storage.

There's not enough manpower to manage all this data. The Obama administration hopes to make more information freely available online. But in the meantime, the old method of requesting data from the government -- filing a FOIA request -- is bogged down due to an insufficient workforce and long request backlogs.

Private companies are storing public data. This trend in outsourcing, largely the result of too much data and too little manpower, is a potential threat to both access and security, as resources that belong to the people are entrusted to outside vendors, raising new privacy concerns.

What to do about this situation? As Faraone notes, the data center consolidation strategy being pushed by Vivek Kundra, the Chief Information Officer of the United States, may help, but it's only a start. Faraone also suggests -- correctly -- that hiring additional staff who can process freedom of information requests and making readily available online data that doesn't contain legally restricted or, in the federal environment, classified information would also improve things a bit.

However, none of these things will solve the problem, which, as Sunlight Foundation policy director John Wunderlich pointed out to Faraone, is in many ways akin to that posed by the explosive growth of paper government records during the first two-thirds of the 20th century:

"Back then [government agencies] didn't know what to throw out, what to standardize, or how to organize. The challenges we face in data are in similar scope -- that's why it's so important that these issues are addressed head-on before it's too late."

Surprisingly, Faraone makes no mention of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which works with agencies to figure out how to standardize and organize their records and how and when to dispose of records that have reached the end of their useful life, or of the role that agency records managers have -- or, as is all too often the case, should have -- in ensuring that all agency records are properly managed. Hiring some records management personnel -- at NARA, the 50 state archives, larger local governments, and larger government agencies -- would no doubt help to reduce agency storage pressures.

However, the more I work with electronic records, the less convinced I am that simply hiring a few more records managers will make everything better. We forget sometimes that formalized records management theory and practice are not mere outgrowths of common sense. They were practical responses to the challenges posed by the deluge of paper records created by ever-larger and ever more complex organizations. The infopocalypse that we face is in some respects quite similar to that which confronted our mid-20th century predecessors, but it is also, at least in some respects, unique. Addressing the challenges associated with our infopocalypse successfully will likely mean a shift in thinking no less monumental than that which propelled the rise of records management as a discipline and More Product, Less Process archival processing.

What will this shift in thinking look like? I don't know. I anticipate I that we're going to focus less on one-on-one guidance and more on standards development and automation of tasks now performed by humans. I also expect that our definitions of "record" and "records series" will be altered significantly and I suspect that, at some point in the future, be discarded altogether.

Yeah, I'm scared, too. However, our mid-20th century predecessors were as shaken by the changes in their record-keeping environment as we are by the changes in ours. They chose to meet those challenges head-on, and, after a lot of hard work and mistakes along the way, eventually developed workable solutions to complex problems. If we have any interest in surviving -- which may well mean evolving from "archivists" and "records managers" into "digital preservationists" or "data curators" or somesuch -- we'll take our lumps and do the same.

FBI systems development problems -- and how to keep big IT projects on track

Prompted by the release of a scathing April 2005 U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations report, in June 2005 U.S. News and World Report devoted a lot of attention to information technology and systems design problems within the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which was then working with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to develop a system that would enable FBI agents throughout the world to create and exchange case file data and to search a wide array of government databases.

The magazine's interview with the FBI's CIO and an accompanying article make for interesting reading: general-interest publications typically devote scant attention to recordkeeping issues. Moreover, the interview and article reveal that the FBI was beset by a host of problems, among them: it had difficulty maintaining control over the development process and kept amending its list of system requirements, technological change rendered SAIC's products obsolete even before they could be put into production, cost overruns were mammoth, and no one wanted to tell FBI Director Robert Mueller that the project was in deep trouble.

Shortly after the U.S. News and World Report articles appeared, the FBI scrapped the project, in which it had invested $124 million, and terminated its contract with SAIC (which has an interesting track record with big federal contracts). The agency ultimately started developing a new case management system, this time with Lockheed Martin. Unfortunately, earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General issued a report questioning whether the new case file management system, named Sentinel, will be finished on time and at cost and whether it will truly meet the FBI's needs.

Given that Lockheed is building the Electronic Records Archives system for the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), this report is particularly worrisome. However, NARA identified its system requirements at the outset and hasn't substantially modified them and seems to have retained control over the development process, which suggests that NARA is going to have a better experience with Lockheed.

In the meantime, how can government agencies ensure that their systems development projects don't end up like the FBI's Virtual Case File and Sentinel initiatives? On Monday, the TechAmerica Foundation’s Commission on Government Technology Opportunity in the 21st Century, which consists of 31 federal agency and information technology industry representatives, issued a 33-step action plan for federal agencies and federal contractors.

The commission's core recommendations for agencies, which are detailed in full in its report, are:

• Develop professional, in-house program/project management capability
• Embrace iterative and incremental approaches to systems development
• Subject all major information technology acquisitions to independent, third-party risk review
• Improve communication and engagement with both the contractor developing the system and the internal staff who will become its end users

The report goes on to outline the benefits associated with each recommendation, the obstacles that inhibit their implementation, performance measures that assess the impact of implementing these recommendations, and a suggested timeline for federal implementation of these recommendations.

The commission's report was written with federal agencies in mind, but its plain-spoken assessments and recommendations and the vast experience of its authors make it required reading for any state or large local government contracting out the development of an information system. Moreover, any government archivist or records manager seeking to understand the potential pitfalls associated with large-scale systems development projects should study this report and its appendix, which summarizes the findings of past reports concerning federal government systems procurements.

NYAC/ARTNY: Archivists' Toolkit

The Hudson River, as seen from the grounds of the Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site, Hyde Park, New York, 4 June 2010.

Last week, I attended the joint meeting of the New York Archives Conference (NYAC) and the Archivists Roundtable of Metropolitan New York, (ARTNY) which was held at Marist College in Poughkeepsie. Unfortunately, Mac-using attendees discovered upon arrival that, despite Marist’s promises to the contrary, they could not connect to Marist’s wireless network. Now that I’ve reconnected, I’ll put up a couple of posts about the highlights of this year’s conference.

In my view, the best session of the conference was Session 1, “Implementing, Modifying, and Teaching the Archivists' Toolkit.” The Archivists’ Toolkit (AT) is an increasingly popular open source tool that supports accessioning, location management, and description of archival materials, and the session itself attracted a capacity crowd.

Janet Bunde of New York University (NYU) discussed a recent effort to integrate the AT into NYU’s Advanced Archival Description course so that students, who typically lacked the funds needed to attend AT workshops sponsored by the Society of American Archivists, would become familiar with the tool and hone their descriptive skills. The students reviewed the AT user’s manual in advance, then devoted an entire class session to entering sample data into the AT. At the end of the class, students discussed where they entered specific data elements and the descriptive output that resulted. Although the discussion wasn’t as extensive as Bunde would have liked, it shed light on students’ descriptive choices and revealed that, despite the use of some odd terminology, the AT’s interface is relatively intuitive.

Bunde stressed that this exercise didn’t, in and of itself, teach archival description, but it made me think about how to do so. I created a handful of MARC records while working as a student assistant, but I really didn’t feel comfortable with description until I found myself responsible for reviewing MARC records created by archivists at other repositories. I soon acquired an intimate knowledge of MARC and the ability to differentiate between acceptable variations in local practice and out-of-bounds tag usage. I really like the idea of having students openly compare and defend their descriptive choices, and using the AT as a teaching tool has real promise, particularly if, as NYU plans to do this fall, it’s incorporated more fully into the course curriculum.

Deena Schwimmer of Yeshiva University discussed how her repository, which has only two professional staffers and few IT resources, used the AT to centralize, as quickly as possible, holdings and descriptive information about its manuscript collections. Working with a clerical assistant, Schwimmer first culled holdings information from donor files and the relatively small number of MARC records describing the collections and entered it into the AT. Then, working in tandem with an intern who created collection-level descriptions, she used the AT to create Encoded Archival Description (EAD) finding aids that contained only the most basic descriptive elements: Biographical/Historical Note, Scope and Content, Abstract, Conditions Governing Access, Conditions Governing Use, and Language of Materials, and Title and Date information. She also used the AT to manage the project: she added fields that identified whether an EAD finding aid had been produced and enabled her and her intern to exchange notes about specific collections.

Schwimmer’s project exemplifies what a single results-minded archivist can do with a well-chosen tool and a little student and clerical help. Before Schwimmer’s project began, approximately a third of Yeshiva’s 2500 linear feet of manuscript holdings had been described, and when the project wrapped up roughly 18 months later, every collection had at least a basic finding aid. I think we’re going to see lots of similar AT success stories during the next few years, and, needless to say, I think that this is a very good thing.

Marisa Hudspeth of the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) then discussed how her repository is building a new AT reference module that will both meet its needs and enable it to, via release of the module’s source code and documentation, give back to the archival community. The RAC had been using a proprietary tool that supported patron registration and tracking of duplication services, but moved to the AT because of its robust collections management and descriptive modules. When it became apparent that the AT development team's energies were focused elsewhere, the RAC decided to hire several former team members and build a reference module itself.

When it’s completed, the reference module will perform the following functions:

• Patron registration: will track research visits, publications, completion of necessary research paperwork, and research awards; and facilitate generation of statistics and reports.
• Duplication services: will manage all types of requests; create standardized invoices in PDF; store fee schedules and shipping rates and automatically calculate totals; track service requests; generate statistics and reports; and securely manage payment information.
• Retrievals, bar-coding, and use tracking: will track use of materials by patrons; generate statistics and reports; automate the charge-out procedure using barcoding; add barcoding functionality to the AT’s Accession module; support printing of barcodes and box labels; and enable both archivists and researchers to submit pull requests electronically via clicking on boxes in the RAC’s EAD finding aids.
• Reference requests and reading room scheduling: will electronically distribute reference requests to staff; allow staff to respond to requests within the AT; store request histories, staff assignments, and responses; generate statistics and reports; and enable archives that have limited research facilities to manage scheduling of research appointments and factor in holiday closings, weather incidents, and other events.
• Personalized user accounts: will enable patrons to update their contact information, submit reference requests, schedule and cancel research appointments and sign up for waiting lists; receive notifications of closings and research room vacancies; sign up for newsletters and the like; view an orientation video and agree to the RAC’s terms of use; track the status of their duplication requests; review their own request histories; bookmark and comment on finding aids; submit funding paperwork; electronically sign forms, and, if they wish to do so, connect with other researchers.

At present, the RAC doesn’t know how this reference module will work with ArchivesSpace, which will, when completed, merge the AT and Archon, another open source archival data management system. However, the RAC will release the code and continue using it, even if the module can’t be incorporated into ArchivesSpace.

After this session ended, I was talking to a colleague about the RAC’s work, and we were both struck by the degree to which reference-related information systems remain paper-driven -- not only at our repository but also at many, many others. Our own repository is currently developing some of the functionality that will be included in the reference module (e.g., barcoding and use tracking), but we’re still terribly paper-centric. The RAC’s work ought to help propel the move away from paper, and it’s going to be really interesting to see how this exciting project pans out.

If you are an AT user and want to track reference requests, duplication services, etc., electronically, the RAC is looking for reference module beta testers. The module’s first component -- patron registration -- should be finished within a few weeks, and the entire module has a scheduled completion date of 31 December 2011, so things are moving right along. If you're interested in serving as a beta tester, contact Marisa Hudspeth at mhudspeth-at-rockarch.org.

"Removing the Shroud of Secrecy": records management and open government

Last Tuesday (23 March), the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security held a hearing on "Removing the Shroud of Secrecy: Making Government More Transparent and Accountable." Members of the subcommittee, which is chaired by Senator Thomas R. Carper (D-DE) heard testimony from, among others, Archivist of the United States David Ferriero and Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra.

In his written testimony and in the Webcast of the hearing, Ferriero stressed the centrality of records management to good government: "the government cannot be accountable if it does not preserve -- and cannot find -- its records." He went on to assert that heads of federal agencies and other senior agency personnel "need to understand that the records and information they and their organizations are creating are national assets that must be effectively managed and secured so that the public can be assured of the authenticity of the record [emphasis added]."

Well said. It's all too easy to forget that government records and information are, fundamentally, public property and that they warrant the same careful stewardship as other public assets, and we archivists and records managers need to keep reminding others of this essential fact.

Open Government in the Digital Age Summit: videos, slideshow, and other resources

On 19 March, the New York State Chief Information Officer/Office for Technology (CIO/OFT)and the New York State Archives jointly hosted the Open Government in the Digital Age Summit in Albany. Speakers included Archivist of the United States Ferriero, U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government Beth Noveck, and e-Republic Inc. Chief Content Officer Paul Taylor.

CIO/OFT's Web site now features video recordings of all Summit speeches and panel discussions, Paul Taylor's PowerPoint presentation, and the final Summit agenda. It has also prepared a news release that captures many of the day's highlights and posted photos of the Summit on its Facebook page.

Over 150 people attended the Summit, which brought together information technology professionals, archivists and records managers, public policy experts, journalists, and others interested in the relationship between information technology, recordkeeping, and government accountability and transparency. If you're interested in these issues, be sure to check out the resources above.

Last call: Open Government in the Digital Age Summit

If you're interested in electronic records, open government, and the relationship between the two and will be in (or can arrange to be in) New York State's Capital District this Friday, you'll definitely want to attend the Open Government in the Digital Age Summit jointly sponsored by the New York State Chief Information Officer/Office for Technology and the New York State Archives.

We've got a first-rate group of speakers. David Ferriero, the 10th Archivist of the United States, will deliver the opening address, and Cal Lee of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science will take part in the discussion on the archival implications of government openness. Panelists representing state government, the news media, software companies, and the open source community will explore the meaning of government openness in the digital age and citizen expectations for access to government records. Beth Simone Noveck, the U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government, will discuss the federal government's openness efforts, and Paul Taylor of e.Republic, Inc. will deliver the closing address. I'm really looking forward to hearing each and every one of them.

The Summit agenda, registration information, parking information, and directions to the Empire State Plaza and a map showing the location of the Cultural Education Center, where the Summit will be held, are all available online.

If you can join us in Albany this Friday, we would love to see you! If you can't, recordings of all of the speeches and panel discussions should be available via the Web shortly after the Summit takes place; once the links are up, I'll be sure to post them. I'm also planning to blog about the Summit, but I may be a little tardy in doing so: for reasons I'll explain later, the end of this week is going to be really, really hectic -- but in a good way!

Open Government in the Digital Age Summit: tentative agenda

Last week, I posted registration information for the Open Government in the Digital Age Summit, which the New York State Chief Information Officer/Office for Technology and the New York State Archives are hosting in Albany on Friday, 19 March 2010 in Albany.

If you're interested in electronic records, government openness, and the relationship between the two and can arrange to be in New York State's Capital District on 19 March, I strongly encourage you to attend this free event. We're still confirming a couple of speakers, but those we have lined up really are first-rate. Archivists and records managers will be particularly pleased to note that David Ferriero, the 10th Archivist of the United States, will deliver the opening address and that Cal Lee of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science will take part in the discussion on the archival implications of government openness. Moreover, I've heard several of the other confirmed speakers at other events and can promise that they'll have interesting things to say on 19 March.

Here's the tentative agenda for the Summit, which is also available online:

8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.

• Registration

9:00 a.m. – 9:20 a.m.

• Susan E. Beaudoin, Counsel, CIO/OFT: Introduction of the State CIO
• Dr. Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, New York State Chief Information Officer/Director of Office for Technology: Introduction of U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer

9:20 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.

• Guest Speaker, U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer

10:00 a.m. – 10:10 a.m.

• Break
  

10:10 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.

• Geof Huth, Director of Government Record Services, New York State Archives: Introduction of the State Archivist
• Christine Ward, New York State Archivist: Remarks and Introduction of David S. Ferriero

10:30 a.m. - 11:10 a.m

• Guest Speaker, David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States

David S. Ferriero was confirmed as 10th Archivist of the United States on November 6, 2009. Previously, Mr. Ferriero served as the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries (NYPL) where he developed the library’s digital strategy. Before joining the NYPL, Mr. Ferriero served in top positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Duke University libraries.

11:10 a.m.– 11:20 a.m.

• Break

11:20 a.m.– 12:30 p.m.

• Panel Discussion: "Meaning of Open Government in the Digital Age"

• Susan E. Beaudoin, Counsel, CIO/OFT, moderator
  
• Andrew Hoppin, CIO, New York State Senate
• Sam Litt, Deputy CTO, New York City DoITT
• Stuart McKee, National Technology Officer, Microsoft Corporation
• Patrick Toole, CIO, IBM (invited)

12:30 p.m.– 1:30 p.m.

• Lunch on your own

1:30 p.m. – 2:40 p.m.

• Panel Discussion: "Citizen Expectations for Access in the Digital Age"

• Michael Ridley, Director of High Performance Computing, NYSTAR, moderator
• John Wonderlich, Policy Director, Sunlight Foundation
• Dr. Steve Sawyer, Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University
• Dr. Jerry Mechling, Vice President, Gartner Research (invited)

2:40 p.m. – 2:50 p.m.

• Break

2:50 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

• Panel Discussion: "Open Government Implications of Sunshine Laws and Archival Responsibilities"

• Robert Freeman, Executive Director, New York State Committee on Open Government, moderator
  
• Dr. Cailin Brown, Assistant Professor Communications Department, College of St. Rose
• Dr. Cal Lee, Assistant Professor, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• Robert Port, Senior Editor for Investigations, Albany Times Union

4:00 p.m. – 4:10 p.m.

• Break

4:10 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

• Closing Address, Paul Taylor, Chief Content Officer, e.Republic, Inc.

Paul W. Taylor, Ph.D., is the Chief Content Officer for e.Republic, Inc. Previously, Dr. Taylor served as the Chief Strategy Officer for the Center for Digital Government. Prior to joining the Center, Dr. Taylor served as Deputy State CIO in Washington State.

5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

• Reception - State Museum

Open Government in the Digital Age Summit, Albany, New York, 19 March 2010

If you're interested in electronic records, digital preservation, and government accountability and transparency, you'll want to attend this event if at all possible. I'll post the full agenda as soon as possible (we're awaiting final confirmation from a couple of speakers), but if you know you can make it to Albany, New York on 19 March 2010, by all means register now! NB: although registration is required, this event is free.

In support of Governor David A. Paterson’s commitment to increased transparency and openness in government, the New York State Chief Information Officer/Office for Technology and the New York State Archives cordially invite you to attend the . . .

Friday, March 19, 2010
8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
New York State Cultural Education Center – Clark Auditorium
Reception to Follow

This Summit, which is free and open to the public, will feature an opening address by David S. Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States.

Paul Taylor, Chief Content Officer, e. Republic, Inc., will present the closing address.

Panel discussions will focus on “hot-button” issues in “open government” including:

• The Meaning of “Open Government” in the Digital Age
  
• Citizen Expectations for Access in the Digital Age
  
• Open Government Implications of Sunshine Laws and Archival Responsibilities

The summit includes additional speakers and panelists of national stature as well as representatives from the highest levels of government, academia, research and industry.

Please visit http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/245446/open-government-registration to register for this exciting event!

Please register by March 12, 2010 as space is limited. An email confirming your registration will be sent to you.

If you have any questions regarding this event, please contact Terry Jovanovic at (518) 473-5115 or terry.jovanovic[at]cio.ny.gov.

Gartner: growing need for digital archivists

Here's an interesting tidbit: information technology research and consulting firm Gartner predicts that evolving business needs will compel enterprise IT managers to fill four emerging information management roles -- either by establishing new positions within their units and expanding their recruitment pools or by establishing alliances within the enterprise:

Business Information Managers who can manage the operations of both a business unit and the IT that supports the unit.

Enterprise Information Architects who can add structure and context and thus increase the efficiency and reusability of information resources.

Legal/IT Hybrids who can create "policies and schedules, help design and execute discovery exercises for regulators, and mediate between legal and IT departments." Records managers, in particular, ought to pay attention to this one: according to Gartner VP and Distinguished Analyst Debra Logan

IT leaders with responsibility for information management have been in a stalemate for more than five years over what to do about legacy information, how long information should be kept, and what the legal precedent is for doing so . . . . The lawyers won't tell companies what to do, but they won't listen to anyone but other lawyers. The records managers want to implement retention schedules as they did in the paper world, and IT departments just want someone to tell them what to do with all the e-mail that is bringing their exchange servers to their knees and all the personal folders clogging the storage devices.

Logan anticipates that security personnel who get some legal retraining or attorneys who receive some IT training will fill this role, which of course begs the question of what will happen to records managers. Will they be able to upskill by taking both IT and legal training, or will the IT professionals and the attorneys gradually eclipse them? As someone who firmly believes that records managers possess a distinctive and valuable perspective and set of skills, I'm firmly hoping for the former.

Digital archivists will "appraise, arrange and preserve digital records for legal and regulatory purposes," and -- check this out, all you electronic records archivists and info science grad students -- Gartner projects that by 2012, approximately 15 percent of corporations will "add someone in a digital-archivist role"; in 2009, less than 1 percent of companies did so. According to Debra Logan, the need for digital archivists is great:

Organisations typically have vast quantities of records, which require specialist expertise to access, appraise and preserve . . . . This isn't a job for conscientious users to perform if they have time; it requires training and expertise. If you have never heard of persistent uniform resource locators (PURLs), don't know what PREservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies (PREMIS) is and are unaware that there are reasons why Portable Document Format (PDF) is not a suitable preservation format for e-mail, you need a digital curator.

Gartner explicitly notes that candidates for digital archivist positions "can be found in library and information science (LIS) schools." If its projections pan out, those of you in grad school might start seeing more and more corporate recruitment efforts. Interestingly, Gartner notes that "existing employees nearing the end of their careers" might also make good digital archivists, so those of us already actively involved in electronic records and digital curation work might find that our professional literature is getting more and more attention -- and that seasoned IT professionals are turning up in LIS courses and continuing education workshops.

The next few years are going to be really interesting, aren't they? I'm kind of looking forward to it.

Sorry for the light blogging as of late, folks: I was sidelined by a nasty cold last week. Now that I'm starting to feel better, you'll see a little more activity around here.