SAA Records Management Roundtable hangout

On Friday, the Society of American Archivists' Records Management Roundtable (RMRT) sponsored a Google Hangout focusing on records management training and outreach.  Given that 2013 seems to be The Year l'Archivista Can't Get Her Act Together, it's probably not surprising that I neglected to post about this event in advance.  However, a recording of the hangout is readily available on YouTube -- and embedded above.

As is so often the case with Web-based training, the hosts ran into some technical difficulties.  Two of the people who were scheduled to take part in this hangout -- Dan Noonan (Ohio State) and Joanne Kaczmarek (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) -- were unable to participate and there were a few other hiccups along the way.  However, moderator Brad Houston (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and panelists Peg Eusch (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Tom Wellman (Michigan State University) persevered and in the process shared some interesting information about creating and sustaining records management in sprawling, decentralized institutions.  Their insights will be of particular interest to records managers employed by public colleges and universities, but other archivists and records managers may also find them useful.

The participants also shared some resources that may be helpful to other archivists and records managers seeking to create records management training materials. Peg Eusch created the video above in order to convey basic records management information to University of Wisconsin-Madison employees who worked in distant offices or didn't have the time to attend in-person training.

Joanne Kaczmarek wasn't able to take part in the hangout, but Brad Houston shared the video she created to explain the basics of e-mail management to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign staff (unfortunately, this video is not embeddable).

RMRT is planning to host future Google Hangouts and will publicize them via the RMRT blog. And in the unlikely event that I manage to get my act together, I'll post about them here.

San Jose State SLIS colloquia

Every semester, San Jose State University's School of Library and Information Science offers a series of online colloquia that is freely accessible to anyone with an Internet connection and a modest array of hardware and software.  Information about the spring 2013 series has apparently been up for a bit, but I've been out of grad school so long that I've lost my once-profound connection to the rhythms of the academic calendar.  However, there's nothing like being appointed to a brand-new Staff Development Team to focus one's mind on free continuing education possibilities . . . .

Several of this semester's colloquia will be of interest to electronic records archivists and other information professionals seeking to preserve born-digital content.  Three of them will take place next week, and the fourth will occur in April:

Looking Back on the Preserving Virtual Worlds Projects
Henry Lowood, Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections and Film & Media Collections in the Stanford University Libraries 
Monday, 25 February 2013, 6:00-7:00 PM PST
This colloquium will be held in SJSU SLIS's Second Life virtual campus.  (You will need to establish a Second Life account and learn the basics of finding SLIS's "island" in order to attend.)

Digital Preservation for the Rest of Us: What's in it for Librarians and Library Users
Philip Gust, Stanford University -- Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (LOCKSS) program
Tuesday, 26 February 2013, 12:00-1:00 PM PST
This colloquium will be held online via Collaborate Web conferencing (set-up info)

The Next Major Challenge in Records Management is Already Here: Social Media
Anil Chawla, Founder & CEO, ArchiveSocial
Tuesday, 26 February 2013, 6:00-7:00 PM PST
This colloquium will be held online via Collaborate Web conferencing (set-up info)

Professional Ethics for Records and Information Professionals
Norman Mooradian, VP of Information and Compliance, CookArthur Inc. 
Tuesday, 16 April 2013, 6:00-7:00 PM PST
This colloquium will be held online via Collaborate Web conferencing (set-up info)

If scheduling conflicts keep you from taking part in a colloquium you wish to attend, don't worry:  SLIS regularly posts Webcasts of completed colloquia on its website.

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.

NARA releases 2011 records management assessment

Since 2009, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has conducted annual surveys of federal government agencies' records management practices.  All of these surveys have revealed that electronic records management is a particular challenge for the federal government, and the 2011 assessment, the results of which NARA released earlier this week, is no exception.  Although NARA identified some modest successes, most notably increased transfers of archival electronic records, it's plain that management of electronic records remains an area of particular concern.  NARA found that:

< snip >

• Many respondents do not know or understand key terms and concepts pertaining to electronic records;
• Many respondents consider various aspects of electronic records management to be the purview of information technology staff;
• A significant number of agencies do not have migration procedures in place to ensure that electronic records are retrievable and usable to conduct agency business;
• Many respondents believe that media neutral records schedules eliminate the need for records management policies and procedures specific to electronic records;
• A significant number of agencies use backup tapes, which NARA does not consider a recordkeeping system, to preserve electronic documents and e-mail records;
• A third of agencies are using an ERMS [Electronic Records Management System] or RMA [Records Management Application] to manage their electronic records;
• Over 40 percent of agencies use e-mail archiving applications to manage e-mail messages . . . .

< /snip >

These findings are depressing but not particularly surprising.  Electronic records management remains a real challenge for many public- and private-sector organizations.  I would be willing to bet that the feds are actually ahead of most (but by no means all) state and local governments, and I suspect that many corporations -- even those whose stock in trade is digital information -- are similarly challenged. Earlier this week, I blogged about the near-disaster that Pixar (which should be applauded for its candor) experienced, and Twentieth-Century Fox and Paramount have discarded or lost digital files that have monetary and artistic value.  A host of other corporations are probably hoping that their records and information management nightmares remain out of the public eye.

What does NARA propose to do about the sorry state of federal records management?  Appendix I of the recently released report offers a detailed plan of action, and I encourage you to read it -- and the rest of the report -- in its entirety.  However, I will say that I'm particularly pleased that NARA wants agencies to incorporate records management plans -- with benchmarks and resource allocations -- into their annual budget submissions to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).  I'm also glad that NARA to work with OMB to ensure that records management and archival functions are incorporated into new electronic recordkeeping systems and into the federal "IT governance process."  When a fiscal control entity demands something, government agencies tend to listen.

Tomorrow: San Jose State online colloquium

San Jose State University's School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) regularly offers online colloquia that highlight issues and strategies of interest to librarians, archivists, and records managers. Tomorrow's presentation, "Social Enterprises: A Changing Information Landscape," will be given by Don Burke of the U.S. Department of Energy. Burke will focus on how new collaborative tools and the work norms they foster will "finally break the paradigm of paper as the fundamental container of information." He will also discuss "some of the opportunities and challenges those changes have on traditional ideas of information management, records management, learning, and communication."

Mr. Burke's presentation will begin at 5:00PM Pacific Time (8:00PM Eastern Time). There is no charge to take part in this colloquium, and you don't have to register in advance. All you need to do is go to this Web page shortly before the colloquium starts, scroll down, and click on the "Live URL" for Mr. Burke's presentation. (N.B.: SLIS uses Blackboard Collaborate, which will install some Java files onto your computer. You may want to read the Student Guide to Using Collaborate before you participate in this colloquium.)

ARMA International and San Jose State records management Web events

If you're searching for low-cost professional development opportunities, trying to figure out how to manage and preserve social media content, or seeking to develop workable records management policies, check out these upcoming online events.

First, Dr. Patricia C. Franks, coordinator of the Master of Archives and Records Administration (MARA) degree program at the San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science (SLIS), will facilitate an ARMA International webinar, Records Management Policies in a Social Media World, later this month, that will focus on practical tools and strategies for managing social media records. Those who complete this webinar will be able to:

• Analyze the impact of various social media technologies on records management
• Apply current records retention schedules to records residing in social networking sites
• Identify and use existing tools to capture and manage social media records.
  

This webinar will be available online from 14-29 November 2011 and is free to both ARMA International members and non-members alike, but you must register no later than 25 November 2011 in order to access it.

I heard Dr. Franks speak about strategies for managing social media records at an ARMA Central New York meeting in October 2010, and I was really, really impressed. I refrained from blogging about it only because I was coming down with what turned out to be a really rotten cold; by the time I recovered, I wasn't 100 percent sure that my notes and memories were complete and accurate. I'm really looking forward to this webinar, and I hope that you check it out as well.

Second, SLIS itself is making an upcoming MARA guest lecture available live via the Web. On 14 November 2011 at 1:00 PM PST, Fred Diers, vice president and general manager of GRM's Solutions Group, will discuss "How to Create a Credible Retention and Information Governance Package." Mr. Diers will discuss:

• Proven steps to develop a retention schedule that is realistic and sustainable
  
• How to reduce the risk of litigation, government investigations, and audits

Instructions for viewing this lecture online via Elluminate (and for accessing recorded Webcasts of past SILS events) are available here.

E-mail management, part one

A few days ago, I attended a Central New York ARMA event at which David O. Stephens analyzed the Top Ten Issues Driving Records Management Today. As might be expected, Stephens devoted a lot of attention to the challenges posed by electronic records, and I was particularly struck by his strategy for improving the management of e-mail.

Stephens noted that e-mail is now the dominant form of business communication: more than 60 percent of electronic business documents are transmitted as e-mail attachments, and up to 60 percent of business-critical information is stored in the messaging environment. However, IT departments struggling to keep e-mail systems operational typically purge all messages after a relatively short time (e.g., 90 days) or force end users to limit the number of messages stored in the system. End users who need to retain older messages must either save them to an "archive" on a local or shared hard drive or print them out.

From a legal discovery standpoint, these practices are profoundly troubling: retaining messages that could have been disposed of increases an organization's legal exposure, combing through individual e-mail archives, paper printouts, or backup tapes is time- and resource-intensive, and overlooking an obscure archive or tape stored offsite can have devastating consequences.

Stephens also pointed out that the orthodox records management approach to e-mail -- having end users match the content of individual messages to a specific records series and organize the messages accordingly -- is, quite simply, a recipe for failure. Unfortunately, too many records managers still believe that end users must be responsible for managing their own e-mail.

Stephens asserted that individual messages fall into one of three categories -- short-term value, medium-term value, and long-term value -- and treating each category as follows:

• Short-term. This category comprises messages of transitory value. Users should be trained to identify such messages and to delete them from their mailboxes on a daily basis. Most users will have to devote 10-15 minutes a day to doing so, and supervisors should support and encourage this practice.
• Medium-term. Messages not deleted by users should be classified as having routine business value and should be automatically transferred to an e-mail archiving system at regular intervals. These messages should be retained in the e-mail archiving system for 3-7 years depending upon the organization's resources and needs; 3 years is generally the minimum retention period needed to satisfy legal requirements, but organizations that opt for a more conservative approach may opt to keep e-mail for 5-7 years.
• Long-term: The number of employees who send or receive messages that should be retained for more than 3-7 years is relatively small, and the total number of messages that warrant lengthy retention is also small. Employees who are likely to send or receive such messages should be taught how to identify them and to either print them out or transfer them to an electronic records management (ERM) system.
  

As Stephens points out, this approach isn't perfect: some employees simply won't identify and delete messages of transitory value, and some employees who send and receive messages that have long-term retention needs won't consistently identify them and remove them from the messaging environment. However, it is a vast improvement upon current practice: it relieves end users of all responsibility for managing messages of routine business value, relieves IT and legal staff of the obligation to go through backup tapes and those pesky individual e-mail archives, and ensures that messages that have reached the end of their retention period won't hang around and increase the organization's legal exposure.

The only problem that I have with Stephens's approach is its reliance upon technology -- not because I believe that e-mail archiving systems and ERM systems are inherently deficient but because many records managers will find it hard to justify their purchase, particularly in the current economic climate. In the absence of pressing e-discovery concerns or regulatory requirements, governments and a substantial number of non-profit and corporate bodies will no doubt continue to classify e-mail archiving systems and electronic recordkeeping systems as second- or third-tier priorities.

Moreover, in some instances, organizations that see the need for these IT investments may have difficulty finding products that truly meet their needs. Owing to the market dominance of Microsoft Enterprise/Outlook, users of Enterprise/Outlook systems can select from a wide array of compatible e-mail archiving products. Lotus Notes users also have a decent number of choices, but users of other systems have fewer options. Users who are outsourcing their e-mail to the cloud may well be dependent upon their cloud service providers.

I nonetheless hope that records managers embrace this approach and start pressing their employers to make the requisite IT investments. Stephens noted that when we get snail mail at home, we toss the junk mail, put the magazines on the coffee table or nightstand, and place the bills in our "to-do" pile, but we don't put any of this stuff back in the mailbox. Why, then, are we storing e-mail in our inboxes? We need to start asking senior managers and IT personnel this question and pushing them for a better answer.

Government social media records

Local, state, and federal governments are increasingly using social media to convey important information and to solicit feedback from citizens. However, governments and officials are still struggling to adapt to a Web 2.0 world. Michigan, for example, is actually taking down some social media content as a result of legal considerations and resource limitations. U.S. Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have recently learned that citizen feedback isn't limited to "likes" or approval. At this moment, U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) is probably wishing that he had never gotten a Twitter account. And Kent County, Delaware has recently issued a policy that bars employees from posting negative comments about their colleagues or county government -- whether via county-owned computers while at work or via their own computers and cell phones while off the clock .

What to do? I can't help you strike the right balance between the need to present an appropriate face to the public and the free speech rights of your employees -- the courts will probably do that -- but if you're a government official or employee contemplating using social media, be sure to check out the following resources:

• Government Technology's Five Social Media Missteps to Avoid
• iDisaster 2.0's Top 36 Items to Include in Social Media Policies
• The Center for Technology in Government's Designing Social Media for Government: Eight Essential Elements, which contains links to a wide array of state and local government policies

Even a cursory glance at these resources will underscore the fact that, in most jurisdictions, social media content typically meets the statutory definition of a "public record" and must thus be managed properly. For tips on how to do so, consult the following:

• Patricia C. Franks's How Federal Agencies Can Effectively Manage Records Created Using New Social Media Tools
• The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration's NARA Bulletin 2011-02, Guidance on Managing Records in Web 2.0/Social Media Platforms

At present, just about everyone seems to agree that most social media content has a short retention period. Unfortunately -- but not surprisingly -- there is no consensus regarding how best to capture and preserve content that has enduring value. There are lots of tools out there, and all of them have different features and save content differently. Given that most social media content will likely be destroyed within a relatively short timeframe, this isn't as big a problem as it might be. However, I suspect that those of us charged with capturing and preserving content deemed archival may run into some preservation problems a few years down the road -- and I hope that the federal government's 2009

My own experience is limited to capturing content created by others, which poses some additional challenges: some social media capture tools are expressly designed to help people preserve their own content and require full login rights. In such a situation, use of a Web crawler may be the best approach. I've experimented -- with decidedly mixed results -- with using OCLC's Heritrix-based Web Harvester to capture Facebook, IdeaScale, Twitter, and YouTube content, and I know several people have had somewhat greater success with Heritrix-based Archive-It service. If you're interested in exploring Web crawling of social media content, check out this nice list of Web crawling software and services.

If you're looking to preserve your own content, other options are available:

• Several low- and no-cost tools that support capture and archiving of one's own Facebook and Twitter content are out there. For more information, consult April Edmonds's superb overview.
• TwapperKeeper enables you to capture and preserve tweets (i.e., individual Twitter posts) that contain specified hashtags or keywords. Using this tool to capture all of the tweets created by a specific office may be a challenge, but it can be used to capture all of the tweets related to a specific subject or event. Sadly, the "download and export" and "API" components features present within the Web-based version of TwapperKeeper were recently removed at the behest of Twitter. However, it's still possible to install an open source version of the software that still includes these features on your own server.
  
• A growing number of software companies, among them Arkovi, Backupify, LiveOffice, Smarsh, Sonian, and Symantec, are creating social media archiving tools or incorporating them into larger e-mail archiving products. If you're already using an e-mail archiving product, investigate whether it also supports social media archiving. If you're not, a stand-alone commercial product or service may meet your needs.

Finally, please note that, at present, the imperative to manage state and local government social media records may conflict with the terms of service agreements governing usage of social media services such as Facebook or Twitter; in many instances, these agreements limit the extraction or repurposing of content. The federal government has negotiated special agreements with many social media service providers, and the National Association of State Chief Information Officers has negotiated a model Terms of Service agreement for state and local government Facebook users and is currently seeking to develop similar agreements with other social media service providers, but it's likely going to be some time before the legal issues that might affect our ability to manage social media records are resolved conclusively.

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.

New NARA guidance re: Web 2.0 and social media records

Late last week, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration released a long-anticipated bulletins concerning management of records created as a result of federal agency usage of Web 2.0 and social media tools to conduct government business. It details how to determine whether social media and Web 2.0 content meets the Federal Records Act definition of a government record, highlight the records management challenges particular to Web 2.0 and social media records, and outline how agencies can address some of these challenges. It also stress that agencies are responsible for managing records that are housed by third-party service providers.

If you're interested in managing or preserving government social media and Web 2.0 content, be sure to check out this bulletin. I'll be giving several of my colleagues a heads-up about it.

CMSWire SAA 2010 recaps

Six of the forty-six Louis Saint-Gaudens centurions standing guard over the Main Hall of Union Station, Washington, DC, 15 August 2010, 11:42 AM.

FYI, Mimi Dionne has written excellent recaps of four sessions held at the 2010 joint CoSA-NAGARA-SAA meeting for CMSWire magazine:

• #saa10: Is Structured Data Essential for Effective Archival and Discovery? (Session 102, Structured Data Is Essential for Effective Archival Description and Discovery: True or False?
• #saa10: The Cloud - Opportunity or Risk for Records Managers? (Session 202, Content in the Cloud: Opportunity or Risk for Records Managers?)
  
• E-Discovery and Records Professionals: Overcoming the Digital Tsunami #saa10 (Session 402, E-Discovery and Records Professionals: Overcoming the Digital Tsunami)
  
• #saa10: Archival Preservation Environment Isn't Just a Bit of Storage (Session 501, Distributed Archival Custodial and Preservation Environments (DCAPE) Project: Status Report and Demonstration)

SAA 2010

View from the sixth floor, Washington Marriott Wardman Park, 14 August 2010, 6:55 AM. Washington National Cathedral is in the background.

The 2010 joint meeting of the Council of State Archivists (CoSA), the National Association of Government Archivists and Records Administrators (NAGARA), and the Society of American Archivists (SAA) has come to an end. Between working on my own presentation (which went pretty well) and being a bit under the weather on Thursday, I haven't had the chance to post anything here. Some of this year's presentations are freely available on the SAA Web site, more (my own included) will be added to the site shortly, and people have been tweeting up a storm about the meeting, so I'm not going to post any detailed session recaps this year. Instead, I'm going to offer up some of the most interesting insights and snippets of information I picked up at this year's meeting:

• Seth Shaw (Duke University): Archivists confronted with unfamiliar materials have an instinctive tendency to gravitate toward item-level description. Photography is an excellent example of this behavior, and it wasn’t until we were deluged with photographic materials that we began moving away from item-level description. Electronic records are another example, and we need to return to archival principles when dealing with them. (Session 104, Taking Scale Seriously: Practical Metadata Strategies for Very Large Digital Collections)

• John MacDonald (Information Management Consulting and Education): We need people who understand the evolving organizational landscape and its impact on recordkeeping and who know how to position themselves to support operational and strategic goals and priorities and individual needs of business lines and the enterprise, how to articulate records issues in business terms, and how to be seen as their organization’s “go-to” person for all records issues. How do we find these people? Do what human resources experts do: define the nature of records work, identify the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to do the work, develop competency profiles, assess the gap between those competency profiles and existing competencies, build recruitment strategies, develop training and education strategies, etc. (Session 302, So, Like, Byte Me: A Critical Response by Records Professionals to Born-Digital Records)

• Adrian Cunningham (National Archives of Australia): The International Council of Archives is working to reconcile the varied national electronic recordkeeping standards (e.g., DOD 5015.2) , and the results of this project have been been submitted for fast-track approval by ISO, the international standards body. (Session 302, So, Like, Byte Me: A Critical Response by Records Professionals to Born-Digital Records)

• Lisa Weber (National Archives and Records Administration): The Buddhist faith holds that life means suffering, that the origin of suffering is attachment, and that the cessation of suffering is attainable. Records professionals suffer because they are attached to the concept of preservation. However, all records are decaying -- sometimes slowly, and sometimes quickly. We need to think of digital preservation as a series of handoffs to the future and avoid falling into the trap of thinking that everything is too difficult or that we need to build perfect systems; the middle path -- neutral, upright, and unbiased -- is what we should seek. We need to act, observe, and learn, then act, observe, and learn. (Session 302, So, Like, Byte Me: A Critical Response by Records Professionals to Born-Digital Records)

• Victoria Lemieux (University of British Columbia): Traditionally, keyword searching and linear review has been the accepted approach to e-discovery. However, this approach is not scalable. Attorneys and others have been exploring a number of alternatives, including visual analysis, the science of analytic reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces. It facilitates processing of massive sets of data, produces quick answers, and facilitates discovery of the unexpected. It originated in the scientific community and has moved into business intelligence, fraud detection, and other fields, and now it’s moving into e-discovery -- particularly when e-mail is involved. To date, a lot of visual analysis focuses on social networks, but it can also be used to create cluster representations of content. Visual analysis isn't perfect and has yet to be tested in court, but research suggests that doing a “first pass” using visual analysis and then doing keyword searching and linear review is a highly effective approach. (Session 402, E-Discovery and Records Professionals: Overcoming the Digital Tsunami)

• Jason Baron (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration): Researchers have discovered that keyword and Boolean searches fail to retrieve substantial numbers of documents responsive to e-discovery requests. (Session 402, E-Discovery and Records Professionals: Overcoming the Digital Tsunami)

• Chien-Yi Hou (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) demonstrated a prototype of the Distributed Archival Custodial and Preservation Environments (DCAPE) system. He used it to detect a virus in a test batch of records submitted to the system, move files from his laptop to a storage location in North Carolina, and did some other cool stuff. (Session 501, Distributed Archival Custodial and Preservation Environments (DCAPE) Project: Status Report and Demonstration)
  

• Juan Williams's son once asked him, "What's the biggest building in Washington?" Wiliams named the Capital and several other buildings, but his son kept telling him he was wrong. After Williams exasperatedly gave up, his son told him the answer: "The National Archives, because that's where all the stories are." (Plenary III)

Illinois Electronic Records Act

Well, this is interesting: on 28 July, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed a new state Electronic Records Act into law. This new law specifies that electronic records have "the same force and effect" as records created in other formats and that they are subject to the state's Freedom of Information law and encourages state agencies to create and transmit electronic records provided that doing so does not "jeopardize the efficient operation of state government."

Most significantly, it establishes a new Electronic Records Advisory Board composed of the following people (or their designees):

• State Treasurer
• Secretary of State (the Illinois State Archives is part of the Office of Secretary of State)
• Governor
• Attorney General
• State Comptroller
• Director of Central Management Services
• President of the University of Illinois
• Director of the Bureau of Communication and Computer Services, Department of Central Management Services
• Director of the State Archives
• Secretary of Transportation

The law charges the board with producing, no later than 1 July 2010, a report "recommending policies, guidelines and best practices" relating to the following electronic records management issues:

• Long-term maintenance of electronic records
• Management of electronic files in a networked environment
• Recordkeeping issues in information system development
• Log file management
• Management and preservation of Web-based records
• Retention periods for electronic records

Once the board's report is finished, the Secretary of State must post the resulting policies, guidelines, and best practices on its Web site and distribute them to all Illinois state agencies. Within six months of the report's completion, agencies must review the board's "recommendations and take all possible steps consistent with those recommendations to enhance the use of electronic means of creating, transmitting, and retaining State records."

There's a lot to like about this legislation. I'm a big believer in the value of interagency collaboration and cooperation (I helped to write a report recommending that a similar committee be established in New York State), and Illinois's Electronic Records Advisory Board will get a lot more attention and respect than any effort led solely by the Illinois State Archives. Agencies are going to find it pretty difficult to disregard the combined guidance of the Governor's Office, the state IT agency, the State Archives, the Attorney General, and the state's chief financial officials, and as a result the state is likely going to see some real improvements in the management of its electronic records.

However, I am dismayed by a couple of provisions embedded within the law; when reading what follows, please bear in mind that I have no knowledge of the developments that led to its passage and that there may be really good reasons why it is written as it is. First, the board has been given only 11 months to produce its report and agencies have only 6 months to review and implement the board's recommendations. The issues that the board must address will require extensive research and solicitation of input from state agencies and, in all likelihood, people who do business with the state and the general public (the law encourages e-mail transmission of information formerly sent via U.S. Mail). As a result, the board's members are going to have to work at a breakneck pace and, in all likelihood, devote less attention to some key issues than they would otherwise. Agencies running large or legacy information systems will likely find it very difficult to implement some recommendations within the allotted timeframe. In my humble opinion, it's better to move a little more slowly and do things properly.

Second, the board will cease to exist after it finishes producing the report. Electronic records issues are not "fix-them-once-and-then-forget-them" concerns, and, in my view, ongoing cross-agency communication and collaboration is imperative. Giving the board a couple of years to produce its recommendations (or a series of recommendations released at regular intervals) and then a year or so to answer questions from agencies and then produce a follow-up report outlining successes, lessons learned, and emerging areas of concern might have been a better alternative. However, Illinois has a multi-agency State Records Commission with regulatory powers, and the overlap between the membership of this commission and that of the Electronic Records Advisory Board is considerable; as a result, the board's dissolution may be less of a problem than it would otherwise.

Despite these concerns, I think that this legislation is a really promising first step. Even if the Electronic Records Advisory Board isn't reconstituted after 1 July 2011, its report will almost certainly produce tangible improvements in the state's management of electronic records. Moreover, personal experience suggests that the shared struggle to produce a major report in a very short amount of time will pave the way for ongoing communication and informal collaboration between board members.

Seeing how this legislation pans out is going to be interesting. I'm really looking forward to reading the board's final report and seeing how agencies implement its recommendations. I also hope that other states (e.g., New York) enact similar laws.

NYAC/ARTNY: E-mail management and preservation

The Hudson River, as seen from Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park, Poughkeepsie, New York, 4 June 2010.

This post concerns something that happened 11 days ago, which I suppose makes me a full-fledged slow blogger . . . .

I noted a little while ago that I thought that Session 1, which focused on the Archivists’ Toolkit, was the highlight of the recent joint meeting of the New York Archives Conference/Archivists Roundtable of Metropolitan New York. However, Session 7, Management and Preservation of E-mail, was a very, very close second.

Nancy Adgent of the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) got things rolling by discussing one of my favorite preservation projects, the Collaborative Electronic Records Project (CERP) undertaken by the RAC and the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA).

Using RAC-held Microsoft Outlook .pst files e-mail in a variety of formats and SIA e-mail in a variety of formats Microsoft Outlook .pst files, the CERP team developed separate workflows that took into account their institutional differences. They also tested off-the-shelf conversion tools and and developed a parser that converts e-mail messages and attachments to an XML-based preservation format; over 99 percent of the 89,000 testbed messages parsed successfully.

Along the way, they learned a host of lessons:

• Transfers from active systems go most smoothly when an archivist and an IT person work together.
• Minor problems will arise. Some attachments that should have accompanied messages were missing, most likely because they were stored in a central server and the messages were copied from individual users’ desktops. The dates of some individual messages were replaced by the date they were bundled into a .pst file, and the name of the author was sometimes changed to that of the archivist who examined the file. Most strikingly, the installation of new GIS software on testbed equipment changed the display of some message fonts.
• E-mail requires some processing before it’s converted to XML. The CERP team used a variety of off-the-shelf tools in order to do so.
• Different anti-virus tools sometimes yield different results. The CERP team used Kaspersky and Symantec, each of which detected a few viruses that the other didn’t find.
• Searching file names is not a foolproof means of identifying “sensitive” materials. Although both repositories conducted such searches and either removed sensitive information from access copies or documented its existence in finding aids and metadata, they realized that some sensitive information was still lurking in the messages.

Paul Szwedo of the New York State Office of Real Property Services (ORPS) then discussed how his 300-person agency began managing its e-mail. To the best of my knowledge, ORPS has made a lot more progress than any other New York State agency, and I hope that other agencies follow its example.

Prompted by recent changes in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, ORPS decided that staff had to take responsibility for their own information. It first reviewed, updated, and consolidated its e-mail, the Internet, and IT equipment use policies so that they harmonized with the state’s information security policy, ethics law, and relevant executive orders. It then amended its e-mail retention policy, which now mandates that users who want to keep their e-mail longer than 120 days must move it into a centralized archive.

ORPS already owned EMC’s DiskXtender archiving product and purchased the EmailXtender (now SourceOne) component (which the Obama White House also uses) for e-mail archiving. Instead of keeping every message, the agency opted to create folders based on length of retention period and rely upon staff to file messages appropriately. Folder access is customized by unit, so units that create records with longer retention periods can manage them properly and those that don’t can’t keep records forever.

After the system was installed, ORPS began providing training and guidance to staff. Staff had eight weeks to manage their existing e-mail, and Lotus Notes’ save-to-local-drive option was disabled. Project leaders sent out reminders to staff and stressed that managers were responsible for ensuring that unit records were managed properly and that unit staff knew how to do so.

Paul identified a number of key success factors:

• Backing of senior management. (In a brief conversation we had after the session, he indicated that senior managers’ support was the single most important factor. If only figuring out how to secure the backing of senior management were as simple.)
• Policy development preceded implementation. Business needs should drive IT investment, not the other way around.
• Staff educated themselves via State Archives workshops and discussions with other agencies.
• Availability of funding
• Records management liaisons served as a test group, which facilitated identification of problems and prepared the liaisons to handle questions from other staff
• All tutorials, videos, and communications relating to the project were placed online

The challenges were nonetheless substantial:

• Turning a “save everything” organization into an organization that manages its information requires a lot of effort
• Some people saw e-mail management as a distraction from their “real” work
• Everyone wanted more time to review and sort messages
• Upper managers retired, resulting in loss of momentum
• Networking staff had other responsibilities thrust upon them
• People save e-mail for easy reference, and don’t necessarily think of it as a record

Project staff also learned several lessons along the way:

• Don’t assume people are paying attention. Despite repeated warnings and reminders, one person did not review and organize his/her messages and as a result lost all of them.
• Elicit concerns, and do so upfront if at all possible (As Fynette Eaton has pointed out, this is a key principle of change management)
• Weigh overhead against policy. On several occasions, ORPS had to tweak its policies because they were placing an undue burden on network personnel.

Christine Midwood of Iron Mountain Digital ended the session by highlighting how new products and services can help address the challenges associated with e-mail:

• Legal risks and discovery. New products can provide consistent, rapid search across email archives, apply litigation holds by message (and apply multiple holds to a given message), and manage e-discovery cases so that teams can access only those messages responsive to the case they’re working on.
• Expense. New products can apply retention schedules, streamline costs via outsourcing storage to a cloud environment (my take: the cloud isn’t ready for state and local government records), and consolidate archiving, business continuity, security, anti-virus, etc. functions into a single product.
• Data loss. Technology can provide a tight, documented chain of custody, capture complete delivery information, and consolidate or eliminate message files stored on individual users’ hard drives.
• Privacy. Software can now block or quarantine e-mail that contains prohibited or suspect content (e.g., Social Security Numbers) and provide role-based access to e-mail (whole message, metadata only, no access)
• Productivity. New products offer “continuity” features that minimize e-mail outages, eliminate e-mail quotas, and automate application of retention policies.

In response to a question from an audience member, she made a really interesting point: Iron Mountain and other vendors work with companies that are keenly aware of the risks of keeping information too long, and as a result they get few inquiries about how to handle e-mail that has a permanent retention period. She noted that allowing end users to sort and classify their own messages might open the door to permanent retention, but I suspect that something more (e.g., migration/conversion, preservation metadata) is going to be needed.

"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.

Open Government in the Digital Age Summit: David Ferriero

Approximately 150 people -- IT professionals, archivists and records managers, public policy experts, and journalists -- attended the Open Government in the Digital Age Summit jointly sponsored by the New York State Office of the Chief Information Officer/Office for Technology and the New York State Archives.

In lieu of a lengthy recap, I’m going to put up two or three shorter posts -- one centering on the keynote address delivered by David Ferriero, the 10th Archivist of the United States, and at least one other post highlighting the key threads of the day’s discussion. I have several reasons for doing so:

• I expect that all you archivists out there are at least a little curious about the new Archivist.
  
• Certain points and themes kept coming to the fore throughout the day, and it makes more sense to take a little time and tease them out than to do a session-by-session summary.
• I’m on vacation. I have some pretty intense sightseeing plans for the next few days -- which means that I need to break things up a bit and that posts about the Summit are likely going to alternate with posts about my travels. (Where am I? Come back tomorrow, and you’ll find out.)

First, however, a few words about “open government.” As a number of speakers and panelists pointed out, “openness” is commonly seen as being synonymous with transparency of operations and decision-making processes, accountability to citizens, and promotion of citizen participation in the creation of policy and development of services. Moreover, as several Summit participants noted as the day went on, open government requires an ongoing commitment to transparency and accountability -- and to ensuring that essential government information remains uncorrupted and accessible over the long term.

David Ferriero really helped to bring into focus the relationship between records and openness by stressing that if open government is your goal, you should focus on records management. In many respects, his point is obvious, but it’s all too often overlooked: how can you promise transparency and accountability if you can’t find the records that provide insight into government operations or policy development or can’t guarantee their completeness, accuracy, or integrity?

He then focused on the management of electronic records and the immense amount of work awaiting the federal government: a recent U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) survey of federal agencies revealed that agency records management and information technology staff, who really need to work together in order to manage electronic records appropriately, rarely do so. Moreover, almost every agency surveyed had records subject to a moderate or high risk of loss.

(Sadly, this situation isn’t unique to the federal government: the records management-IT disconnect is a big problem in New York State government and, judging from what I’ve heard from colleagues elsewhere, most other state and local governments are in the same boat. We’re all falling far short of the mark.)

Ferriero then discussed NARA’s own efforts to become more open and citizen-centered. Its Open Government Working Group, which is responsible for enhancing NARA’s ability to interact and collaborate with agency personnel and the general public, will post a formal plan for doing so on NARA’s Web site on 7 April. However, Ferriero gave us a preview of some of the recommendations that may appear in it:

• Establish an ongoing group charged with figuring out new ways of doing business and increasing openness
• Retool NARA’s strategic plan to include open government
• Create staff-only Web 2.0 tools that will enable NARA personnel to share ideas and collaborate more effectively
• Seek to engage the public via Facebook and other popular social media sites -- in essence, go where users are instead of waiting for users to come to NARA’s site
• Redesign NARA’s Web site with end users in mind, update the records management section, incorporate an “Ask an Archivist” interactive feature, and set up a wiki so that researchers can share the results of their research
• Sponsor an Apps for Archives competition (akin to the Apps for Army and other federal competitions) competition for development of applications that will improve access to NARA’s holdings
• Realign digitization priorities and give users ability to see what’s in the digitization queue
• Continue publishing high-value datasets in open formats on www.data.gov -- in essence, move from providing services to providing a platform for others to develop services
• Investigate the possibility of developing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Web dashboard on FOIA services and responsiveness
• Actively declassify records and streamline declassification protocols
• Create an open government Web portal

Ferriero also took questions from the audience and offered up a number of fascinating tidbits:

• NARA is working with the secretaries of the Senate and the House of Representatives to ensure that draft versions of bills are captured and preserved appropriately
• NARA holds about 1 million e-mails from the Reagan administration, 250 million e-mails from the administration of George H.W. Bush, and anticipates getting approximately 1 billion e-mails from the Obama administration. Several of the people sitting around me gasped audibly.
• In an effort to breach the records management-IT divide, he’s convening the first-ever joint meeting of the federal CIO Council and the federal Records Management ??
• Like everyone else, NARA is still trying to figure out how to preserve Web sites, which change constantly; however, it’s plain that sporadic crawls such as those performed by the Internet Archive aren’t sufficient. (I agree; however, it’s just about the only practical approach available to most archivists at this time.)
• When developing new online tools and services, you really need to focus on users’ circumstances and preferences, not your own internal uses of technology; if you don't, you're not really committed to openness. For example, only fifty percent of New York City residents have home Internet connections, but most of them have cell phones -- and want mobile services and applications.
  

The last couple of questions centered on e-mail, BlackBerries, and cell phones, all of which pose particular challenges for archivists and records managers.

• Even the most conscientious employees occasionally use them to send and receive personal messages. Ferriero noted that, in the absence of automated tools that can pick out personal messages, it’s probably easier to keep everything than to conduct a manual review of messages. As an archivist who works with a small but growing volume of e-mail “archives,” I agree wholeheartedly: weeding these archives would be a time-consuming, soul-sucking task, and the resulting reduction in storage costs simply wouldn’t justify the investment of staff time.
• Determining which messages to keep is a particular challenge. I disagree with the approach that Ferriero advocated -- keeping everything -- but I understand why someone charged with upholding the Presidential Records Act and acutely cognizant of the research potential of routine correspondence would advance this argument. There has to be a way to preserve an adequate historical record -- sampling (by individual or by agency), targeting the accounts of key personnel -- without committing to saving every message that passes through an agency’s e-mail servers.

Ferriero’s speech was really well received, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how NARA evolves under his direction. The next few years ought to be really interesting.

AC+erm "mass peer-review": your help is needed

If you have expertise in electronic records management (ERM), the researchers leading the University of Northumbria's AC⁺erm Project seek your input. Your feedback will help to advance ERM research -- and you'll probably want to check out some of the ERM case studies and case examples that project staff have identified.

Would you like to help us in a ‘mass peer-review’ exercise to help validate some of our research findings?AC⁺erm—Accelerating the pace of positive Change in electronic records management—is a research project being conducted by the School of Computing, Engineering & Information Sciences at Northumbria University, under the leadership of Prof Julie McLeod. It is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

As part of the project, we have carried out a systematic literature review (SLR) of journal literature on electronic records management (ERM) published from 1996 to February 2009.

We searched for the topic "electronic records management" in the following databases: LISA, EBSCO, Web of Science. (LISA covers information studies and technology, library science and publishing; EBSCO’s Business Source Premier coverage includes business, management, engineering, law, health and art; Web of Science citation indexes cover 9,000 journals across the sciences, social sciences & the arts and the humanities).

We have reviewed 1,189 from a total of 1,756 items and selected, to date, 536.

Selected outputs from the SLR data have been used to inform the initial questions for our Delphi studies and made available on our project website.

We would welcome feedback on our SLR activity to see if we have adequately identified the relevant literature. We have chosen a subset of the total number of results for validation – this subset comprises journal articles that disseminate the results of case studies and case examples (a total of 104 items).

If you are willing to share your knowledge and expertise, you can do so by downloading a Word document from our website, completing the response fields, and returning it by email to eb.acerm[at]northumbria.ac.uk The document contains the full list of 104 articles along with brief descriptions of the cases and can be found at http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/sd/academic/ceis/re/isrc/themes/rmarea/erm/slr/

Thank you for your help!

Rachel Hardiman, BA (Hons), MSc

On behalf of the AC⁺erm Project Team
School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences
Northumbria University
Pandon Building
Camden Street
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE2 1XE

Tel: 0191 243 7650
e-mail: r.hardiman[at]northumbria.ac.uk

AC⁺erm Project website: www.northumbria.ac.uk/acerm
AC⁺erm Project bloghttp://www.acerm.blogspot.com/
Project on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Northumbria_RM

This message was posted to the Management and Preservation of Electronic Records listserv earlier today. I usually refrain from reposts of this sort, but this project is really interesting and I wanted to pass on Ms. Hardiman's request.