tfpl blog

SharePoint versus EDRM

A delegate on one of my recent EDRM training courses told me that his organisation (a large financial institution) had been planning their EDRM implementation for years and were just about to start their roll-out when they received some unwelcome news.  Another part of their organisation had purchased SharePoint. 'What should I do?' he asked me.

EDRM systems and SharePoint are both competing for the same space and market (and as the above example shows, sometimes competing within the same organisation). But there are marked contrasts in the strengths, weaknesses and records management model behind the two types of system.

Strengths
The strength of EDRM is the control it gives to organisations.  They can ensure that all their teams and departments store their documents and records within one organisational classification (fileplan). 

The strengh of SharePoint is the flexibility it gives to teams and workgroups:  a team can set up a team site or a project site within which they can have:

• their own document library to store their documents and records
• a calendar
• a bulletin board
• links to, and feeds from, other sites
• news and pictures etc.

Weaknesses
The achilles heal of EDRM is user acceptance.  The fact that teams are forced to store their records in an organisationaly defined structure brings with it the risk that teams and/or individuals will reject the structure and opt to store their documents elsewhere. Some EDRM implementations have been prematurely aborted due to lack of user-take up. 

The achilles heal of SharePoint is the overall coherence (or lack of it!) of the repository. Each document library inside each team site or project site is a world on its own.  There is no place to maintain an overall classification to bring together and make sense of all the records in the system.  My colleague Miles describes a typical SharePoint implementation as 'a tangled mess of websites, with document libraries popping up all over the place'

Speed of implementation
EDRM is notoriously slow to implement:  not just the time to configure and integrate the software, but the time taken to build the organisation's fileplan, and the time taken for the phased roll out to reach all parts of the organisation. 

SharePoint is not necessarily any easier than EDRM to configure, but once you have got it up and running teams can set up project sites and get working straight away.  Another colleague (John) describes project sites 'spreading like bindweed' as team after team sets them up.

Records management model
EDRM stems from a well worked through records management model, based on the International Records Management Standard and the statements of functional requirements issued by the National Archives (TNA 2002) and the European Union (MoReq).  Retention rules and access rules are linked to fileplan headings and passed down to the folders and records saved under those headings.

SharePoint has not attempted to meet the TNA 2002 or MoReq requirements (the strength of Microsoft's position in the market means it can prosper without them).  Instead SharePoint has its own records management model.  Rules can be defined whereby documents needed as records can be copied from document libraries in team sites, and sent to another type of site, called a records centre.  Retention rules can be applied to those documents copied to the records centre. 

I am sceptical about the value of the records centre in SharePoint.  It is an afterthought, a place where no-one visits and no work is done. A records graveyard rather than a trusted, referenced and used archive. 

Conclusions
I am no fan of the records management model behind SharePoint, but I must admit that the project site is a much more lively and interesting environment to work in than either the traditional hard copy file, or the electronic record folder in an EDRM.  My hopes are that we as a profession can:

• find ways of helping our organisations to structure and make sense of these team and project sites, rather than relying on the SharePoint's unproven Records Centre concept. 
• find ways of influencing Microsoft to improve the functionality of SharePoint in ways that make the above task easier.

SharePoint Summit

On April 1, 2008 TFPL are hosting a one-day conference in London at which practioners and consultants from a variety of UK organisations and sectors will share their experiences in using SharePoint for records management and collaborative working:  to see the programme and for details of how to sign up follow this link

Home-shoring!

Many thanks to Vivienne Winterman who reports from a conference entitled Mobile and flexible working in the public sector.

Flexible working is a key issue in helping central and local government meet 'transformational' targets.  With the reduction in office space being a key requisite to fulfil this initiative, staff need to work more flexibly away from the workplace - ideally from home.

The new term for this is 'home-shoring' as coined by Kevin Breach, a Senior Advisor from ACAS who spoke at the conference.  Changing the culture of both management and staff is key to the success of flexible working.   

TFPL has recently carried out reviews for several councils movng in this direction.  They have realised that access to both internally produced and externally published information at the desktop will be a key requirement to successful out of office working.  If staff can access well managed resources via the web/intranet it will be easy for them to adapt to working from home two or three days a week.

The requirements of EDRM and e-books and e-journals are forcing organisations to look closely at how they manage and share internal documents and how they procure and manage externally published information.  Organisations need to deliver these services centrally, reduce duplication of effort, time and costs and enable the workforce to work collaboratively whether they are in the office or elsewhere.

Cities of the future and records of the past

This lunchtime I went to see an interactive exhibition entitled 'the city of the future'  by Patrick Kieller.

When I got there I was confronted by five big screens, each showing black and white films from the BFI archive, each film shot in a city (London, Liverpool, Dublin etc) between 1895 and 1905.

Kieller's reasoning for this was that the best way to appreciate how different the future might be is to look at the past and gauge how different that was.

I use a similar logic when working out retention schedules for records.  Outside of some highly regulated functions (banking, accounting, health and safety etc.)  UK legislation has little or nothing to say about how long records should be kept.  Instead of asking people to look into the  unknown future I ask them to think back to the remembered past.  I ask them whether it would matter if they had no records of that particular type of work from 5 years ago.  Who would it matter to and why?  And would it bother those people if we didn't have those records from 10 years previously?

I saw the same types of people trudging across Blackfriars bridge on the 1895 film as I did when I walked back across it on my return to work.  On the film people were walking across the bridge in strange clothes, and it was odd watching the horse drawn vehicles, some with really slow lethargic nags and others with sprightly high stepping horses.    On the way back to work some of the people on the bridge were pressing funny little metal things to their ears whilst talking.

Enhancing your cv!

We hosted another free training event for our registered temporary staff last night.  Around 20 people heard consultants Jayne Eaton and Katy Crosse share hints and tips about revamping a cv.

The evening also included a mini cv surgery and advice on how to make an impression at interview.  Attendees were given a list of sample interview questions and a sample cv.

For more information about training events for temporary staff, contact katy.crosse@tfpl.com

Managing tomorrow's people - the future of work 2020

We are delighted to announce that Jackie Gittins, Director of HR Consultancy at PricewaterhouseCoopers, will address the inaugural TFPL Connect meeting, to be held at the RSA on February 21st 2008. 

In 2007, PwC undertook a scenario-based research project to explore the people management challenges of a variety of social, economic and population factors.  Jackie will outline the findings of the research, including the key themes and scenarios the researchers identified.

In addition, Kate Arnold of NHS Direct; Tony Sheenan of Ashridge Management College; Alun Davies of Lovells; and Alison Wellens of the Information Commissioner's Office will discuss the knowledge and information management challenges of Managing the future workforce. 

Google docs and the future of document management

Google docs is becoming the work-around of choice for people wanting to get around weaknesses or constraints of their organisation's document storage systems.

At recent training course I was told about:

• a charity where staff in the marketing department use Google docs to create and store their documents because it allows them to collaborate on documents with people from other parts of the charity (whereas their shared drive is restricted to deparmental silos)

And

• a bank with a very strong compliance and information security regime, where some colleagues were using Google Docs to create and store business documents in order that they could work on documents at home (corporate systems were were extremely slow to access remotely, and banned the sending of word documents as attachments to a web based e-mail address)

One one level the rise of Google docs is simply one large US corporation  battling another (Google versus Microsoft).  Google docs  is a less sophisticated version of Microsoft Word available via the web rather than from your organisation's servers. 

The interesting thing is that whereas Microsoft are using a traditional IT business model of selling software to organisations, Google are using a web 2.0 model.  Like other web 2.0 applications Google docs is aimed at individuals not at organisations, is free to individual users, depends for its success on achieving a critical mass of users, and wants to grow virally.

The one significant advantage it has over Microsoft Word is that I can invite anyone willing to get themselves a Google account to collaborate with me on one of my Google docs.  This gives Google Docs the potential to grow virally:  once someone has been invited to collaborate on one of my documents there is a high chance they will then use it to create their own documents, and in turn invite others to collaborate with them.

A further advantage to an individual of using Google docs for work documents is that they then retain access to these documents even after they have left their organisation.

The biggest weakness in Google docs is that although it allows a user to share documents with colleagues it does not allow them to share folders with colleagues.  It is not possible for a folder to be created on Google docs that all team members can access.  This means that teams are still dependant on their organisation's systems to capture and keep records of their work.

Here are two potential scenarios for how the future of document handling will go over the next five years: 

Document management in 2012:  Scenario 1: 

The functionality of free web applications like Google Docs and Gmail, and hotmail developed rapidly between 2007 and 2012.  Individuals started to use them for more and more business purposes, and to rely on their work provided applications less and less. 

By 2010 many organisations had ceased providing staff with e-mail accounts and in-boxes, and ceased providing personal storage areas on network servers or document management databases.  They saw little advantage in providing these facilities when the organisation could not access the material due to data protection considerations (and their staff preferred web-based alternatives anyway!)

Organisations concentrated instead on:

• providing staff with secure web connections for them to use their applications of choice to communicate and collaborate
• providing staff with a connection to an electronic records management system where staff could transfer or deposit those documents that they want stored as an organisational record.

Document management in 2012:  Scenario 2

By 2007 the web had already provided individuals with generic word processing packages and webmail which they could use instead of their organisation's systems.   

By 2010 generic collaborative software became freely available via the web, with functionality equivalent to those of the major software vendors. Groups of colleagues  could use these free applications to create a workspace/project site. They could then invite others (inside or outside the organisation) to join, collaborate on documents, and share news with each other.

Organisations ceased providing collaborative or records management systems in-house.  Instead they concentrated on ensuring that the organisation could identify, access and protect all of those workspaces/project sites in which work is conducted in their name.   

The nature of the contract between organisations and individuals has changed:

• In 2007 an organisation's IT department could decide whether or not to allow a particular member of staff or team to access and use a particular application or database hosted on the organisation's servers. 
• By 2012 it was down to the individual or team to decide whether or not to allow the organisation to access and share in the administration of their workspace/project site, hosted on the web.

Hello TFPL Connect!

Our NEW learning network brings together information and knowledge professionals from all sectors.  Free to join, we are also planning to host three large paid-for events this year.  The theme for this year's meetings will be 'The future of work'.

Our first meeting will take place on 21 February at the RSA.  Click here for more details about TFPL Connect.   

Bye bye Bath Club

We hosted the last ever Bath Club meeting at the end of 2007.  A packed house heard Alison Leahy and Steven Buckley speak about their experiences of implementing KM at London Borough of Southwark and Christian Aid respectively.  Both speakers focused on the cultural and collaborative changes that help ensure successful KM implementation. 

The evening was rounded off by Natalie Ceeney, Chief Executive of the National Archives, who outlined the objectives of the Knowledge Council as it seeks to ensure the appropriate management of information and knowledge across government. 

A full report on the evening's outcomes, written by Annabel Colley can be found here.

Information Management in 2008

As 2008 begins, TFPL consultants reflect on the projects we have worked on over the past 12 months and outline the key information challenges that our clients have asked us to address as a pointer to the trends for the coming year.

Content management
Our consultants were involved in several intranet redesign projects as well as taxonomy strategy and development projects. The common theme was intelligent information architecture,  making content better organised and described to bring it and users together in a more natural and efficient way – to the benefit of the business AND the user.

Intranets are key resources for organisations, and TFPL helped a number of national organisations review and redesign theirs to work both as a communications channel for the business and as an efficient business application, serving up everyday information.  This process needs skills to look at both the user-focused (i.e. the layout of pages) and the content-focused,( i.e. the metadata profiles and attendant controlled vocabularies) elements.

Taxonomies continue to be important:  there effective design allowing users to manage and navigate content systems and aids retrieval using search engines.  Extending these classification aspects with resource discovery and dynamic publishing of content we are beginning to allow Information Discovery with content related to other similar content through well created and managed metadata.

Aligned to information architecture work has been a growing need from organisations to manage the complex task of migrating unstructured web content from disparate sites into centrally managed content management systems.   We have managed content migrations for a large government deparment and a global law firm.  TFPL have developed a methodology to assist our clients through a content migration, covering:

1. content audit
2. migration planning
3. user review
4. automatic, rule-based migration
5. quality assurance

Knowledge management
There has been much interest this year in the development of information and knowledge strategies to support the business objectives resulting from changing trends in external economic, social and technical advances. These drivers have led to:

• Downsizing the workforce and workspace
• Flexible work patterns, with more and more staff working from home
• New technology (web 2.0) and more robust communication networks to improve knowledge sharing and learning across organisations

We have conducted information and knowledge audits and strategy development projects for government agencies, local councils, and the not-for-profit sector.  Organisations are reviewing how they manage and deliver information to ensure that K&IM strategies and services are aligned with business objectives.  They are looking to rationalise the procurement of published material and working to deliver internal information effectively as well as seeking to avoid silo working

Our consultants spend time talking to staff across the organisation, using a variety of methods to better understand:

• What information they require to carry out their jobs
• How they want to work
• How best they would prefer to access and use information 
• What where the key issues and barriers preventing them from doing so.

In nearly all of our client organisations we found that people were spending too much time trying to find the information ‘they knew was there somewhere’. . Clients were also interested in how other organisations have addressed these issues so that good practice methodology can be adopted straight away.

The range of our IM/KM work across all the sectors has enabled TFPL to share experience and know-how with our clients and to work with them to build a vision for information and knowledge management.. In many cases TFPL has gone on to support clients through the implementation and evaluation of the projects.

Information service reviews
We have worked with in-house information services to ensure that the services and products offered are fresh and relevant.  Challenges facing information services include:

• Detachment from target audiences
• Remoteness from senior management
• Hesitation over service development
• Subjective spending decisions

Records management

The demand for records management consultancy during 2007 remained very strong across the government sector and clearly re-emerged in the private sector as organisations realign their information and records management programmes to meet changing external demands and set out to realise the benefits of technologies. Building good RM practices into the electronic records management arena still poses a challenge for many and TFPL is supporting a number of EDRM designs and implementations.

Small to medium sized organisations are attracted by the Microsoft Sharepoint offering which is considered an attractive alternative to traditional RM applications and are showing increased interest in using collaborative and social media tools.

Bringing sense to the e-records environment still requires the understanding of the connectivity between the governance frameworks, information architecture, user friendly corporate fileplans with appropriate metadata frameworks and controlled vocabularies. TFPL is meeting the growing demand for making sense of and integrating legacy records into the new e-environment through migration and rationalisation of applications that hold records.  Developing and applying retention schedules for legal and regulatory compliance across all organisations has also featured in this year's consultancy projects.

2008 is widely expected to see a tightening of belts across all sectors.  In this climate, efficiency in business is essential and good decisions can only be taken with the right information at hand.  TFPL consultants can help your business put it's Information Management strategies and practices in order.