TFPL, Senior Records and Information Management Consultant
Have just
read a stimulating post by James Lappin on his blog examining the
possibilities of SharePoint for records management. Now, this is the
current hot topic (in RM circles at least) and revolves around the question of
whether SharePoint 2010 can provide the functionality (or some of the
functionality) of a conventional EDRMS. Microsoft claims it can but do
not, as James points out, intend to seek certification against DoD 5015.2 or
MoReq 2 and while SharePoint 2010 can do a form of records management, it is
records management as defined by Microsoft, not as defined by the international
records management community.
So exactly
what is this Microsoft version of records management? Well, the Records
Centre familiar to users of SharePoint 2007 is still there in 2010 and has some
additional features. Putting aside the question of how or how well it
works, the Records Centre offers the possibility of doing records management
the traditional way; that is, moving a digital object identified as a “record”
out of the care of its creator or custodian into a secure place managed on
behalf of the organisation. However, Microsoft then goes on to present an
alternative to the Records Centre by allowing users to “declare” records in
situ in a team site. Once declared, the records stay where they are
and do not have to be moved to the Records Centre. So, two models of
records management are now on offer: centralised vs. dispersed
control. How do we make sense of this?
Our answer
is…it depends. It depends on what sort of organisation you work for and
what, if any, records management you need. If you work for a global
energy company and are subject to an immense array of regulations, you will
need to pay attention to records management. You will have to deal with
the reality that information is created and managed in many different places
using a range of different IT applications including line of business systems
and probably more than one EDRMS. It will not be possible to put all
information/records in one “records centre” and at best you will maintain a map
of the repositories you know about and try to set some standards for how these
are managed.
If you
work for a small public sector agency, a small third sector organisation or a
small company or partnership, you could almost certainly get by with using file
shares (with some conventions about naming and versioning) and would consider
introducing SharePoint as a great leap forward. You might have some
records (very few, perhaps) that need the level of curation made possible by
the Records Centre and will certainly have many that can be happily managed in
a file share or in situ in a team site.
It seems
to me that Microsoft is offering alternatives which are not exclusive but which
the records management community chooses to position as polar opposites.
Irrespective of what it is, there is no sense in arguing for just one model,
one system, one corporate approach, today when so many organisations (across
every sector) are down sizing, merging, diversifying, splitting, or taking
advantage of shared service arrangements.
Just look
at the following list of information domains found in most organisations to see
what diversity of approaches exists:
- Formal corporate records e.g.
legal instruments, committee minutes and papers, policies, annual
reports: born digital, managed in hard and soft copy, published to
the web and/or intranet, preserved long term in an archive or EDRM
solution
- Case records: often
managed using a bespoke line of business system where they remain until
disposition.
- Operational support records
e.g. finance, HR: often managed using a bespoke line of business system
where they remain until disposition.
- Project records:
complicated assemblies of documents often worked on by multiple members of
a project team both inside and outside organisations. Fertile soil
for collaborative software.
- Less well defined
(unstructured) working documents: the documents filling up file
shares and team sites that represent the glorious richness and
inconsistency of everyday working life. Often considered a records
management nightmare, the majority of these documents do not require
long-term preservation and control and might benefit from an in situ
records management approach
- Email: a slough of despond for records managers, if you can’t buy an email archive product, leave email where it is. It’s better kept in its native application. Life is too short to drag and drop it somewhere else!
James
concludes correctly that “SharePoint is now a mature collaboration system,
having gone through several iterations of the product” but I would say that what
it offers by way of records management is just that – what it offers. The
debate about what SharePoint does and how it does it will properly continue and
we are working with a number of organisations who have embarked on SharePoint
implementations for a whole variety of reasons unrelated to records
management. Records managers, meanwhile, must take a metaphorical step
back and think hard about the fact that in 21st century organisations records management cannot remain as it used
to be.
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