tfpl blog

Records management in SharePoint - the debate continues

Author: John Davies
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.

The past, present and future

Author: Luisa Jefford
TFPL Intelligent Resources, Director - Public Sector Recruitment

I can't believe how quickly the last week has flown by.  It's 7 days since  I delivered a presentation for my colleague Angela Abell . I was asked to  talk about Knowledge Management Competencies "Past, Present and Future" to NetIKX (Network for Information and Knowledge Exchange).

My presentation (which  I'm happy to share if anyone is interested) covered some of the previous outputs of the research which TFPL has undertaken over the past decade.  It highlighted that "Knowledge and Information Professionals" should position themselves as "Knowledge Strategists and Knowledge Specialists" to enable organisations  to become fully engaged and knowledge mobilised. This is a world away from the one of the very first  roles I ever dealt with as a recruiter at TFPL which was the cataloguing of McCarthy cards! How things have evolved in 15 years.

Does the effect of the economy have any bearing on this?  Most certainly, and whilst today I don't think "Knowledge and Information Professionals" should disregard positioning themselves as  "specialists " or indeed "strategists " it is increasingly obvious in my day job that they need some additional skills  to offer as and when required.   

The research outputs showed that as well as KIM and ICT expertise these additional skills include personal attributes and interpersonal, organisational and business  knowledge and having an understanding of what your organisations objectives and core strategies are. A melting pot or perhaps,  to paraphrase more effectively, a  'kit bag'  of tools that will ensure your profile and your value remains aligned to your organisational needs and requirements.

An enjoyable afternoon for me and I will definitely be putting NetIKX on my networking radar . 

The Library of Congress to archive all "Tweets"

Author: Shooresh Golzari
TFPL, Consultant

According to this BBC article, The Library of Congress is set to archive every Tweet that has ever been and every Tweet there ever will be. In effect, this is an attempt to preserve the [social] historical context around world events (i.e.) what people were saying, for example:

• before and after Barrack Obama was elected as US president in 2008;
• the drama around the Iranian elections of 2009 as it was unfolding;
• or in reaction to the earthquake disaster of 2010 in Haiti. 

Twitter is a popular micro-blogging service, which allows users to post their thoughts on anything in no more than 140 characters; the number of users is well in excess of 60 million and ever growing and there are reportedly up to 55 million "Tweets" per day.  My first reaction to this news, given that number, was to wish any future historian luck in finding any gems amongst all the drivel. But... I then remembered the clever search mechanism built into Twitter ("hashtags") and Google's hand in enhancing search in Twitter is apparently also being utilised by The Library of Congress.

Rhetoric, Fashion or Fact: 2010's first Connect Conference

Author: Lucy Frost
TFPL, Head of Training and Events

Last week we held our first TFPL Connect event of 2010.  It was great to see a combination of new members along with some familiar faces. Speakers Michele Fordyce from EEF, Hank Malik from Carbon Trust and Caron Cant from Birmingham City Council introduced their ideas about future challenges for KIM specialists, which sparked some interesting questions and thoughts from the audience.

The evening was chaired by Martin Sanderson, TFPL and began with Michele Fordyce sharing with us her experiences at EEF, looking at how they engage with their customers through the new Information and Research function. Michele explained this turn around had been made possible by focusing on the key business needs, building relationship with the service lines and senior management and talking the language.  Engaging with internal customers was vital to demonstrating how KIM could contribute to the business goals, help functions meet their targets and increase value to members.

Hank Malik, then gave some interesting insights in to knowledge and innovation, discussing how we have moved from collecting content, through communities and connecting people, to ‘the wisdom of crowds’ enabled by ‘open’ connectivity in public spaces. Open innovation, the public exchange of ideas is, he argued is the next phase of KIM but with this brings issues around governance and control of information.

Caron Cant, went on to talk about her experiences at Birmingham City Council , where she highlighted that with over 56,000 employees, recognition and reward of information management skills and behaviour was key to developing an effective information driven organisation.

Interestingly in a KIM world of W2.0 technologies, blogs, jams, podcasts, it was communication and people skills that topped the speaker’s agenda. However, during the evening it became clear that there are three central issues that are likely to be with us for sometime:  the tension between structure and freedom; aligning with business drivers and customer focus; and the recognition and reward of KIM skills and behaviours.

Rhetoric, Fashion or Fact was one of TFPL Connect's regular events.  All our Connect members will receive a summary of the evening and we will be running three further evening events during the year.

SharePoint 2010: what it means for information professionals and their organisations

I recently made a trip to Microsoft for a workshop on SharePoint 2010 at their campus in Reading.  The picture I took away is of a shift in focus away from development to configuration (and there's a hell of a lot more to configure), illustrated by the following:   

• Complex (or simple) records and document management policies (compliant with DoD 5015.02, amongst other things) can now be configured into the system at and across every level and site location, or simply determined ad hoc.  It looks like a complete EDRMS is on the cards with hierarchical (file-plan like) structuring, automatic document ID numbers and-all with a highly intuitive and attractive browser (any browser) based user interface. 
• Developers will no longer be needed to come in and hack into your SharePoint in order for it to communicate with other databases and systems.  All of this can be configured out of the box without any knowledge of or ostensible use of code.
• As a result of the above and because the development engine, Visual Studio 2010 (sold separately of course), is integrated into the Central Admin area I think that significant investment on bespoke coding is a thing of the past. For example, .NET coding can as easily be published to SharePoint 2010 as a document might be through a standard CMS. In addition to this, the .NET coding language is relatively easy to pick up for quick learners, which systems admins usually are.
• My opinion is that outlay in development will revolve around (app by app) bespoke applications development which has been readily facilitated through the provision of APIs meaning that apps can be built and rolled out through the Central Admin (or the ‘back office’) development tool-kit.

On cost, for organisations that have made a sizable resource commitment to MOSS 2007 already, the prospect of further investment in SharePoint 2010 might initially be a turn off[*].  If however they are persuaded by the additional functionality (particularly in what was formerly business intelligence, the records centre and mySite) then they still face the requirement to upgrade their hardware to x64 (currently it is x32). This x64 backroom hardware is needed to effectively accommodate technologies such as ajax which make for seamless and smooth user operability on the client side but demand significant resources from the servers to that end. This demand scales up with increases in user numbers and user activity, which will be a significant consideration if organisations start adopting SharePoint as a “full featured business platform”, as Microsoft is touting it.

Additionally, upgrade/migration from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint was not something that was readily covered and I suspect 2007 users may be in for a rougher ride, price-wise and technically, than they might otherwise have expected.  This may be a particular issue to those organisations that invested heavily in 3rd party bespoke development of the product.

So, how significant is the advent of SharePoint 2010 to the information professional? Well, we have always known that information architecture, information governance (inclusive of its pillars such as policies, rules etc) and sound information management in general are critical to the success of any electronic information system deployment.  And, with the removal of significant functionality barriers in SharePoint 2010, the continued importance of this cannot be stressed enough in giving systems administrators something to consider before bending to every whim of their users. 

It is therefore critical that the advice of the information professional is heeded at the highest levels of management and engendered into the IT psyche.  The blueprints of a successful implementation should be drawn up, highlighted, championed and followed from the very beginning, lest the onset of “SharePoint Sprawl”, a symptom of poor information architecture and a lack of information management forethought, generally; and one with which many, if not most, MOSS 2007 implementations contend.

If you have information management concerns around your deployment of SharePoint, or any other system, contact us for expert advice and solutions.

Authored by Shooresh Golzari, tfpl consultant.

[*] Recent conversations with clients and SharePoint integrators indicate that this is true.

Are our heads in the Cloud?

An interesting article in the Sunday Times highlighted the key themes we explored at the TFPL Cloud Computing conference back in March.  There are strong advocates for the Cloud but also significant resistance to the concept of ‘private data in public spaces’.

It’s clear that the Cloud is here to stay and there are real benefits to using it, but also risks - not least of which is that, once you have signed up to using the Cloud all your data (including photographs, videos, music, financial data) is held by a third party and if you want to retain access you need to continue subscribing.  One of the speakers at our event emphasised the need to ensure that you have an agreement in place that allows you to switch providers (or withdraw from the Cloud altogether) without losing access to your information.

That’s obviously a critical issue for an organisation but can be equally important for an individual - would you want to risk losing access to personal treasures?

On the other hand, once in the Cloud your information will (should?) be backed up, mirrored and secured by a provider who does this for their living.  How many of us are guilty of not backing up laptops and PCs which contain our personal digital archives on a regular basis?

Read the full article for a detailed discussion of the pros and cons and the potential impact of the Cloud on the IT, media and publishing industries.

Melanie Goody
Director of Consultancy

Cloud computing – morning session from last week's tfpl conference

Roger James, IT Director at the University of Westminster, set the scene for the day with the mantra: cloud computing  - ‘ private data in public spaces – a leap of faith/a leap of fact’.  Roger explained that anyone could be $10 and 10 minutes away from setting up a collaborative space in the cloud and went on to give us an example of such a domain in Google Apps.

The event’s keynote address was given by John Sheridan from The National Archives.  Closely involved in the Power of Information Task Force and Semantic Web initiatives, John provided an overview of the UK Government’s interest in Cloud technologies: its potential to provide cheap collaborative tools together with savings in storage and infrastructure. 

Some of the related benefits John outlined were:

•    economies of scale
•    lower overheads
•    greener IT
•    opportunities to refocus IT efforts away from operations to more productive issues.

It may be early days for Cloud, but commoditization means that difficult things will become easier and can be used more widely.  However, all new technologies bring issues and challenges as well as opportunities.  John highlighted:

•    data protection
•    security
•    privacy and authentication
•    data portability
•    need for Open Standards.

To take advantage of cloud, organisations have to accept an element of risk and be prepared to fail as well as succeed.  

Looking to his own organization, John suggested that the implications for TNA’s adoption of Cloud computing would include:

•    protection of information of ongoing business value
•    preserving archival digital information of historic value
•    working with vendors and promoting Open Standards

An easy route for the public sector may be to utilize Cloud for the storage of Public Data.  How one continues to ensure findability in large data stores or add value by linking data to create new intelligence will remain an ongoing challenge but John saw significant opportunity and potential benefit to be gained from cloud computing.

Melanie Goody, Martin Sanderson and John Davies

Archana Venkatraman provides her perspective from our event here.

Three Google apps case studies from the TFPL cloud conference

At yesterday's Cloud Computing conference I heard three fascinating case studies of Google apps implementations

Roger James on Westminster University's Google apps implememtation

• The University decided to turn their student and staff e-mail over to a cloud based providor in the auttumn of 2007. They narrowed the supplier down to Microsoft and Google. After assessing the suppliers, the IT department asked staff and students who they preferred. Staff were split 50/50, but students overwhelmingly preferred Google. In June 2008 they signed the agreement with Google, and everything was set up ready for the students to use when they returned from their summer break for the new academic year 2008/09


The University own the domain name, each google apps account, and all the e-mail addresses. If they want to delete a student's Google apps account they can.


Some people at the University were concerned that outsourcing e-mail to Google would mean that personal data was being stored outside of the European Economic Area (contrary to the 8th Data Protection people). Google have contracted to only store Westminster University's data in European data centres (although it would be hard for the University to verify this is actually taking place). Roger pointed out that before they went over to Google apps 96% of students auto-forwarded their e-mail to their personal webmail accounts (yahoo/gmail/hotmail etc), where the data was going out of Europe and also out of the University's domain.


The University rolled out Google apps to 1,500 staff, without training. In addition to e-mail Google apps gives students Google docs, Google video and Google sites. Roger was particularly impressed by Google video which has turned into a University of Westminster specific You Tube. They have only received 120 help desk calls since it has gone live.


Google apps has cost Westminster just £2,000 because Google offer it free to Educational bodies (Microsoft offer similar deals). Roger estimated it would have cost £1million to put an equivalent infrastructure in.

Paul Driscoll on Google apps at Erith Group

• Erith Group is a demolition firm, with 250 employees. They knock buildings down and clear up the mess afterwards. They became one of the UKs' first Google apps customer in the auttumn of 2006.


Paul had taken out a 30 day trial of Google apps. By chance in the middle of that trial, a fire took hold of a nearby building. As a result of the fire an oxyacetelene cannister exploded, wiping out their server room, and denying the company access to its HQ for an extended period. Paul put all his colleagues onto Google apps, and the company have been using it for their e-mail and document storage ever since


Erith used to have seven servers, now they only have one (to host their accountancy system). Paul reboots that one server every Friday on his way out of the office. He doesn't have to think about servers the rest of the time.


Google apps costs Erith £25 per user per year. Paul estimates it has saved the company £20k per year on hardware procurement, maintentanence and operation. In the break he told me that he thought the actual saving was higher: a 250 person company typically requires an IT complement of 3 people. Erith get by with Paul as the only IT person.

Andy Beale on Google apps at the Guardian

• Unlike Westminster and Erith, The driver for the Guardian's Google apps implementation was its collaboration features rather than e-mail


The Guardian were not able to consider using Microsoft's SharePoint because around 60% of their staff are Mac users, and SharePoint currently has very poor Mac integration.


The newspaper wanted to roll out Google apps to coincide with their move to new Headquarters buildings. They wanted 21st century collaboration features to go with their 21st century building. Andy said that the fact that Google apps is a relatively young system compared with Lotus notes and the Microsoft Office suite was in its favour.


The Guardian wanted a 'lightweight' collaboration tool, to support teams of journalists that come together for short periods in a very fluid organisation.


Google talk (the instant messaging facility in Google apps) has been heavily used by teams of journalists. Andy told us that the ease with which wikis and shared calendars can be set up in Google apps has speeded their adoption.

In his summing up Roger James said that usability was key to software in the twentieth century, and the key to useability was familiarity. Google Apps was so familiar to students that they were able to take it up without training. In Roger's view Google Apps provided Microsoft with its first serious competion in the organisational software market for twenty years.

Explore the Cloud with us

The emerging technology of cloud computing is set to capture a lot of interest in 2009 and is widely predicted to have explosive growth over the coming years.  Brands we all know well such as Google, Microsoft and IBM are converging on this new technology with a range of services and applications aimed specifically at Cloud Computing.  Inquisitive individuals will be asking what is it?  And what are benefits and risks to my organisation?  As part of our commitment to thought leadership within Knowledge and Information Management TFPL has decided to create an event to better understand this technology from some of the early adopters and experts in this field. 

One of early adopters is the Guardian Media Group (GMC) who were featured on Thursday in computing.co.uk* discussing their plan to use Web 2.0 and Cloud solutions to cope with the challenging economic conditions.  The publisher has embraced Google Apps to replace Microsoft Office as part of a strategy that will see Lotus Notes replaced by Google Mail by the end of 2009.  They have recently moved to a new HQ in

London's Kings Cross following a review of GMG's operations and have made significant cost savings and also introduced new cultural changes.  Andy Beale Technology Director said "The reason that Web 2.0 tools, and in particular Google Apps, are so effective at improving efficiency is that they are inherently collaborative.  Our decision to use Google was, in part, because it uses familiar models - email and office applications - but takes them in a different direction".

By moving into the cloud GMG has been able to benefit from these recent initiatives including server virtualisation and the removal of complex Virtual Private Networks which is saving the group £30m a year in energy and maintenance costs alone, as well as the rollout of Google Apps.  The workforce will also reap rewards from Web-based tools as they provide a more flexible environment for remote workers.  "Companies that can move to adapt web technology for its workforce are going to be more attractive to candidates and that will continue to be an important factor during the recession," said Beale.

Andy Beale will be presenting a case study at TFPL's event Get Inside the Cloud of Information where he will be joined by a range of professionals to discuss the wider impact of Cloud Computing.  John Sheridan, Head of E-Services at The National Archives, an expert in emerging technologies and adviser to the UK Government will be discussing the challenges and opportunities Cloud Computing brings to the information profession.  Ibrahim Hasan, Information Lawyer will be explaining how businesses can manage private data in public places and what effect Cloud Computing will have on existing legislation.  Lynn Collier from Hitachi Data Systems Ltd will put into perspective the economic model behind Cloud Computing and how organisations can maximise savings and create better efficiencies.  The case study from the Guardian Media Group will be complemented by further examples of the use of cloud technologies at The University of Westminster and Erith Ltd.  The Chair for the day will be Roger James, ICT Director, University of Westminster who will be hosting a Q&A session with the speakers.

* Guardians of the digital age. (2009 February 26). computing p. 9.