A Future Vision of Invisible And
Rigorous Records Management
Denise A. D. Bedford, Ph.D.
Visionary
Senior Information Officer
Information Quality Group
World Bank
Disclaimer
 Before I begin today, let me issue a general disclaimer -the vision I’m describing is one that I have been
promoting but it is not one that has yet been adopted.
 I think this approach is practical when some basic
components exist
 I will leave it to your discretion, though, to decide
whether I am talking ‘everyday science’ or ‘science
fiction’
 Remember, though, that science fiction has given us
some of our best visions for the future
Presentation Overview
 Problem Statement: Records management is essential.
The RM challenge is increasing, no one likes to do it and
with the new requirements we can’t rely on individuals to
do the right thing all the time.
 Vision: An information context in which records
management occurs everyday in the work environment,
without people having to think about it, and it satisfies
the standards of records managers
 Realizing the Vision: What you need to have in place
and a progressive approach to realizing the vision
Statement of the Problem
 Tim has already described the challenge very well…
 Amount of information generated by institutions is
increasing
 Records requirements are also growing
 Records management services are struggling to keep up
with the amount of information and the requirements
 The traditional approach provides us with a very strong
base of practice for paper-based records
• Question is whether the human-centered implementation
approach will be practical for the volume of information in the
future and in particular for electronic records
Statement of the Problem
 Information systems make it easier for people to create records in a
fragmented and scattered way – people don’t know records
management and we will never train everyone to do it right or even
to do it consistently
 A business process may now span three or four information systems
– leaving records along the way, in different records management
contexts
 The same people are now participating in all phases of the
information life cycle – they have more of an impact on our total
information picture
 Records managers must now monitor multiple systems and design
schedules to suit different information types and context – structured
data, semi-structured/fragmented data, and unstructured data
Big Picture RM Model
 From my perspective, it seems like we will always be chasing the
records challenge and never quite catching up to the demand
 Managing records in my humble opinion means full life cycle
management not just the end stage of ‘archiving’
 While some records may be born on paper these days, and while
paper records will always be with us, many records today are born
digital.
 I don’t need to explain to this group of experts what the full life cycle
process is for records, nor should I attempt to discuss the
considerations involved in declaring a digital object a record and
preserving it
 My contribution today will be to share a vision of an approach to id
Statement of the Problem
 What kinds of problems are we trying to solve?
 Potential loss of Institutional records
 Unintended access by non-privileged users
 Unintended publication of information before disclosure due
dates
 Electronic information systems which are overwhelmed with
redundancies and convenience copies
 Labor intensive RM activities which are challenged to keep up
with the demand
 How do we avoid these problems?
Vision
 Staff member needs to complete a required document as part of
her/his every responsibilities. They access the template library, find
the right structure and write their report. Once the person has
finished writing the report, he/she saves it.
 Metadata is automatically generated and embedded in the
document structure when it is saved by the user.
 The template that was used to create the document also has
sufficient information to make a ‘best guess’ as to where it should be
stored, and what other information and records management actions
are appropriate.
 Information and records management functions occur once the
document is completed because business rules would be built into
the template context.
Vision
 From the business rules, we can make a best guess at
whether it is a record or a convenience copy, which
record schedule should be assigned to it, which records
management actions should be taken, and when they
should be taken.
 The template also provides some structure for the
document and stores it as semi-structured information
 Ideally, each part of the document may carry the
metadata of the ‘whole’ wherever it goes if and when it is
fragmented or reused
Realizing the Vision
 Minimum Components of the solution
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Fully-elaborated and institutionally-comprehensive RRDS
Organizational Unit Authority File
Series Definition Authority File
Item-Level Retention & Dispositioning File
Rule-Based Retention & Dispositioning Expert System
Enterprise-Level Core Metadata, including archival metadata
Metadata Repository with links back to source system metadata
records
Management reporting tools
Managed content systems
Archives Management System
Robust and actionable definition of what constitutes a record
copy….
What would the system do?
 Another caution – such a system is envisioned to assist records
experts in managing records but not to do records management
instead of records managers
 The intent is to at least get some control over what are likely to be
records into the content when it is created
 Essentially moving some of the records management work upstream
into a document or content management life cycle stage
 The most proactive aspect of the envisioned system would be a
centralized reporting capability running off the metadata repository
that would alert content owners and system administrators that a
records management action was due within a specified period of
time
What would the system do?
 Such a basic reporting system could help records managers …
 Prevent loss of Institutional records because content marked as a record
copy could be ‘deletion disabled’ and identified earlier in the cycle
 Manage information systems which already are overwhelmed with
redundancies and convenience copies by retaining only record copies
 Labor intensive RM activities which only react to records management
requests could not see records issues earlier in the process and actually
have a change to do more proactive records management
 Unintended access by non-privileged users because security class and
record status could be tagged when the document is born digital rather
than when it is appraised at a later date
 Unintended publication of information before disclosure due dates
because metadata could be used to prevent publication outside of
established policies and rules
Realizing the Vision
 Realizing the vision, though, presumes that you have the
components available in a foundation
 This is not a silver bullet vision
 Each of the components is a challenge to achieve
 I think it is possible to realize the vision – incrementally
and cautiously
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Using templates
Managing content
Generating metadata
Elaborating the RRDS at the institution level
Writing the business rules
 It may be 5 or 10 years down the road, but it can happen