A Grand Challenge for Industry

We hosted a very interesting and successful industry day – more accurately an industry morning – on Tuesday, September 10, 2013. The theme?  The Managing Government Records Directive: A Grand Challenge for Industry.

This event supported Goal A3 of the Directive – the search for economically viable automated solutions for electronic records management – by giving the Federal information management community the chance to talk directly to vendors about what automated solutions are needed to meet the goals of the Directive.

Staff members Meg Phillips, Don Rosen, Mike Wash, and Paul Wester mingle with vendors after the formal program.
Staff members Meg Phillips, Don Rosen, Mike Wash, and Paul Wester mingle with vendors after the formal program.

The highlights of the event were two insightful panels of information managers from several Federal agencies. The first panel focused on the CIO’s perspective on electronic records management, and featured speakers from some of the biggest and most innovative programs. Bernard Mazer, CIO, Department of Interior and Robert Carey, Deputy CIO, Department of Defense explained how electronic records should fit into an integrated agency IT architecture. Mike Wash, NARA’s CIO, moderated the panel.

The second panel provided insights from records and information managers at a combination of large and small agencies. Mark Peasley, Deputy Director of Administration, Office of the CIO, Department of Homeland Security and Deborah Armentrout, Records Officer, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spoke about their agencies experiences and gave vendors direct advice about how to address agency challenges. Paul Fontaine, Information Management Technical Lead, Federal Aviation Administration spoke from his experience as an active member of the Electronic Records Management Automation Working Group organized to let agencies share best practices and support our work on this goal.

Paul Fontaine, FAA, Deborah Armentrout, NRC, and Mark Peasley (speaking), DHS
Paul Fontaine, FAA, Deborah Armentrout, NRC, and Mark Peasley (speaking), DHS

We were especially pleased that James Lappin captured the event in cartoon form on his UK-based records management blog, Thinking Records. He also posted the link to the recording, very helpfully spreading the word. (Thanks, James!)

The next step is for the vendor community to tell us what they can do to help us. We issued a request for information on September 13, including specific questions to help us understand what problems the vendors’ products and services help solve. Responses are requested by October 4, although we will keep accepting responses after that date. We recognize that the market keeps changing, but we want to gather what we can to help agencies do market research and for our own analysis.

For more information, please visit our industry day web page. We’ve updated the page with: the agenda, slides from the event, a recording of the entire presentation, and the link to the Request for Information on FedBizOpps.