We, with significant assistance from the Electronic Records Management Automation Working Group, have completed a draft report and plan to satisfy Managing Government Record Directive Goal A3.1. This draft is available here (.pdf) for your review, suggestions, and discussion.
We decided that it would be most useful to satisfy the goal by drafting two things, a report and a plan.
The report addresses categories of suitable approaches for automating ERM and discusses their outcomes, benefits, and risks. Our goal is to finalize the report in May 2014, incorporating the comments you send now.
The report covers the goals of electronic records automation, what the project has accomplished to date, NARA’s stance on DOD 5015.2, and a framework of 5 suitable approaches to automation that the Federal government can pursue.
The plan, on the other hand, will remain a living document. It will be revised at least once a year as we complete initial tasks and assess the feasibility of the four major initiatives we will start exploring in the first year.
The plan is still basically an outline – we need input to flesh it out. We hope you, both Federal agency staff and information management experts outside the government, will work with us to refine it. You can help by commenting here on the blog now and continuing to provide input over time.
Some of the questions you should consider as you read this draft are:
- What should the long term future look like to achieve vastly improved access to government information?
- What steps could we take to get there?
- Are there points (in the report or plan) that need clarification?
- Are these the right goals?
- Are these the right initiatives in the plan?
- Are these the right tasks? Are there missing tasks? Who could do these tasks?
- What stakeholders would need to be consulted? What stakeholders are already working in these areas that we should coordinate with?
- Are you in a good position to help with any of the tasks?
Comments are due by April 25, 2014
Update: To leave a comment, please visit this more recent posting. Thank you.
What is the best way to get comments to you, and possible edits?
An early comment – I couldn’t get the link to the Working Group’s wiki on OMB MAX to work (p. 7 of report), and I have an OMB MAx account already, so take a look at this.
Hi Kathleen. We have fixed the wiki, so you should have access to it now. If you have comments, you can leave them here on the blog or email them to the PRMD mailbox at prmd@nara.gov.
The key concept that is missing from this draft and from most discussions about these issues is that fact that Records Management is not a stand-alone function or product. It is found today as a component of a larger Enterprise Content Management solution that includes document management, search, access controls, legal holds, and much much more.
Any discussion of Records Management absent this context is too constraining to be very useful.
For example, many of the RM automation tools available today in organizations such as the Department of Interior involve a holistic approach to Information Governance. RM is a key component of this solution; however the solution includes many other moving parts that all have to work together to be successful.