Successful Electronic Records
Management Applications:
An Update
Seminar date: February 16, 1999

Federal records managers and IT experts are still reeling from a court ruling that makes virtually all electronic exchanges subject to federal recordkeeping laws. The ruling has been interpreted to apply to all e-mail, most electronic transactions, and even work outputs related to Internet use by feds.

To get a grasp on the breadth and depth of the problem, records managers and IT executives recently met at a GCN Technology Excellence in Government conference in Washington. The discussion ranged from lagging federal records policy to emerging IT solutions for both electronic records- and document management (ERM and EDM).

Michael Miller, Director, Modern Records Program, the National Archives and Records Administration, began the conference with an update on NARA's efforts to frame a new federal policy for ERM. "The problem is that no one size fits all in ERM, as was true with paper records," he said.

NARA will not dictate to agencies in terms of which IT solutions to employ, he advised. But NARA is examining methods by which to identify "best practices" and generally supports the Defense Department's creation of an ERM software standard (5015.2). Miller cautioned, however, that the standard will not by itself solve all ERM IT or regulatory problems.

"The problem is in trying to develop regulations that relate to technology that is changing very quickly," Miller said.

Swamped by E-mail
A quick way to grasp the extent of the problem emerged from the Monica Lewinsky scandal, during which time the White House received about 20 million e-mails from citizens. Not only do these e-mails have to be preserved as records, but so do any attachments to them.

Moreover, the court ruling as it now stands implies that the government will have to maintain records in their original electronic format regardless of how technology might change in the future.

A former NARA official, Charles Dollar, Ph.D., pointed out that the need to provide platform-specific records could lead the government into a "technology cul de sac." Generic viewers have been proposed as a solution but might require constant upgrades to remain "generic" as technology advances.

Another former NARA official, J. Timothy Sprehe, Ph.D., has examined a number of start-up ERM projects in various agencies. He concluded that ERM "is in its infancy and still has a lot of growing pains to endure." He also noted that agencies need to beef up their overall Records Management business systems before IT tools can help much. IT requirements, to date, have not been clear enough, Sprehe said, and business re-engineering might have to occur before new electronic solutions are effective.

Hair of the Dog
ERM will demand both hard and soft cost evaluations before feds get a handle on the overall price, said Frank McGovern, a former Air Force Records Officer. Hardware, software, and networking costs comprise much of the hard costs and are manageable, he said. But "data conversion can get very expensive," McGovern noted, and overall ERM user expertise is critical.

"Training is absolutely essential to the success of any implementation," he advised--pointing to one system "with 150 software licenses in place but only two people who know how to use the system."

To help agencies get projects launched, Richard Medina of Doculabs Inc., provided the conference with extensive benchmark results of ERM software systems, most of which comply with DOD 5015.2. The good news is that systems are getting better at dealing with "Web-based and transactional records," Medina reported. The bad news is that ERM remains a discipline at odds with many existing IT infrastructures and practices.

"ERM is the hair on the tail of the dog," Medina quipped. "EDM is the tail and the IT infrastructure is the dog itself."

Storage Required

Medina provided some very specific advice to Records Managers as they "go electronic."

• Pilot projects should take no longer than 90 days. Otherwise, they are probably failing.
• "The DOD standard is very good--but even if it wasn't, it would be a market force."
• Keep end-users involved in every step of a plan and implementation.
• Make sure you select an appropriate storage media for ERM. Storage is the platform on which all ERM IT sits. Multi-platform storage management will be required.
• Plan for trial and error. "ERM will walk on the backs of those who fell before it."

Industry Input
A panel of ERM and EDM industry experts provided specific consultation to attendees across a range of topics.

• Ron Campbell of FileNET Corp. believes agencies need to use real business applications in pilot projects and "not get stuck in the past" as they implement new ERM. He said that "Web content management" is being addressed by industry but that federal managers need to create the essential definitions that distinguish records from versions of records from Web-based "snapshots" that might or might not require classifications as a record.
• James W. Myers of DynSolutions and Diane Entner of Eastman Software presented information on a new NT-based integrated approach for automatic document management of Microsoft Exchange-based files that should go a long way to easing the IT managers' role in records classification.
  Entner said she thought the definition of Document Management might broaden to include Records Management and all the appropriate subsystems. Myers said that one industry goal is to give records managers "universal, robust filing at every desktop."
• Bruce Miller of Provenance Systems said that ERM has already broadened to achieve a 3-tier structure in which Web-based practices are subjected to the same RM processes as client/server practices. Document version control subsystems, new APIs and better use of technical standards have been rolled into new ERM systems as they have complied and then surpassed the DOD standard, he said.
• Colleen Francis of PSSoftware noted that version control capability includes such features as retention and disposition schedules and routines, but that forthcoming systems will spread these kinds of capabilities more broadly across enterprises as ERM moves from centrally held corporate records to those that are created in the outer reaches of agencies where transactional users might begin to function as de facto records managers.

The conference was presented by GCN, the Council for Excellence in Government, and the Digital Government Institute. It was sponsored by some of the most prominent ERM and EDM companies: DynSolutions, Provenance Systems, Eastman Software, FileNET and PSSoftware.

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