Everyone, I haven't posted on this list for more than a week. I've been waiting to hear from Charley about some issues of concern to all of us, and in the meantime, I was quite busy preparing to coduct a one-day training course in records management here at NRL. The class was held yesterday. Now that it is over for the time being (it's offered roughly every six months) I can turn my attention to some other things.

There are a number of articles and other RM related items posted on this site. They should be of considerable interest to us, both as professionals who need to keep learning and stay informed, and particularly with regard to how we want to revise the SSIC and records schedule. I appreciate Erv's willingness to post them there. I brought back from the Managing Electronic Records Conference in Chicago several publications from DouLabs, INC. These are benchmark comparisons and analyes of imaging, workflow, document management, and records management software packages, including the RM applications that meet the 5015.2 standard. These are all pretty lengthy documents, but I hope Erv can post at least the DM and RM reports. I just received permission from Greenwood Publishing Group to post a portion of the June 1998 issue of the Records and Information Management Report, an article entitled "Preserving Digital Information as a Record Copy." I am sending this to Erv and hope he can post it as well.

I am looking at an article in the 16 November issue of FCW called "Training in Progress." It says that agency IT and web personnel are looking for additional training outside their own areas of expertise because they have to be knowlegeable about a lot of "cross-cutting" issues including Federal recordkeeping requirements, legal requirements such as Privacy and FOIA, and so on. The RM community has been saying for a long time that they have to know something about the technical and IT management issues that will affect eletronic recordkeeping. It's interesting to see the IT guys now reaching the same conclusion from the opposite direction. The RIM Report article I mentioned above argues that manageing digital records requires an understanding and application of basic recordkeeping concepts such as records/non-records, filing, cutting off inactive records, linking file plans or indexing schemes to retention requirements, and managing the retention and eventual dispostion of records.

Let me refer you to Zappy, to whom we were introduced By Dale Long in one of the articles he wrote that Erv has posted for us. When last we saw Zappy, he was happily scanning all his e-mail, with the intention of keeping it all forever. Zappy is instructive because he is a poor recordkeeper. No doubt, before he discovered the wonders of digital imaging, he wore out the copy machine down the hall. He probably lived in his office like a goldfish in an aquarium, in a sea of paper. All of the persons who have attended the three training sessions I have held at NRL have been "Zappys" at least to some degree; all have been poor keepers of analog information using manual tools and processes. All will continue to be poor recordkeepers with automated tools and processes unless they learn and understand the basic RM concepts. I know from my own experience with ForeMost and TRIM that they won't work as advertized unless their users know basic RM.

DoD already has an RMA standard in place and is attempting to develop a contract method that will allow its agencies and commands to purchase RM software that meets the standard and that can act in concert with the panoply of other information management applications that are coming into the workplace. Unless potential users have the recordkeeping skills in place and know the terminology, the new tools won't help them much. One of the films I show in my training highlights the existence of a wide gap between records management policy and records management procedure. Such a gap certainly exits here at NRL and probably everywhere else in the Navy. Training, coupled with periodical compliance review and follow-up can fill in that gap. I suggest that the Navy develop a standard basic records management training program and offer it to the IT community, systems support personnel, unit or department managers, and the RMA end-users before they acquire the tools and receive the vendor training that goes with them. There are already such RM training program for personnel who use automated RM tools at EPA, CIA, and at TRW, a DoE contractor. I know the EPA and TRW programs are good because I borrowed from them to put together the training plan at NRL. At any rate, the notion of standard RM training in concert with the acquisition via a standard contract of RMA's that meet standard certification requirements seems to make good sense.

Dean

-- Anonymous, November 18, 1998