Editorial

Citation

McLeod, J. (2013), "Editorial", Records Management Journal, Vol. 23 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/RMJ-09-2013-0021

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Records Management Journal, Volume 23, Issue 3

It is a pleasure to start this editorial by welcoming four new members of the journal’s Editorial Advisory Board. Ms Bridget Sisk, Chief of Archives and Records Management at the United Nations Secretariat, New York strengthens the Board’s practitioner representation and brings strong international links, because of her role, as well as further links in the USA. Lori Richards, Assistant Professor in the iSchool at Drexel University in Philadelphia brings further US links and a combination academic expertise and practitioner perspective from a previous role at Deloitte & Touche. Her research focuses on digital curation and archives as well as the impact of emerging technologies on theory and practice in our discipline.

Dr Erik Borglund, Associate Professor at Mid Sweden University also brings a practitioner perspective, from his 20 years working as a police officer, alongside his academic perspective. Based at the Department of Information and Media, his research focuses on digital information management and document management in crisis and conflict context, which combines informatics and archival science. And Simon Chu, currently Adjunct Associate Professor at the Hong Kong University School of Professional and Continuing Education, ensures the Board has explicit representation in the Far East. Simon is the former Director of the Government Records Service in Hong Kong and has held many positions on national and international committees, including the International Council on Archives. He spoke with Professor Luciana Duranti at the 2012 ICA conference on archival legislation for engendering trust in the networked digital environment and earlier this year presented a TED Talk entitled The Tragedy of Hong Kong Archive Preservation Status. Together our new members represent three different continents maintaining the international profile of the RMJ, bring a wide and varied network of contacts, and have a diverse range of expertise which will broaden the Journal’s coverage and appeal, its future development and content. I am delighted they all accepted the invitation to join the Board.

Coincidentally, not by selection or design, all of the articles in this issue are from contributors based in Europe/Scandinavia, including one from a practitioner and others from university-based researchers. Also coincidentally they each, in different ways, highlight the centrality of people and information culture in successful approaches to managing information and records in the digital era.

Proscovia Svard, a research student at the University of Amsterdam, offers an interesting approach to addressing the persisting challenges of long-term preservation. Her investigation, with two Swedish government authorities, explored whether or not an enterprise content management strategy coupled with the records continuum model, which she used to analyse the data collected, could be used to mitigate the challenges. It is perhaps surprising that the concept of ECM was not known concept in the two authorities even though her interview participants, who included archivists, system administrators, a registrar, a project manager, web editors and IT personnel, thought aspects of ECM were in place and working if not fully developed. Lack of a holistic approach to information/records management and collaboration between archivists, business and IT staff led not only to unnecessary acquisition of electronic information systems but also neglect of long-term preservation issues. Since ECM emphasises collaboration and systems integration it has the potential to offer a strategic approach to preservation and the continuum model a good approach to data analysis.

Maria Kallberg, a researcher at Mid Sweden University, shares findings from her research into the status of staff in the registry function in the context of centralization to provide a single contact point for e-services. Also based on a public sector case study she uses the records continuum model to explore how reorganization and centralization of information creation and management is “shaping” professional roles. She demonstrates that whilst registrars were recognized for their role in the continuum’s “create” and “capture” dimensions, challenges remain to ensure that the newly centralized services addressed the requirements of both the “organize” and “pluralize” dimensions, Whilst the registrars who were part of her study felt their status has grown, they felt this perception was not shared by the wider organization. She concludes that even though the registry function is identified as strategically important, registrars do not have status as “experts” despite the new strategic importance the registry function in Sweden.

A colleague, Sue Childs, and I have also contributed an article in this issue. It provides a different approach to viewing the challenge of managing electronic records, which we define as a “wicked problem”, using the Cynefin framework. We used Cynefin to synthesise and make sense of the data about people issues from our AC+erm research project, which investigated strategies and tactics for improving ERM. Although ERM may be thought of as a dynamic and complex challenge, when viewed through the Cynefin lens many of the people issues are not complex; they are simple or complicated. Understanding their nature aids decision making and the choice of appropriate tactics to effect positive change. It helps to re-perceive the ERM challenge and offers a strategic approach which we believe is applicable for any organizational context.

Juerg Hagmann, a consultant based in Zurich with extensive experience as a records and information management practitioner mainly in the pharmaceutical and banking sectors, provides a viewpoint on information governance. He provides his own definition of the notion of “information governance” in comparison with selected published definitions. Drawing on the work of some major consultancy organizations, which is not always readily available to records professionals, and other work he highlights the importance of carefully scoping information governance frameworks, balancing the representation of all relevant stakeholders and investing in initiatives that foster an information management culture. He suggests that one of the biggest challenges is that no department or discipline alone can achieve the desired results, it requires collaboration, and “clear value propositions for specific business functions”.

This issue also includes a selection of book reviews contributed by members of the Editorial Advisory Board. Catherine Hare reviews David Bawden and Lyn Robinson’s book Introduction to Information Science. Philip Jones reviews Patricia Franks’ book Records and Information Management, the first substantial textbook on the topic to be published for a decade. And Rachael Maguire reviews Information Resource Description: Creating and Managing Metadata by Philip Hider. This selection should contain something of interest to all of our readers.

Finally I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the winners of this year’s Literati Awards of Excellence for their contributions to Volume 22, 2012. Many congratulations to Dr Fiorella Foscarini, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, Canada, winner of the Outstanding Paper Award for her article “Understanding functions: an organizational culture perspective” (Volume 22, Number 1). The Editorial Board was very impressed by Dr Foscarini’s article which examines a concept that is at the core of records management theory and practice – functional analysis. Her research highlighted cultural factors, as well as technical limitations, that can affect its practical implementation. As a result she calls for the profession to reassess its approach to adopting functional analysis, in particular by becoming more “organizational culture aware” in determining its suitability. Congratulations also go to Nils Troselius and Anneli Sundqvist; Pauline Joseph, Shelda Debrowski and Peter Goldschmidt; and Johanna Gunnlaugsdottir, all winners of the Highly Commended Papers Award; to Shadrack Katuu, the journal’s first nominee for a new Emerald award for the article with most social impact; and to Sue Childs, winner of the Outstanding Reviewer Award for her two reviews in Volume 22. Together the award winners are a combination of both the academics and practitioners, based in six countries in four continents, demonstrating the international reach of the Records Management Journal.

We had an excellent response to our recent call for papers for a special issue on big data and open data and look forward to bringing you that, guest edited by Dr Anne Thurston, Director of the IRMT, in 2014.

Julie McLeod