Opinion piece

Citation

McDonald, J. (2002), "Opinion piece", Records Management Journal, Vol. 12 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/rmj.2002.28112caf.001

Opinion piece

At the time that I am writing this (July, 2002) the stock market is taking a tumble and the fearmongers are claiming that we are heading into another crash. Others though are saying that we should just hang in because it is "inevitable that the stock market will rebound" (and invariably it does but not without a lot of pain along the way).

The same seems to be happening with Government online and electronic commerce. Early predictions that governments will be the most connected in the world by such and such a date have been tempered by the realities of financial constraint, slow client/customer take-up, and the limitations of the technology (often security-related). Still, I think that most would argue that the way ahead seems inevitable – modern organizations, regardless of what they are (private, public, etc.) are seeing the Internet as a major if not primary means of delivering their business.

The online environment is transforming business . . . and record keeping

Many Web sites are already becoming sophisticated portals facilitating the delivery of multiple business processes and services to consumers and citizens (if we look at the government context) and, importantly, to other businesses and governments. We are moving into a wireless environment and an environment that will permit services to be personalized for the individual client. We are moving into an environment that is transforming the way we interact with one another and the way we carry out our business. All of this is having a profound impact on the nature and design of organizations and their business processes. It is also having a profound impact on record keeping.

In this emerging environment the conduct of business electronically in a Web-enabled environment is causing the lines between individuals and organizations to blur. The business process no longer stops at the boundary of the organization. It reaches into the homes of clients and, in the case of governments, into the homes of individual citizens. It also reaches into the other businesses or organizations with whom organizations are partnering. The full story – the full documentation – pertaining to a given business process may exist (often virtually) in a variety of locations (from corporate databases to PDAs to the hard drive on a home computer or small business). There is a host of information management issues associated with this, not the least of which is how one keeps the full record – the full story of the transactions associated with complex cross-boundary business applications. (This introduces the interesting possibility that records managers may be asked to provide advice not only to their parent organizations but also to those with which their organizations are partnering or serving i.e. business process-driven rather than solely organization-driven records management support). Other issues revolve around jurisdictional responsibility and stewardship with respect to the obligations of the various players to manage the information they are increasingly sharing.

Another point. The expectations of citizens are changing as the online environment forces organizations to respond in real time. This is best illustrated in the scenario where a citizen applies for a license only to be informed that his or her application has been rejected. In the "olden" days the citizen might have written a letter or called someone to ask for an explanation (likely with a response indicating that their request had been acknowledged and "we will get back to you"). In today's online environment, however, the irate citizen might just as likely fire an e-mail back into the government department asking not only for an explanation about the rejection but just as likely, asking for all of the information that was used to make the decision, as well as the business rules the official used to arrive at the rejection. And that citizen would expect all of that information within minutes or hours rather than days or weeks. Why this expectation? Because if the department has built an online world of such integrity, timeliness, and user-friendliness then surely such integrity, timeliness and user-friendliness must be reflected in the information sources the department (and now the citizen) have come to depend upon!!

The intimacy between the customer/citizen and the business process has never been greater. More and more the customer/citizen expects the organization to manage its information properly. There is nothing that can erode trust more than the admission that one's information – the information required to process a claim, to account for a decision, and so on – cannot be located or cannot be provided in a timely manner.

The online environment needs to reach employees as well as customers

Customers are not the only ones expecting that information is being managed properly. So too are the employees in the organization. They expect that the information they need in order to respond in a timely and comprehensive manner will be at hand – that it is authentic, reliable, accurate, current, and complete. Nothing can erode productivity more than employees who live with the daily angst that they may not have the right information, nor the complete information, nor the information they need when they need it (often in nanoseconds rather than hours), especially when they are trying to serve an increasingly computer-literate client population.

Such an angst is beginning to have an impact on the design of intranets and even the fundamental design of the user interfaces employees depend on to do their work. Not so long ago I heard one frustrated government employee complain that his grandmother, in using the Internet, had an easier time accessing information and interacting with government services than he did because she was being provided with user-friendly icons and "buttons" that reflected the services she needed ("apply for a pension", "enquire about health benefits", etc.). Meanwhile he was still confronting a screen that reflected utility-based icons (e.g. word processing, e-mail, etc.) that had nothing to do with his work activities. "Why can I not have icons that represent my various work activities (e.g. developing a policy, applying for training, etc.) and have all of that software (supported by templates) integrated behind the screen so that basic steps like composing documents, routing drafts, and even getting approvals for documents can be accomplished automatically through pre-defined workflow?" What a boon that would be for records managers, who could then incorporate records capture, retention and disposition specifications, and even archival requirements into the design of the workflow.

Ultimately customers and employees assume that their information will be there when they need it. And without knowing what it really looks like they will expect that a back-end infrastructure is in place to ensure the effective management of the information they depend upon.

Our clients are already "there" . . . but are we?

All of this is good news for records managers and archivists. No longer do they need to beat the doors down to have people listen to them about the problems of electronic records management. Many organizations have already recognized (or certainly are beginning to recognize) that while technology is a terrific enabler to e-government and e-business, the key to success will be dependent upon the quality of the underlying information management infrastructure.

But are records managers and archivists positioned to pursue the opportunities being presented by the emerging electronic environment? From a "records" perspective it would appear that they are and the articles in this edition of the Journal, as well as the myriad electronic records initiatives underway around the world, are demonstrating that we are well on our way to finding and implementing the required solutions.

On the other hand, I wonder how much we have really understood the changing nature of the business processes and the organizational structures that are being transformed so rapidly by the digital online environment modern organizations are experiencing.

Understanding records begins with understanding business processes and understanding business processes begins with understanding the business. If this is true then perhaps we might want to ask ourselves how well we are doing in establishing that understanding and folding it into everything we are doing, from the electronic records management tools we are building, to the education and training we are offering. How well do we understand the changing nature of so-called "office" work, office behaviour, and collaborative work over the Internet? (Among an army of literature on the subject, two refreshing references to the issues of information management in the workplace and in organizations as a whole are Seely Brown and Duguid, 2001 and Gladwell, 2002). Do we really understand how the online environment is changing the way organizations design their business processes (and the way in which records are generated as a result of these changes)? Are we cognizant of how organizations themselves are changing as they enter into complex partnerships and reposition themselves to exploit the potential of the new online environment?

Rather than catching the residue of what organizations produce, the literature implores us to be at the "front end". But do we really understand what the "front end" looks like and what it means to be active participants at the "front end"? It seems to me if we are truly balancing the records dimension with the business process dimension then we would see evidence of this in the policies and toolkits we are producing, the education and training programs we are developing and the organizations with which we are partnering. How many of our toolkits are business process driven? How many of our education and training programs contain modules providing in-depth perspectives on modern business process transformation and organizational change in a digital online environment? How many of our professional organizations have partnered with those who represent professional groups involved in business process and organizational transformation issues?

If we can't do "it", a new generation will . . . because they need "it"!

At the beginning of this piece I mentioned that e-business and the dramatic shift to the electronic means of conducting work are inevitable. And it is not just because the technology is available, or that private sector companies can gain competitive advantage through e-business, or that governments can improve the way they deliver their program and services to citizens. It is because an entirely new generation, brought up in a digital environment and just now entering the workforce will be expecting, indeed assuming, that the world they will be occupying, and leading, will be digital (Tapscott, 1998 explores the characteristics of this new generation).

This is the generation I see represented in my young nieces and nephews who have already leapt into the digital age. It is represented in my 14-year-old niece who does her school assignments on the computer, works on school projects with fellow students in an exclusively electronic mode and who frustrates her parents with hours-long exchanges with a host of friends in online chat groups. (Incidentally this is the same niece who asked me to show her how to work the phone that was in the old cottage we were renting for the summer. It was a rotary phone and, of course, in the push button era in which she was growing up, the idea of having to stick your finger in a hole and turn a dial seemed very bizarre!)

It is represented in my young nephew who received a digital camera for Christmas (and here, I cannot help but reflect that I was delirious when, at 14, I received a simple Brownie Instamatic!!) and who enjoys loading up his photos on his own Web site and sending them off to friends around the world. A short while ago he actually asked me how long his digital photos would last, a clear indication that even when we are frustrated that the penny seems to take so long to drop for the senior leaders managing our current organizations, it may be this emerging generation that will not only understand the issues but will take the necessary steps to ensure that the electronic records they will be depending upon will be available, accessible and authentic.

This is the generation that will assume that an infrastructure of policies, standards and practices, and systems is in place to manage the information they need to do their work. And if such an infrastructure is not in place, then they will see that it is built. It is inevitable and because it is inevitable, records managers should recognize that they are being provided with a rich opportunity today to provide the kind of support this generation will be looking for tomorrow. The caveat is that records managers, who already know how to apply important concepts such as "authenticity" and "reliability", understand the business process and organizational environment from whence records emerge.

John McDonaldIndependent consultant specializing in information management

ReferencesGladwell, M. (2002), "The social life of paper",New Yorker Magazine, 25 March, available at: www.newyorker.com/printable/?critics/020325crbo_booksSeely Brown, J. and Duguid, P. (2001), The Social Life of Information, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.Tapscott, D. (1998), Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.