Collaboration & Social Media:
New Challenges for Records
Management
Northern VA Chapter of ARMA International
27 February 2009
Maurene Caplan Grey
Founder, Principal Analyst
Grey Consulting

The Challenge of Records Management

“The power of real-time information lies in
its context, not its frequency.”
Larry Yu (MIT Sloan Management
Review, Fall 2008)
/
Source: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/articles/2008/fall/50105/the-downside-of-realtime-data

Objectives
Become familiar with business and
technology market trends
Become collaborative and social media
lifestyle savvy
Apply record management principles to
collaborative and social media content

Objectives
Familiarize yourself with business and
technology market trends
or
Fall victim to vendor hype

Market Trends
Business Imperatives
Customer service & support
HR management & training
Financial management
Product development Technology Disrupters
Operations & production … Digital distribution
Social media
Portability
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Open source …

Information Management Quagmire
Mailbox Quotas
Message Retention
Digital Rights Management
Archiving
Document Management
Record Management
Search
Encryption
Too many signals
No clear direction

Managing the Email Message
Technologies
•Policies
•Filters
Internet
•Tags, Indices,
Information
Retrieval
Firewall
•Storage Media
SMTP External
Email Relay
Server Service
Provider
Email Archiving,
Document Management,
Desktop or Records Management
Datastore
Policies

Content Management
Web
Email Document
Content
Archiving Mgnt
Mgnt
Challenges Characteristics
•Unstructured & •Retention
structured data •Life cycle
Records
•Industry management
Mgnt
mandates •Risk mitigation
•Building trust •Citation authority
•Technology •Compliance
changes •Legal hold

Vendor Approaches: Microsoft
unified communications
SaaS Product
Exchange Exchange
Voice Services
Voice Services
email, email,
calendaring calendaring
Live Meeting LCS*
IM, Web IM Web
conferencing conferencing
Microsoft Ecosystem
Office Suite, SharePoint, BizTalk,
Project, Speech, Forms …
* Live Communications Server

Vendor Approaches: Adobe
content creation and delivery
Macromedia
Flash
Web
Acrobat Connect content creation Acrobat
(Web (.pdf content
Conferencing) Creation)
Adobe Acrobat
Collaboration
Web conferencing & central content library
SaaS or Product

Vendor Approaches: EMC
“where information lives”
TruArc
records eRoom
management team room
Documentum Bulldog
Legato document Rich media
email archiving management
EMC Documentum
content management
Authentica
digital rights
management
RSA
data security
Acartus
Captiva print stream
Image capture
output

Point Products
Enterprise-wide
Policy engine
Holistic
Compliance-driven
Patent pending
The Quest for the Holy Grail

Objectives
The collaborative and social media
lifestyle can be glitzy
Don’t fall victim to the buzz

Buzzword Fatigue
Social media
Cloud computing
Enterprise 2.0
Web 2.0 Community
Collaboration
More buzz than a bee http://www.go2web20.net

People Talk
One-to-one,
one-to-many
Human
Communication
Electronic
Communication Human
Collaboration
Electronic
Jointly create
Collaboration common goal
and mutual
value

People Create Information
One-to-one,
Technologies: one-to-many
Email, IM, Web
conferences,
blogs, bulletin Human
boards…
Communication
Information
of business
value
Electronic
Communication Human
Data Collaboration
Repository
Electronic
Jointly create
Collaboration common goal
Technologies: Chat, and mutual
doc & appl sharing, value
wikis, white
boarding, team
rooms…

Information Takes Form
Category Paper E-Communications Closed Open
Collaborative Collaborative
Media Letter Email Team Room Team Room
(internal access (anyone can
only) participate)
Envelope Name, SMTP Header DNS (Domain DNS (Domain
(addressing Street, (routing information, Naming Standard) Naming Standard)
information) State e.g., To:, From:)
Transport USPS (US SMTP (Simple Mail HTTP (Hypertext HTTP (Hypertext
Post Office) Transport Protocol) Transfer Protocol ) Transfer Protocol )
Resides File cabinet Email server Intranet Web Internet Web
(a resting place) server server

Form Changes

Social Media Information Defies Form
Content can live in …
Server cache
Desktop cache
Handheld device
cache
Kiosk cache
Shared Web files
Shared local drives
Open communities
Closed communities

Adoption Defies Dichotomy
Grassroots adoption “Them” and “Us”
Mushrooming Communities closed to
communities new media neophytes
Business process Organic; unsanctioned
integration
Birth of new cottage Point products;
industry operational complexity
Hybrid architectures Training; re-architecting
develop, e.g., tags models
within a taxonomy

Objectives
Dichotomy: Applying RM to collaborative
and social media content
Bridge the gap

Where Is My Data?
Enterprise Consumer
Cloud Data Cloud Data
Stores Stores
Backup Backup
Data Stores Data Stores
Disaster Disaster
Recovery Data Recovery Data
Stores Stores
Partners’ Partners’
Enterprise Data Stores Data Stores
Data Stores Enterprise Partners’
Data Stores Data Stores
Enterprise
Enterprise Partners’
Data Stores Stores
Data Data Stores
Personal-Area
Network Data
Stores

Where Is My Information?

Who Defines the Context?

Objectives
Dichotomy: Applying RM to collaborative
and social media content
Transparency trumps rigidity

What Defines the Record?
Industry regulations
Federal and local
legislation
Intellectual property
… more
Rigidity is passé
Transparency
trumps “on a need
to know basis”

The world is flat. Space and time are
curved.*
*Source: Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, Streaming Media Industry Sourcebook 2009

Transparency and Open Government
MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE
DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES
SUBJECT: Transparency and Open Government
Government should be transparent.
Government should be participatory.
Government should be collaborative.
The independent agencies should comply with the Open Government Directive.
This memorandum shall be published in the Federal Register.
BARACK OBAMA
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/

Case Study: Georgia’s Virtual Vault
Confederate Enlistment Oaths and Discharges
Chatham County Deed Books
Colonial Will Books
Colonial Wills
Historic Postcard Collection
Headright and County Plats
Confederate Pension Applications
County Records from Microfilm
Georgia Power Photograph Collection
Leo Frank Clemency Application
Source: Georgia’s Virtual Vault, October 2006
(http://content.sos.state.ga.us/index.php)

Is This a Record?

Is This a Record?

Is this a record?
Basin
Artist: Qian Zhao
Number: 407180
Location: Chapel Hill, US
Source: The One Million Masterpiece
(http://www.millionmasterpiece.com)

Bottom Line
Technology changes
People don’t
Records management must adapt

Homework
Become a champion for collaborative and social media
information management
Is doing so worthwhile?
Tighten corporate and RM policies, by making them looser
“Email policies” are weak. E-communication policies are better.
Self-educate
Play with different collaborative and social media technologies.
Share best practices. You are a pioneer.
Get ahead of the curve by designing the road.

Organizations of Interest
Center for Democracy & Technology www.cdt.org
Resource Libraries www.cdt.org/resourcelibrary
IT Compliance Institute www.itcinstitute.com
Digital Civil Rights in Europe www.edri.org/
U.S. House of Representatives, Legislative Archive (includes current
status of introduced bills) www.house.gov/house/Legproc.shtml
Legal Information Institute (research and electronic publishing activity of
the Cornell Law School) www.law.cornell.edu
Records Management Society (UK) www.rms-gb.org.uk/
Records Management Association of Australasia www.rmaa.com.au/
WikiFOIA (Freedom of Information at the state and local level)
sunshinereview.org/index.php/Portal:WikiFOIA

Thank you
Maurene Caplan Grey
Founder, Principal Analyst
Grey Consulting
http://grey-consulting.com
maurene.grey@grey-consulting.com