Records Management and Knowledge Mobilisation: A Handbook for Regulation, Innovation and Transformation

RSA.

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Managing records and growing knowledge: an interactive strategy

Abstract:

Early initiatives in electronic records management showed promise for contributing to government transformation, but concentrated more on regulating information governance. Public sector modernisation has gained momentum, and a central feature of reform is the trend from delivery through hierarchies to networks. Records managers are seeking to refocus their professional role on information and knowledge. The key problems of government transformation are knowledge-based. Knowledge mobilisation and records management working together are well placed to meet these challenges.

Key words

electronic records management

government transformation

modernisation

public sector reform

professional role

knowledge mobilisation

In 1997, an energetic, reforming, New Labour Government was elected in the UK, ousting the weary incumbent which had been in power for many years. The newcomers promised a sweeping programme of modernisation and reform, a ‘new dawn’ which would permanently change the face of the public sector; a transformation into efficient, effective, integrated and increasingly electronic public services. At that time, many government information systems were still largely paper-based, existing electronic systems tended to be uncoordinated silos that simply automated manual practices, and government websites remained unsophisticated public communication channels. Inspired by the heady beliefs of the dot-com boom, rapidly moving to a fully electronic mode of working, creating large and interlinked databases of government records, the large-scale application of IT systems and building integrated public-facing electronic services through a coherent network of websites seemed the obvious course to follow. The new administration set out enthusiastically to apply the digital efficiencies and disciplines of the private sector to the conduct of government business.

At the same time, records managers and archivists responsible for government records were concerned about the long-term implications of electronic business systems for capturing, managing and preserving digital records. The essential mutability of the digital format, and dependency on fast-changing technology for access to the content, threatened the authenticity and longevity of the corporate record and, for the permanent archive, the continuing flow of historical records in the future. In response, records management practice aspired to bring electronic records under managed control much closer to the point of creation than with paper records. The new strategy for a sweeping digitisation of government business represented, on the one hand, a threat that could not be ignored, and on the other, an opportunity to hitch these issues onto a more glamorous carriage.

The new strategy was articulated in a government White Paper entitled Modernising Government, which set out a range of initiatives and targets for the delivery of ‘information-age government’. Some way into this document, it mentioned:

…a strategy across government for managing and accessing archives, using modern IT to support service delivery and accountability. It is our aim that by 2004 all newly created public records will be electronically stored and retrieved.

With most broad-based policy documents, the original wording of its detailed elements is collated from many sources and edited together by a central policy team. It seems most likely that those who originated this statement were thinking of the creation of interim electronic archives for semi-active records – those no longer needed for day-to-day business, but deemed important for compliance and reference purposes – rather than of current business records in day-today business systems. This seemed a good way to ensure that ‘born-digital’ documents produced by electronic business systems would be preserved for later selection by the permanent archives. Clearly this strategy would be difficult to justify in cost–benefit terms on its own – and hard to engage senior management interest within departments – if the primary benefit is understood as the historical value for future generations. Linking this objective into public service reform initiatives – arguing that it will improve electronic service delivery and build public trust and confidence through greater accountability – reframed the strategy as an essential underpinning infrastructure for the modernisation initiative.

The arguments developed thus: a radical move to online public services requires an equal attention to the efficient capture, management and presentation of operational information behind the public face of the system – tax-collecting organisations, for example, need to know what guidance they have placed on their websites in the past, the e-mail communications that staff have had with individual customers, any precedent-setting policy and case decisions, and so on; and to be able to make this knowledge reliably accessible at the point of contact with the customer. Some of this information will be held in structured databases, but some also in unstructured and poorly controlled documents, e-mails or spreadsheets, without benefit of version control or audit trails. A ‘print-to-paper’ policy is not sustainable in online working; therefore all this material must be brought within a managed electronic environment and placed under the necessary disciplines that would assure their status as reliable and authentic formal records. In turn, this managed environment would need to reflect new ways of working, rather than simply automating paper-based routines, whilst also retaining a degree of compatibility with legacy material.

A second major theme of modernisation, at the inter- agency level, was tagged as ‘joined-up government’. The citizen/customer should be able to interact with pubic services in terms of their own needs, without having to understand how functions are allocated across the physical structure of government agencies; the focus should be on the outcome rather than the process. Therefore electronic records management should be consistent and compatible between, as well as within, different organisations, to enable the appropriate sharing and update of information regardless of its physical location. At the same time, the managed environment must take account of privacy and data protection rules, and reconcile these with the innovatory needs for information-sharing between organisations.

The logic of these arguments reinforced the belief that electronic records must be brought within the managed environment at or near their point of creation, else their authenticity might be in question. Driven by the consequences of locating it within the modernisation initiative, the brief policy statement on interim electronic archives quoted above quickly evolved into a target to install electronic document and records management (EDRM) systems in business areas across all central government departments and agencies by the end of 2004, meeting a common standard of requirements – quite a different challenge! This in turn generated a range of supporting activities, functional and procedural standards, departmental business change programmes and incentivisation of software product development.

This story illustrates the surprising ways that public policies, in general, come about. It is often assumed that they are generated through a fully rational process of evidence-gathering, evaluation of options and considered rational choice; but many other factors influence the process. In this case, a pre-existing solution – interim electronic archives – fitted well with a broad archival concern about the impact of IT on the quality of records and future transfer to the permanent archives. The redefinition of the problem as one of rapid modernisation offered an entrepreneurial opportunity to attach this solution to a problem passing in the stream of wider policy issues. Now framed in this new perspective, it began to evolve a different aspect. The logic and momentum of this innovation reworked the proposed solution into something rather different: about current business systems rather than historical archives.

This shift put the records management function potentially at the forefront of business change, introducing new tensions. The conventional formal structures of records management tend to stress a regulatory function, constraining the actions that can be taken on corporate information in order to ensure authentic records and compliance with information governance regimes. Potential constraints include, for example, requiring users to: store electronic records in corporate filing structures they do not understand and find difficult to retrieve from; apply retention policies, security and other (to them burdensome) metadata about the record, adding additional processes for largely administrative reasons; or refrain from sharing information between business units where there may be risk of compliance issues. A concentration on regulation can then easily become a battle against innovation, in which records managers are perceived as ‘information police’, always in the position of saying, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ In such a situation, it becomes more difficult for them to demonstrate how these apparent obstructions do in fact contribute to real business benefits.

This tension between regulation and innovation is inherent in records management. On the one hand, the unique contribution of records management disciplines is to produce a structured and sustainable body of material which accurately records what happened, supporting accountability and transparency: a focus on order and stability. On the other, it must engage with issues of modernisation and reform, contributing to business benefits and effective outcomes delivery, helping to improve agility, efficiency and quality: a focus on change. A central question of this book is: how can we resolve these competing demands in a consistent and coherent way?

The ‘2004 initiative’, as it became known, found it difficult to articulate precise business benefits from EDRM that would be capable of justifying the substantial costs of implementation across the whole of government. Benefits tended to stress the avoidance of costs from lack of compliance, savings in space management and efficiencies in records management processes themselves; and generalised assertions on improved decision-making and evidence-based policy. Fortuitously, an alternative platform emerged in the shape of Freedom of Information legislation, new to the UK and to be implemented by 2005; and to a lesser extent, in revisions in data protection and other legislation. The attraction to officials and politicians of some assurance against surprising revelations, through improved records control, offered supplementary justification. To the question: ‘what is EDRM for?’ the answers shifted between an initial ‘to save today’s records for future generations’, towards ‘to avoid the potential embarrassment of failing to comply with information policy’, whilst ‘to radically help transform the way government works’ slipped down the agenda. When seeking to meet a difficult target, the familiar is more attractive than the unknown, and for many organisations it seemed the spotlight shifted from service transformation towards information governance; from enabling innovation and change towards corralling and restraining new approaches; from proportionate risk management towards precautionary risk avoidance; and from a user perspective towards a records manager perspective.

This and subsequent initiatives in health and local government have succeeded in building a strong narrative around information policy and governance: defining a comprehensive set of rules on the application of data protection and data-sharing, freedom of information and information security, confidentiality and transparency; and turning these into institutional rules that are embedded in the expected culture and behaviour of public sector bodies. They have been less successful – as with many other government IT programmes – in radically transforming the way that government delivers services and outcomes. There are few studies quantifying the benefits realised by the various programmes that have implemented EDRM over the last decade or so, and no systematic review of the returns from the substantial investments made in these initiatives. Undoubtedly many records managers have achieved a great deal in promoting a corporate model of records and a compliant information governance regime in their organisations, and in improving the efficiency of records management processes themselves. What is not clear, though, is the extent to which these achievements have directly added value to the primary objectives of those organisations – shaping and delivering public policy