A New World Ahead: International Challenges for Information Management.

• Author: MACKENZIE, GEORGE

The global expansion of information management in the future depends upon cooperative effort among those association and countries recognized as having significant impact upon the recognition of the profession and the practices followed. This paper reviews current cooperative efforts between the ARMA International and the International Council on Archives (ICA) and the impact they are having on the future trends in both archival and records management practices. The author also addresses the development of an international standard based upon the Australian AS4390, activities of national-level governmental archival bodies and major studies in electronic records management.

We live in a changed and changing world, with new challenges facing those who manage organizational information. Thoughts about the future of information and records management must include the realities of high-speed communication around the world, a global economy, and the accelerating adoption of internationally authoritative standards, such as ISO 9000 and the Australian AS 4300. The effects they will have on records systems practices in the future will pose serious challenges to organizations and the profession worldwide.

The first challenge, which arises directly from the spread of democratic systems and institutions in recent years, is the movement for greater accountability and transparency in government. Governments need to be accountable to individual citizens, to business organizations, to individuals, and to those organizations in other countries with whom they trade in the global marketplace. This need for accountability also applies in the developing world where a restructuring of public services is demanded by donor and lending agencies. This heightened accountability wholly depends on a proper information infrastructure.

The second challenge arises from the fast growth in electronic generation of records, in particular the widespread use of electronic office systems and the development of electronic communications. We now have more and better means of generating and transmitting information than ever before, but our abilities to manage it effectively, especially in the longer term, are lagging behind.

Despite the shrinking of the world -- in a virtual sense -- from better communications, language and cultural differences remain. This cultural dissonance continues to affect the ways in which organizational information is managed across the world. This is the third challenge.

The fourth challenge is the continuing gulf between the resources available in the developed and developing worlds. This is changing into an ever-enlarging gulf between the information and technology "haves" and "have-nots." This disparity creates an ethical concern as well as one founded in an economic and commercial domain.

ICA-ARMA-IRMT Cooperation

Organizations operating at the international level are responding to global challenges by forming strategic alliances to share resources and develop joint positions. The three main international organizations concerned with archives and records management are ARMA International, the International Council on Archives (ICA) and the International Records Management Trust (IRMT). In 1996, these bodies agreed on an accord that recognizes the important roles organizational records, particularly in underpinning accountability in democratic societies; and voices concern about the ability of organizations to maintain their records, particularly because of a lack of skilled specialist staffs. The accord also recognizes that although general approaches to record keeping can be established internationally, there are laws, policies, standards ,and practices which will continue to vary from country to country.

The accord suggests several areas for cooperation, including identifying best practices and standards, disseminating educational materials, exchanging information between periodicals, and participating in joint field projects. Part of the spirit of the accord rests in getting to know the organizations and their people, and the invitation of representatives from each organization to attend annual meetings has helped considerably in this respect. ICA, IRMT, and ARMA are all very different organizations, but by working together the group is richer than the sum of the parts.

Future cooperation between ICA's Committee on Electronic and other Current Records and ARMA's Electronic Records Management Committee will likely cover functional requirements for electronic records, competencies for knowledge workers in archives and records management, devolution of public record keeping to the private sector, and principles for managing archives and current records.

Management of Public Sector Records Project

One of the accord's tangible results is cooperation on the Management of Public Sector Records Project (MPSR). Developed by IRMT, this project is one of the most significant responses to the challenge of managing information in developing countries. The aim of the project is to build an integrated approach to managing public-sector information resources and to empower archives and records professionals to manage it as a strategic resource. Representatives of ARMA and of ICA are on the steering body, and joint discussions on distributing the products of the project's efforts have been held.

The project arose from a recognition that the national archives in many English-speaking developing countries typically held the archival material from the nation's colonial period but that those archival institutions were not dealing with more modern material. In the agencies of government, semi-current and non-current records were piling up, leading to a clogging of the information arteries and a virtual collapse of record keeping systems. To make matters worse, in some cases entirely new electronic systems were being built on top of collapsed paper ones.

IRMT experts who carried out missions in a number of Commonwealth developing countries saw that the archive and record professionals in these countries were the obvious people to make the difference: they had skills on which to build and they had resources (e.g., staff and buildings) that might be used more efficiently. The leverage needed for these resources is training, educational programs to improve the skills and capacities of archives and records professionals in these countries. From the beginning, however, IRMT saw that simply improving the capacity of staff was not enough: the senior mangers and decision makers also had to recognize the value of managing information as a strategic resource. Then developed the idea of seminars bringing together national archivists and very senior government officials to discuss the management of information. These are made more powerful by being at an international or regional level bringing together participants from a number of countries.

To meet this need, the MPSR developed a series of training modules designed to be applicable in a variety of teaching environments, ranging from self-study to incorporation in the syllabus of university programs. The modules deal with core subjects such as principles of archives and records management, business systems analysis, and preserving records and archives, as well as with the management of specialized types of records, such as personnel and hospital files. A rigorous program of testing, evaluating and rewriting ensures high quality and relevance. A series of case studies and procedure manuals accompany the modules, and video productions have been created to increase the program's impact. The full set of modules...