Managing electronic records in the 21st century: as Michigan's State Archives and Records Management Services discovered, records management application (RMA) software can solve many electronic recordkeeping problems, but it also presents many challenges.

• Author: Wojcik, Caryn

With recent cases Of improperly forwarded, deleted, or stored e-mail grabbing business headlines, the heat is on records and information management (RIM) professionals everywhere to implement a solution that will ensure proper classification and retention of their organization's electronic records.

The State Archives of Michigan and the state's Records Management Services began discussing electronic records issues more than 25 years ago. In 1998, the two units collaborated to create a Michigan Government Electronic Records Committee (ERC), with representation from a variety of professional disciplines. An early concern was formulating some type of policy or guideline for e-mail retention. A draft e-mail policy that proposed printing out official e-mail for retention purposes was rejected by the information technology community, which favored a technology solution. Ultimately, the ERC wanted an automated solution for classifying electronic records created by desktop applications--such as e-mail and word-processed documents--and implementing retention requirements.

Initially, it was not clear what this automated solution might look like. Nor was it readily apparent whether a custom-designed product was best or whether commercial products were available that would better meet the state's needs. It also was important to determine what functionalities were needed or wanted.

In 1997, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) issued the first version of its 5015.2 Standard for records management applications (RMAs), and several commercial products that complied with this standard became available. After learning about the DoD standard and the various RMAs on the market, it became clear that the first step in finding a solution had already been completed; while not perfect, the DoD standard answered the question about desired functionalities. Two questions remained: How well would the commercial products work, and would people use them?

A list of existing RMA users working with this standard was compiled. They were interviewed by phone about implementation of the products and about their users. A few vendors were invited to conduct demonstrations of their products. It was important to determine whether existing users were endeavoring to achieve the same functionalities as ERC--records management for desktop electronic records. Most existing customers were using these products to manage paper records, although a few federal agencies had tested them on electronic records.

It was also important to test RMA software in the ERC environment to determine if it would solve the existing records retention problems. A grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) helped the state answer this question and purchase the RMA software. Staff was employed to administer the software and train the users. The two-year pilot project began May 1, 2000, and ended September 30, 2002.

VENDOR SELECTION

A multi-disciplinary vendor-review team (including three members of the project team) was assembled in October 1999 to select the software that would be tested during the pilot project. A request for information (RFI) was issued and proposals from five vendors were received. Four of the products were certified by the Department of Defense. The team reviewed the proposals and invited three vendors to provide demonstrations of their product. To gather additional information about these products, the team contacted several existing customers of these vendors after the demonstrations.

The team considered several topics to be of special concern, including the product's ability to operate in the current technology environment, ease of participant use, especially how long would it take to file a document, and the product's market share. A 1998 Doculabs report that contained a comparative analysis of six RMA products was extremely useful to the vendor selection team in designing the selection criteria. After the investigation, the vendor-review team unanimously selected ForeMost Enterprise (recently acquired by Documentum, but formerly Provenance and TrueArc) because of the simplicity of its user interface.

PROJECT PARTICIPANTS

The project plan called for two phases of evaluation. During the first phase, the RMA software was installed in the Department of Management and Budget (DMB) and the Office of Support Services (OSS), which was, at the time the project started, the parent...