RM8 Searching – Under the Bonnet

on March 11, 2014

Having explored the new Records Manager 8 interface features that impact End Users in the article ‘The New World of RM8”, this article moves on to take a look under the search bonnet and prepares you to experience a paradigm shift in your search methodology! As you start using RM8 to conduct searches your first question will be “what happened to the Search Methods I used in HP TRIM when managing records?” For instance, traditionally you’d search for all Records with overdue Actions assigned by opening the Search form and selecting the Search Method ‘Record Actions Overdue’. In TRIM 7 ‘Record Actions Overdue’ sits under the Business Process Search Method category with a range of Action related Search Methods, as per Figure 1. Figure 1: TRIM 7 In RM8 (Figure 2) you will quickly find there is no Record Actions Overdue Search Method. Figure 2: […]

The New World of RM8

on February 09, 2014

The question of “What is new for the End User?” is faced by every organisation upgrading from one version of software to another. Major, and sometimes even minor, changes in the interface, the functionality and the features require training in some form for the end users to seamlessly transition. Where there is little change or competent users this may be in the form of informative presentations and flyers. For a different audience or extensive change more formal training may be required. Regardless, there will be a need to prepare resources, allocate training time and set aside the budget for this. With Record Manager 8 (RM8) released by HP as the latest version of the TRIM EDRMS many records units will be trying to decide if they should upgrade to TRIM 7 or RM8. TRIM 7 is now well established, and although for TRIM Administrators and […]

Records Management: Back to the Future

on December 10, 2013

Records and Information Managers are assailed with big picture thinking at present. Faced with an avalanche of information looming from the future, planning is currently consumed and frequently overwhelmed with making decisions on managing big data. Cloud computing, enterprise search and data based decision making are the themes of workshops, conferences and papers. The need to research, consult and set direction for the big picture is self-evident. Past experience informs us that failure to forward think leads to poor outcomes. Organisations which failed to read the future litter the landscape. Think Kodak and digital photography, and IBM’s failure to change to a business model that could compete in the changing landscape of PC production. However, the overwhelming evidence is that most Records and Information Management (RIM) teams are struggling to manage the current requirements and needs of recordkeeping; just ensuring all records are captured in […]

Social Media Does Not Make a Good Record

on October 20, 2013

Social media is here to stay, but the challenges of using and managing it are a long way from resolved. There are times personally when that becomes so obvious, that I

Strategy in the Pacific – The Digital Islands Story

on August 20, 2013

Do you find it difficult for people to appreciate the value of records management, and moreso, the value of your role in it? Records management is not shifting documents and boxes. The people who have collected objects and documents throughout history have enriched our lives and educated us. Its important record managers value your role and appreciate your own innate skills. Those thoughts were in my head as I developed a unique course on Developing a Digitisation Strategy for the PARBICA conference for Pacific Island Records Managers. The thoughts lead me to writing a very Pacific story to introduce strategy … The Digital Island Story Many hundreds of years ago there was an island on the edge of the great Pacific Ocean, known by its people as Paper Island. The Elders of Paper Island told stories of their ancestors, many, many generations before having come […]

Embracing the Digital Future – an interview with Ros Ball

on June 25, 2013

The halls of Harvard University have a history of overcoming resistance to change. The factories of Yokohama are renowned for continuous improvement. Silicon Valley is where we look for technology innovation. And the Archives Offices of Canberra, Surrey, Washington or Pretoria have influenced business to recognise the benefits of metadata. But where in Australia would you start a search for an organisation and individuals who have thought deeply about all these critical elements in recordkeeping, and achieved great success? The City of Shoalhaven on the beautiful southern NSW coastline, best known as stunning tourist destination, is unlikely to have come to mind, but that’s where we found another example of great progress in fully digital recordkeeping. Shoalhaven City Council administers and provides services to a population of 96,000 people living in 49 towns and villages south of Sydney. It boasts 300,000 hectares of national parks […]

There is a Recordkeeper in all of us

on May 02, 2013

Records management is one of the most typecast and poorly branded professions I know. This is old news to anyone working in the profession. You know colleagues regard recordkeeping as dull and tedious, and the people who do it as introverted, detail driven and therefore dull. There is a refreshing clique of humour that has grown within the profession. However outsiders find it a mystery why people pursue recordkeeping as a profession or find it interesting. Records management is a field I entered accidently, as many do. Our role was to provide technical skills. To do so it is essential to understand why recordkeeping is important. That led to passionate discussions, interesting discoveries and a new perspective on the world, and continues to expand my world each day. Today’s need to convert every employee into a dedicated recordkeeper is challenging. Frequently we use ‘scary stories’ […]

Access Denied – Navigating the digital security maze

on March 14, 2013

Myths and Stories Out there, in the corridors of power, the compactuses of restriction and assorted business systems, there’s a war going on. It’s the “War of Access”. The fight is over who can, who should and who will see “my” records. The two armies slogging it out in this cold war are the people of the business defending their right to individually and inconsistently determine who will see their records and the stewards of information, records management. Prevarication rules as organisations avoid the proactive conversations necessary to make the hard decisions to develop a mature organisation-wide approach to accessing records; hard decisions that not everyone will like. The factions continue to reactively squabble with each other over the rules of operation and how to apply them and very little progress is made towards a better world. When managing only paper records, business easily wins […]

To Be or Not To Be… Qualified that is [The Certificate IV in Recordkeeping journey]

on August 14, 2012

It’s been a long, arduous journey. We’ve broken new ground. We’ve taken on challenges set by the industry, and imposed our own stringent quality standards. We’ve debated amongst ourselves and industry professionals on content, context, format and style. It’s taken 6 months of solid work, and now we have a Certificate IV in Recordkeeping program ready to unveil to the records management industry. And what could make it so difficult I hear you also ask. And if it is, then why bother at all? Let me take you on a journey. What a qualification in Certificate IV in Recordkeeping should deliver Not surprisingly, I believe in the worth of qualifications. Not because of the value of the qualification itself though. Yes, that piece of paper listed on your resume will enable you to meet the criteria listed in job descriptions, and open opportunities to get the […]

Picking a winning EDRMS team

on April 10, 2012

“I tried that but it didn’t work. I’ve tried everything and it does not matter what I do, I can’t get the executive to budge, nor the sponsor to really believe in the project”, the records manager opined down the phone. I almost let out an audible sigh as I continued on with the interview, one of many conducted as part of our research sponsored by Records and Information Management Professionals of Australasia (RIMPA) into what are the drivers behind successful and failed Electronic Document and Records Management Systems (EDRMS) implementations. What I had just heard was a common refrain from failed implementations and even from implementations which were deemed successful from our previous quantitative survey but, upon a qualitative analysis of the actual implementation, were not as successful as first thought. Nor was this refrain an isolated indication that skill gaps in the implementation […]