At 11:38 AM 4/20/2005 -0500, you wrote:
>What's the sense of going through all of this unless there is some kind
>of official certification obtained at the end?
Okay... I'll take a stab at this. In a broader perspective, many
organizations don't have the benefit of having a full-time RIM Staff, much
less a skilled or trained Records Management Professional in their
stable. While this may sound a little hard to believe in this day and age
of compliance based requirements, and especially hard to belive in this
venue... believe me, it's true.
We hear more and more through "initial messages" posted here that people
"just started working in RIM" and may have come from IT, or some general
administrative position or have just assumed the duties of RIM as what had
been a piece of their job that they ended up spending more and more time on
over a number of years.
If you have NO RIM PROGRAM or if you have an extremely informal program
supported by "loosey-goosey" business practices and are looking to develop
a formal program, ISO 15489 provides a framework for establishing a formal
RIM program that applies many sound business practices and can be adapted
to suit any industry or organization.
That's why someone would want to do it. It's not about the certification,
it's about the need for some guidance if you have none.
>I have a program that is
>(and has been for 3 years) 95% compliant with the criteria listed in ISO
>15489. I was only waiting until we purchased and installed our new
>content management/records management system (now in progress) to more
>efficiently handle electronic records before going all-out for ISO
>15489. I was under the impressions three years ago that this guide was
>to become a standard, and I would be ready to meet it when it did become
>a standard. However, as it is still just a guide, I now see no benefit
>to spending my limited resources on ISO 15489.
Actually, it IS an International Standard, but it isn't an ANSI Certified
Standard. ISO 15489 has two parts.
Part 1, "Information and Documentation — Records Management — Part 1:
General" is the Standard that is based on the Australian Standard AS 4390,
Records Management, and was developed to standardize international best
practice in records management. It provides guidance on managing records of
originating organizations, public or private, for internal and external
clients to ensure that adequate records – in all formats and media – are
created, captured and managed.
Part 2, "Information and Documentation — Records Management — Part 2:
Guidelines" is the accompanying Technical Report, which specifies the
elements of records management and defines the necessary results or
outcomes to be achieved. It is supplementary to the standard, and is
intended to provide further explanation and one methodology for
implementation of the standard. Both ISO 15489-1 and this technical report
apply to records in any format or media, created or received by any public
or private organization during the course of its activities.
>Also, I can proclaim I'm
>compliant, but if there is no outside evaluation, certification, or
>unbiased assessment to back me up, I can make whatever claims I want, be
>they true or false. Who's to tell me I wrong?
Here in the US, right now, there is absolutely NO ONE to tell you that
you're wrong. And a piece of the problem is in the US, it's very difficult
to convince ANY ORGANIZATION that they "need to comply" with ISO 15489,
because unlike ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, no other countries are requiring
organizations to be compliant with the Standard to do business with
them. Presently, if any US organization wants to do business with the
European Community (EC), their business better be ISO 9001 and ISO 14001
compliant, or their products won't be accepted into their countries for
sale or use.
The problem is, many businesses cannot identify the "bottom line benefit"
to compliance with ISO 15489, so they aren't willing to spend any money to
developing implementation plans for the use of the Standard... and as you
mentioned there is no body to certify that you're compliant once you
are. And the reason for that? Well, it's simple... if no one can make any
money to do it, then no one will spend any money to offer a
certification. That doesn't mean there aren't BENEFITS to implementing the
methodology, they just aren't supported by anything directly identifiable
as a "fiscal benefit" to an organization's bottom line.
But the benefits ARE tangible, and they can result in savings to an
organization... if nothing else, because they result in the establishment
of bset practices for managing information as an asset for an organization.
>If an organization is just beginning to build or reorganize a
>document/records program, it may be a wonderful tool to use as a
>structured approach and to prevent costly errors, but for those of us
>who are already there, again I ask what's the use?
Well, as has been discussed in the thread regarding CRMs and all, not
everyone is at the same level of knowledge or application of best practices
and as you say, if you've got noting or are looking to improve, it's a
definite "hit", but if you want to test your existing system and see if
there are areas that you might be able to do an even better job, this might
be just the tool you're needing.
Keep in mind, this is what Standards are all about. They're intended as
tools to be used to verify an organization is doing what has been
determined to be the best practices to achieve a given result, or to allow
an organization to implement improvements to meet the requirements in the
Standard. Standards that are ANSI approved, such as those developed by
ARMA, AIIM, NFPA and many other organizations are developed by a consensus
based approach, which involves a committee or a task force comprised of
individuals from a wide range of industries and organizations and they
require a balloting process and a public review prior to issuance to ensure
they are widely accepted prior to being adopted and assigned an official
number and revision date. They are also subject to periodic review (in the
case of ANSI approved Standards, once every 5 years) to ensure they still
are valid and meet the intended purpose they were issued for.
>Any opinions out there on this?
That's all I've got to say on the issue... and it's likely more than some
wanted to or needed to hear, but thanks for the opportunity to give a
little bit of a heads-up on Standards. It's not often that people will
pull out a soapbox that you can stand on and not get virtual tomatoes
hurled at you =)
Larry
Member of the ARMA Standards Development Committee (since 1999)
Principal Member of the NFPA Technical Committee on Standard 232 (since 1999)
Member of various AIIM Standards Task Forces and Committees (since 1997)
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