Thank you Fred for the information.  Listserv members, please consider this
ARMA's official response.

Most Sincerely,

John

John P. Frost, CRM
President/Chair of the Board
ARMA International

-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Fred Pulzello CRM
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2009 3:28 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [RM] G.A.R.P. Response

As the head of the task force that developed the Generally Accepted
Recordkeeping PrinciplesSM, I wanted to provide some sort of official
comment here. Doug is absolutely right on a few accounts – first, we’re
happy to see this as a topic for discussion. These principles are
continually evolving and conversation like this from the community can
provide wonderful feedback. 



Doug is also right with regard to the regulatory environment in the world
today. And that was a major catalyst to the creation and community
acceptance of these principles. To answer David’s question about purpose: In
short, GARPSM was created to speak to a business, legislative, and judicial
audience – not as a guideline for RIM professionals. Larry is right when he
says that the trouble with “generally accepted” in RIM is that it is
typically so general that it lacks the necessary detail for successful
application. The audience these statements are aimed toward aren’t the
practitioners. The y are almost exclusively non-RIM, C-level business
executives and boards of directors, legislatures, and the judicial system as
a way to boil down the fundamentals of good information management. At the
core, these are the general principles organizations should strive for with
respect to records and information management.  



How can a practitioner apply these principles? It’s not so much in the
ability to apply these statements to your program; it’s using this language
as a framework for your20discussion to the non-RIM audience within your
organization. I’ll be leading an ARMA International web seminar on that very
topic this month.  



More information, background material, take-aways, and presentations are
absolutely forthcoming – the task force and HQ staff are eager to present
those resources. You’ll soon see an announcement about a panel discussion
from the task force as part of the Orlando conference. It’s that body of
knowledge that can help practitioners cite and interpret these statements
and begin to transform them into something prescriptive. Sure, all of the
major ANSI / ISO / ARMA standards played a foundational role in the
development of this language (as did case law, the combined experience and
expertise of the task force, and each professional who made comment) – but
matching any of that wisdom line-for-line into a document that was intended
to communicate broad theory to a non-RIM audience is not easily a 1-to-1
proposition.



This is an amazing opportunity not just for ARMA International, but for the
profession as a whole. When the task force opened the draft to a public
comment phase, the most frequently heard sentiment (by far) was “It’s about
time.” Most of us real-world practitioners have been searching for common
language to use when having these kinds of conversations. The feedback has
been unbelievably positive and we’re very excited to keep marching down this
path.
 

Thanks for all the discussion and forward 
thinking. Together we’re moving the profession forward!

Regards,

Fred

Fred A. Pulzello, MBA, CRM
ARMA Treasurer
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