A report was given on 60 Minutes last night regarding the Deepwater
Horizon disaster, in which a survivor was interviewed. It was one of
those hard hitting pieces that 60 Minutes occasionally does rather well:

 

http://bit.ly/buRJij

 

However, what caught my attention was the following, which appears on
page 5 of the transcript:

 

>Now, there is new concern about another BP facility in the Gulf: a
former BP insider tells us the platform "Atlantis" is a greater threat
than the Deepwater Horizon. 

>Ken Abbott has worked for Shell and GE. And in 2008 he was hired by BP
to manage thousands of engineering drawings for the Atlantis platform. 

> "They serve as blueprints and also as a operator manual, if you will,
on how to make this work, and more importantly how to shut it down in an
emergency," Abbott explained. 

>But he says he found that 89 percent of those critical drawings had not
been inspected and approved by BP engineers. Even worse, he says 95
percent of the underwater welding plans had never been approved either.

 

The story quotes another BP insider confirming Abbott's story, then goes
on to say that Abbott was laid off, and has been advocating for a
further investigation of Atlantis through various interest groups and
agencies. 

 

Once, over 30 years ago, when I was a janitor working my way through
college, I was cleaning a "security executive's" office and encountered
extensive evidence on his desk of payoffs to a wide range of local
politicians. I never told anyone, and just continued my job. I can't say
that I have encountered similar information as an archivist or a records
manager.  However, Mr. Abbott is revealing potentially serious
information regarding his former employer that he discovered while
performing a records management job (although one wonders how willing
Mr. Abbott would have been to reveal this information had he not been
"laid off").

 

Point 2 of the ICRM Code of Ethics states:

>Certified Records Managers shall conform to existing laws and
regulations covering the creation, maintenance, and disposition of
recorded information, and shall never knowingly be parties to any
illegal or improper activities relative thereto. 

Mr. Abbott appears to be meeting this ethical standard. However, the
next point states:

>Certified Records Managers shall be prudent in the use of information
acquired in the course of their duties. They should protect
confidential, proprietary and trade secret information obtained from
others and use it only for the purposes approved by the party from whom
it was obtained or for the benefit of that party, and not for the
personal gain of anyone else. 

Mr. Abbott is clearly not using the information he obtained for the
benefit of BP, or with their approval.

 

Given that it is surprisingly rare that similar whistleblower incidents
occur out of the records management community, perhaps we value the
second point more than the first. Or do we? What would you do if you
encountered evidence of "illegal or improper" activities in the course
of your business. Its notable here that the improper activity
encountered by Mr. Abbott actually centered around a document approval
process, therefore it can be stated that the improper activity was
records related.

 

Dwight Wallis, CRM

Records Administrator

Multnomah County Records Management Program

1620 SE 190th Avenue

Gresham, OR 97233

phone: (503)988-3741

fax: (503)988-3754

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