​Thanks for your link to Part II of your blog series, "Next Generation
Records Management Comes to the Federal Government."  As you know, I
subscribe to your blog, and I read it and Part I with great interest.​  You
mention that one of the biggest challenges will be managing the resistance
to change that these new solutions will bring.

Having seen officials struggle to sell change messages in a number of
areas, some unrelated to RM, during my career, I've come to believe that
giving people psychic space is an important part of managing this.  One of
the areas where I disagree with the William Bridges change model many
Federal officials turned to 10-15 years ago is the rhetoric it used.
Telling employees that a component in their "resistance to change" is fear
or anxiety puts a negative focus on the listener.  Rreframing that in a
more positive way, to focus on the change agents ("what could we do
differently to frame the purpose of this, so it resonates with more
people?"), would have worked better back then, in my view.  At least in
some parts of Fedland, while some of the Bridges concepts are valid, the
phrase has picked up a lot of baggage over the years.

Many attempts in Fedland 10-15 years ago to resolve RM issues by rolling
out electronic documents/electronic records management systems did not meet
their goals, for a number of reasons.  One was because people were too busy
to focus on RM, which seemed like a "when I get to it" thing to many
program officials.  Another more profound impact was because some change
agents overlooked the psychological impact on senior officials.  Those
officials had been accustomed to having secretaries and assistants file
away their paper records, in locked cabinets, where appropriate.  The most
sensitive documents were close held, and if permanently valuable, stored
away for decades.

Manual declaration of records status by the recipients and senders of email
placed them into constant view in the electronic environment in the
mid-2000s.  The immediacy of moving record material in messages and
attachments into an ERMS required a RM change management step often
overlooked.  I say that based on what I heard or observed in talking to RM
friends throughout Federal agencies back then. That is, the building first,
by on-site agency and departmental RM practitioners and their workplace
allies, of an empathetic foundation geared towards acknowledging and
mitigation the psychological impact on senior officials.

That inadvertent missing change management step from 10-15 years ago may be
part of the emotional baggage some senior program officials still may
carry.  Change works best when you believe others see and understand you,
as someone affected, in the situation. Worth keeping in mind as they now
hear RMs sell them automated solutions to the handling of  their recorded
words, further changing how materials are handled.

Beyond the workplace challenges for RMs, but one of interest to me as a
user of records and as someone with many other historians among my friends,
is the increasing need for human intervention at the very end of the
records lifecycle.  I understand the need for automated solutions and
support their use in RM.  But it means that at the very time as automation
removes the human element in some RM work, researchers of the future will
need increasingly to insert the human being into the online or physical
research room.

Which is to say, to inuit where and why knowledge gaps and archival
silences exist.  And, where it exists in contemporary records, what caused
diminished candor and "pre-emptive sanitization," to use a phase from a
conversation I had 15 years ago with Air Force Historian Eduard Mark.  And
how what was recorded in preserved materials may have been affected in an
era where some writers feared weaponization of their written words.
Something automation cannot do for researchers, but their own intuition and
humanistic outlook may help resolve, to some extent.

Thanks again for your good blogging, Don.  I greatly appreciate it and your
work on the job.

Maarja
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Washington, DC
Blog:  Archival Explorations
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__archivalexplorations.wordpress.com_&d=DwIFaQ&c=pZJPUDQ3SB9JplYbifm4nt2lEVG5pWx2KikqINpWlZM&r=b5NZPQUb9_r2rQ3Zd74ATT3aSs9yKyRnJLOhqJvd7fE&m=jHzOBjofuIcCNFt0tX38LC7TdRVuvbil8e7lxAAlzHQ&s=F1KXYsvLNjdmH-pjge5mz-xvtYW8LMVVI70hJUERbAo&e=

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