Nina,
We have a DoD certified system which is successfully managing (for storage, retrieval and retention purposes) e-mail messages, born-digital documents, and scanned documents. We have installed the Hummingbird document management and records management modules. While it has not been a perfectly smooth deployment (is there such a thing?) and there are some lingering issues with user acceptance, relations with portals and other applications (such as the financial management system and the personnel system), it is certainly light-years ahead of our former paper-based system or trying to make lots of other add-ons play nicely together. We have about 3,000 users in 29 countries and have about 720,000 documents/ files/ records in the database in all four of the organization's official languages. The database includes some 30,000 board documents going back to 1959. The earlier ones were scanned and from 2001 they have been captured as born-digital only documents. We also have included the organization's photo library captured in JPG, as well as other born-digital documents, e-mails and attachments (now those are tough, but we're managing) and some interesting formats which have crept in. We are tweaking it as we go, deciding on formats to support, trying to get our policies to match our practices (and vice versa), improving the training as we move from intensive roll-out to mainly having to offer full training only to new hires, etc. We have had it up and running for 3 years this month, although there are still units where missionary work is needed to convert the resisting hold-outs. It's been a long and winding road, but it has never been dull.
Good luck, and try to resist lots of independent modules if you possibly can.
Regards,
Tom
J. Thomas Converse, Chief
Records Management Section
Inter-American Development Bank
1300 New York AV, N.W.
Washington, DC 20577
(202) 623-3010
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-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [ mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Osier, Nina
Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 12:36 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [RM] A DoD certified product question
I'm getting ready to attend a local demo provided by a computer consulting
company (name omitted deliberately). One of the presenters informed me,
during a conference call last week, that "no product on the market today"
can serve as an RMA for e-mail messages, born-digital documents, and scanned
documents. When I pressed this issue, the consultant insisted that DoD
certification is an "architecture only" exercise. That none of the products
on the approved list can do what it's supposed to do in real life, so we
should be prepared to purchase separate solutions for e-mail and other
digital records.
So, colleagues. Do any of you have personal experience with a DoD certified
RMA that's been fully implemented, and is successfully managing (for
storage, retrieval and retention purposes) e-mail messages, born-digital
documents, and scanned documents? I find the consultant's words hard to
believe, but so far I can't - despite lots of Googling and other research -
find such an installation that's got all the pieces up and running.
BTW, for anyone who notices from my sig line that I'm still at the Maine
State Archives: I had to withdraw my acceptance of the new position at Maine
Dept. of Transportation due to a health problem that surfaced with
spectacularly inconvenient timing. I'll be fine, but taking on new
challenges right now just isn't in the cards. It's a good thing one ever
promised me that life was going to be fair!
Best,
Nina
Nina M. Osier, Director
Division of Records Management Services
Maine State Archives
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