Hi Larry,

Sorry for the delayed response.  Keeping up with conversations, whether it
be email, forums or social networks, is becoming more difficult as
interest grows.  Anyhow, I hope all finds you well.

(BTW, is this the same Larry M. that I met in NJ a few years ago?)

Please find my responses to your questions and statements, below.  I
apologize for the lengthy email but I tried to be as complete as possible.
 I also posted it to ERECS-L and RECMGMT-L listservs, since you posted
your questions to both.

"Who is the Foundation?"  IF4IT was formally put in place as a legal
entity in September of 2011.  It was a long time coming but other ventures
distracted from its creation.  I'm responsible for its vision and
oversight and it's composed of a number of contributors throughout
multiple industries who believe in open knowledge models and that wish to
freely share such knowledge so that other professionals don't have to
purchase or "recreate" it, from scratch, from engagement to engagement.
Our goal is to become something like a Wikipedia but with the differences
that IF4IT specifically focuses on IT and that its content, unlike
Wikipedia's, can be used as formal reference material, from its inception.

"Who was the request from?"  I believe you're question is referring to the
RM Framework so I'll answer in this context.  In this case, the suggestion
for an RM publication came from a colleague who is now an IT executive at
Bank of America.  After seeing the RM Taxonomies and some of the other
frameworks that have been published (http://www.if4it.com/resources.html),
she thought it would be a good idea to have something that would help tie
it all together, with a slant on RM.

"Who submitted the outline?"  She submitted pieces of an outline as a
suggestion for a baseline.  It was passed around for review and grew after
review from about 5 or 6 people with RM backgrounds in industries that
include Pharma, Finance, Semiconductors, Mobile Apps, and various forms of
Insurance.

You made the statement: "I can't see where the IT community would see a
need for much of what is listed here... and I have lots of first hand
experience with interaction with that community, from the vendor, user,
public and private perspective."  Given that I have close to 30 years of
IT experience, I'm going to respectfully disagree with your perspective,
especially since most of my background deals with enterprise data and
information management, which includes Data Governance.  Using mid-sized
to very large IT organizations as the most common examples, it's very safe
to make that statement that "all IT organizations have to be concerned
with RM all of the time" and it's a very big aspect of what IT
organizations do, especially since it's IT organizations that deal with
the solutions put in place to deal with electronic/digital records.  The
volumes of data and information that are spread across thousands of IT
systems in a single company are very critical to RM and good IT
professionals "always" worry about things like: Historical Records
Keeping, Shadow Records, Audit Trails, Archiving, Retrieval and many other
aspects of RM.  This is all a part of what's called Data Governance and a
good IT professional worries about such matters all the time and ensures
that RM requirements are always a factor in design and implementation
decisions.  In a world where lawyers subpoena companies more often and
more frequent than rabbits reproduce, all IT professionals should always
keep RM in mind for everything they do, as "everything" is a record when
it comes to litigation.  The simplest examples are Email, Document
Management repositories, any system that has an associated database, and
things like Intranets, Extranets and Internets.  IT professionals worry
about RM aspects of such systems all of the time, as the data and
information in such systems is always subject to restoral and scrutiny for
many reasons, litigation being only one of them.

You made the statement: "Vendors tend to see much more value in what you
refer to as a 'public framework' than practitioners do."  Please forgive
me if I'm misinterpreting your statement... I don't know if you mean to
imply that IF4IT is a vendor or if you're referring to vendors who go in
as service consultants and implement solutions for other enterprises, as
in the consultancy industry.  If you meant the former, I can say that
we're simply not a vendor, as we don't sell anything, so your statement
wouldn't apply.  If you meant the latter, then my answer is a little
longer... Let me first ask: Do you make such a statement as a fact or as
an opinion?  The Foundation utilizes tools such as Google Analytics and
ShareThis analytics that measure things like new vs. repeat visitors, how
often people come to visit specific content, how long they stay on such
content, what content patterns they create and or follow as they explore
information, what content they find most valuable and share with others,
etc.  These tools even show us things like the domains that readers come
from, such as government, private industry or even personal domains.  The
day-to-day statistics we've gathered, in less than a year, seem to not
align with your statement, as growth and use seem to be trending upward,
rapidly.  According to Alexa, IF4IT has gone from being ranked at over
25M, last September to about 2M, today, all in less than 9 months.  This
is only based on word of mouth.  Social Networking wasn't even a part of
our website until March of this year (most of our growth was between March
2011 and now).  Also, I'll throw in that a number of colleges and
universities that are spread across a number of countries are already
using IF4IT content as reference material for their students.  I would
venture the statement that such learning institutions are not vendors.
Correct?  All of the above doesn't even get into direct feedback and
opinions that we receive from people all over the world, who help identify
what is or isn't valuable and why.

You made the statement: "The fact that you mention '...like the others
(implying other IF4IT Frameworks), will be subject to iterative
improvements, over time...' make it a moving target, which is difficult to
hit.  AND you can't certify compliance against a moving target."  This is
a very good point.  Let me reiterate that IF4IT is not trying to create
something that will replace ISO or ARMA.  It's simply an openly published
set of content that can be used as tools for learning and reference by
students and professionals.  As for things changing quickly and for the
better, through active iterations, this happens all the time, even with
ARMA's books.  The difference is that IF4IT doesn't have to re-edit and
republish paper-based books and that we can publish changes faster and
more frequently.  We also don't charge for our content, which matters to
some people.  It was pointed out to me, just yesterday, that to buy all of
ARMA's published standards material would cost a single professional
thousands of dollars, even with a membership, and that the purchase would
not even include free upgrades to updated materials, which would require a
professional to repurchase updated content/books, any time they changed.
Please keep in mind that while I personally find such material to be well
formed, such expenses are just not feasible for many people or even for
many enterprises.  In such cases, the Foundation's content becomes an
alternate and free option.  For those who can afford such expenses,
Foundation content simply becomes more information for better decision
making.  Our goal, in the case of RM, is not to become the reference for
RM professionals in the Business areas of an enterprise but, rather, to
help educate existing or would be "IT professionals" as to the practices
and importance of RM in the context of IT and in support of RM
professionals on the Business side of an enterprise.  In an age where so
many things are moving to electronic solutions, IT professionals need to
be aware of such things and know how to address them.

Anyhow, I hope this helps answer and clarify things.

My Best,

Frank
-- 
Frank Guerino, Chairman
The International Foundation for Information Technology (IF4IT)
http://www.if4it.com
1.908.294.5191 (M)

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