At 11:38 AM 4/20/2005 -0500, you wrote:
>What's the sense of going through all of this unless there is some kind
>of official certification obtained at the end?

Okay... I'll take a stab at this.  In a broader perspective, many 
organizations don't have the benefit of having a full-time RIM Staff, much 
less a skilled or trained Records Management Professional in their 
stable.  While this may sound a little hard to believe in this day and age 
of compliance based requirements, and especially hard to belive in this 
venue... believe me, it's true.

We hear more and more through "initial messages" posted here that people 
"just started working in RIM" and may have come from IT, or some general 
administrative position or have just assumed the duties of RIM as what had 
been a piece of their job that they ended up spending more and more time on 
over a number of years.

If you have NO RIM PROGRAM or if you have an extremely informal program 
supported by "loosey-goosey" business practices and are looking to develop 
a formal program, ISO 15489 provides a framework for establishing a formal 
RIM program that applies many sound business practices and can be adapted 
to suit any industry or organization.

That's why someone would want to do it.  It's not about the certification, 
it's about the need for some guidance if you have none.

>I have a program that is
>(and has been for 3 years) 95% compliant with the criteria listed in ISO
>15489.  I was only waiting until we purchased and installed our new
>content management/records management system (now in progress) to more
>efficiently handle electronic records before going all-out for ISO
>15489.  I was under the impressions three years ago that this guide was
>to become a standard, and I would be ready to meet it when it did become
>a standard.  However, as it is still just a guide, I now see no benefit
>to spending my limited resources on ISO 15489.

Actually, it IS an International Standard, but it isn't an ANSI Certified 
Standard.  ISO 15489 has two parts.

Part 1, "Information and Documentation — Records Management — Part 1: 
General" is the Standard that is based on the Australian Standard AS 4390, 
Records Management, and was developed to standardize international best 
practice in records management. It provides guidance on managing records of 
originating organizations, public or private, for internal and external 
clients to ensure that adequate records – in all formats and media – are 
created, captured and managed.

Part 2, "Information and Documentation — Records Management — Part 2: 
Guidelines" is the accompanying Technical Report, which specifies the 
elements of records management and defines the necessary results or 
outcomes to be achieved. It is supplementary to the standard, and is 
intended to provide further explanation and one methodology for 
implementation of the standard. Both ISO 15489-1 and this technical report 
apply to records in any format or media, created or received by any public 
or private organization during the course of its activities.

>Also, I can proclaim I'm
>compliant, but if there is no outside evaluation, certification, or
>unbiased assessment to back me up, I can make whatever claims I want, be
>they true or false.   Who's to tell me I wrong?

Here in the US, right now, there is absolutely NO ONE to tell you that 
you're wrong.  And a piece of the problem is in the US, it's very difficult 
to convince ANY ORGANIZATION that they "need to comply" with ISO 15489, 
because unlike ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, no other countries are requiring 
organizations to be compliant with the Standard to do business with 
them.  Presently, if any US organization wants to do business with the 
European Community (EC), their business better be ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 
compliant, or their products won't be accepted into their countries for 
sale or use.

The problem is, many businesses cannot identify the "bottom line benefit" 
to compliance with ISO 15489, so they aren't willing to spend any money to 
developing implementation plans for the use of the Standard... and as you 
mentioned there is no body to certify that you're compliant once you 
are.  And the reason for that?  Well, it's simple... if no one can make any 
money to do it, then no one will spend any money to offer a 
certification.  That doesn't mean there aren't BENEFITS to implementing the 
methodology, they just aren't supported by anything directly identifiable 
as a "fiscal benefit" to an organization's bottom line.

But the benefits ARE tangible, and they can result in savings to an 
organization... if nothing else, because they result in the establishment 
of bset practices for managing information as an asset for an organization.

>If an organization is just beginning to build or reorganize a
>document/records program, it may be a wonderful tool to use as a
>structured approach and to prevent costly errors, but for those of us
>who are already there, again I ask what's the use?

Well, as has been discussed in the thread regarding CRMs and all, not 
everyone is at the same level of knowledge or application of best practices 
and as you say, if you've got noting or are looking to improve, it's a 
definite "hit", but if you want to test your existing system and see if 
there are areas that you might be able to do an even better job, this might 
be just the tool you're needing.

Keep in mind, this is what Standards are all about.  They're intended as 
tools to be used to verify an organization is doing what has been 
determined to be the best practices to achieve a given result, or to allow 
an organization to implement improvements to meet the requirements in the 
Standard.  Standards that are ANSI approved, such as those developed by 
ARMA, AIIM, NFPA and many other organizations are developed by a consensus 
based approach, which involves a committee or a task force comprised of 
individuals from a wide range of industries and organizations and they 
require a balloting process and a public review prior to issuance to ensure 
they are widely accepted prior to being adopted and assigned an official 
number and revision date.  They are also subject to periodic review (in the 
case of ANSI approved Standards, once every 5 years) to ensure they still 
are valid and meet the intended purpose they were issued for.

>Any opinions out there on this?

That's all I've got to say on the issue... and it's likely more than some 
wanted to or needed to hear, but thanks for the opportunity to give a 
little bit of a heads-up on Standards.  It's not often that people will 
pull out a soapbox that you can stand on and not get virtual tomatoes 
hurled at you =)

Larry
Member of the ARMA Standards Development Committee (since 1999)
Principal Member of the NFPA Technical Committee on Standard 232 (since 1999)
Member of various AIIM Standards Task Forces and Committees (since 1997)

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