An interesting discussion.

Compliance with ISO 15489 should NOT be mandatory (in my opinion) for the
reasons given by others (its not a one size fits all thing, and who would
police it?)  The ISO 9000 series of standards is not mandatory, but you have
organisations implementing them left, right and centre.  Why do they do
that?  Because they recognise the value in doing so.  Records Managers have
to convince their organisations that there is a value in complying with ISO
15489.

Naturally, individual jurisdictions can make compliance mandatory - for
example, the National Archives of Australia requires Australian Federal
Government agencies to follow its DIRKS methodology which is based on ISO
15489. More information at
http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/dirks/summary.html.

The National Archives of Australia also gives guidance on what parts are
mandatory and what parts are optional.  For example, the development of a
Business Classification Scheme is mandatory, but the development of a
thesaurus is not.  Information on Classification tools is at
http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/control/tools.html.

John Lovejoy
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