Without in anyway meaning to put Ms. Adkins on the spot, I found this quote
interesting:

"When a document becomes a record is arguably the most critical question in
managing electronic records.  The success rate for records management
application installations is dismal.  The number of systems that fail (or
as we
used to say “failed to meet expectations”) far exceeds the successes.  Most
system implementers and commentators on the state of the profession agree
that the major causes of failure are a lack of an appropriate policy base
and
end-user resistance."

Might I also add a quote from the Wikipedia entry on records management:

"One well known RM thinker, Steve Bailey, has stated:

"As far as the average user is concerned, the EDRMS is something they
didn’t want, don’t like and can’t use. As such, its no wonder that so few
users accept them – as one person once said to me “making me use an EDRMS
is like asking a plasterer to use a hammer!

"And now, finally, it is time to turn our eyes to the records management
profession itself. In my opinion, we have come within a whisker of allowing
our blind obsession with EDRMS to turn us into an intellectually-sterile,
vendor-led profession. For the best part of a decade we have allowed others
to do the thinking for us and have come to rely on EDRMS as our
intellectual-crutch. But make no mistake about it, the blame for this rests
squarely with us. Like children following the Pied Piper, we allowed
ourselves to be so enchanted by the tune being played that we were led,
without question or debate, wherever the technology took us." ( RMS Debate:
The case against EDRMS Has EDRMS been a success? The case for the
prosecution, RMS Conference, Edinburgh 22 April 2007)"
Might I suggest the following:

When a document becomes a record is not the most critical challenge facing
records management, unless you are trying to address that issue within the
context of an EDRMS system. In other words, the challenge raised in Ms.
Adkins posting, is created by the problem cited in Mr. Bailey's quote.

While its not my intent to trash these systems - I've always considered
them valuable tools to address certain types of records management
challenges  - the true challenge in records management, in my opinion, is
creating trusted records keeping systems in a constantly evolving
technological environment.  In some environments, declaring documents as
records will absolutely be the challenge; in other environments ensuring a
given "cloud" of information can reliably reproduce a trusted result (or
"record") within the time frame needed may be the challenge.

 It is the nature of that evolution that we will always be behind the curve
in understanding and responding to that environment. For that reason, I
would suggest that we focus too much on retention/disposition related risk
(a "soft" cost) at the expense of operational expense (a "hard" cost) when
in fact what we might better be focusing on is the trustworthiness of a
given system to reproduce reliable results in response to operational,
fiscal, legal and historic needs. I would suggest that risk mitigation -
while an element of cost that should not necessarily be assumed - needs to
be properly balanced with elements of overall cost effectiveness,
reliability, authenticity, transparency, and compliance.

-- 
Dwight Wallis, CRM
Multnomah County Records Management Program
1620 SE 190th Avenue
Portland, OR 97233
ph: (503)988-3741
fax: (503)988-3754
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