Transcript The Digital Workplace: Organisational Metadata and

The Digital Workplace:
Organisational Metadata and Recordkeeping
6 June 2007
Noni Oldfield
Disclaimer
This is my Personal opinion only
• It is not the official view of Inland Revenue or
other members of the Records and Document
Management Team at Inland Revenue
• I am not an academic – I don’t always keep track
of where the information that informs my
knowledge comes from!
So you are newly arrived at …
You know what you want
Lots of information
neatly organised, easily
accessible, and busily
being used
But a quick look around reveals …
The “records” are just piled up and most aren’t being used
because they can’t be found.
You are sure that there is a lot of duplication too.
You dig deeper and unwittingly reveal …
This!
Metadata ALREADY exists in the
organisation … lots of it!
• Organisational metadata is kept in silos – each
different from the rest
• Most information is not considered to be “a
record”.
• It is not standardised across the organisation, but
some parts use external standards, such as NZGLS,
MARC, and XBRL.
Standardising organisational metadata
The need to standardise metadata is known
• Has been known by the Library and Records
professions for more than 50 years
• Has been known by IT departments since the
1970’s
• Has been known by Senior Management only
recently and reluctantly
What have organisations done about
standardising metadata?
•
•
•
•
Data warehouses – 1970s
Metadata repositories and standards – 1980s-1990s
Metadata models and architectures – 1990s-2000s
XML languages built-in to databases and the web –
2000s
Is it fixed? No its not.
What are our problems?
1. Organisations still can’t
manage all their metadata
How do Records fit in to this?
Most organisations think of “records” as
“unstructured information”
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Shared drives
Personal drives
Email system
File cabinets
CD-ROMs
Plans
Etc
To the organisation
Recordkeeping metadata is just another silo
• It is applied to unstructured information only
• It is generic and only has a loose connection with
the business of the organisation
• That business connection is via “functions” and
“activities” (i.e. tied in with business processes –
which are usually not very well documented
either).
So what about unstructured information?
This is the biggest chunk of information without good
metadata in most cases.
If you are lucky …
… this kind of information is already being captured
into an electronic document and records
management system (eDRMS).
– This almost certainly won’t use the same metadata
definitions as the transactional information
– It may (or may not) conform to existing recordkeeping
metadata standards
But probably …
… it is not. You are limited to the metadata that your
software can add.
– The operating software and the office software can both
add metadata automatically.
– If it is not configured properly, then much of this
automatic metadata is meaningless.
– Recordkeeping metadata standards assume far more
metadata can be easily added than is actually the case.
What about recordkeeping
metadata standards?
These are most useful for
specifying the
functionality for new
eDRM systems
Existing systems are better
evaluated against ISO
15489 to see if they meet
the requirements
What are our problems?
1. Organisations still can’t
manage all their metadata
2. Records are perceived to
be just another silo
So what is recordkeeping?
• PRA 2005 definition covers too much.
• Recordkeeping should be about keeping records,
not about keeping everything.
- There is too much information now to keep everything
(just in case)
- The recordkeeping profession is getting swamped by
waves of new kinds of information
- Not all information should be treated in the same way
Recordkeeping is facing
waves of information
• Email – the first wave
• World wide web – the second wave
• Dynamic, intelligent, data (data wrapped in its own
definitions – data from applications and data
wrapped in XML language tags) – the current wave
• Non-written records (phone calls, video
surveillance, etc) – the approaching wave
• Ubiquitous computing – the distant wave
Tsunami
Recordkeeping needs to
go back to its’ roots
• Define classes of information that ARE records
• Use appraisal to find the information we need to
keep and make it very easy to discard the rest
• Train our end-users to create summaries of their
conversations (file notes, minutes, etc) and keep
those instead of keeping the “raw data” – i.e.
everything.
What are our problems?
•
Organisations still can’t
manage all their metadata
2. Records are perceived to
be just another silo
3. Recordkeeping is being
drowned in too much
information
Of course, for every problem there is
an opportunity …
Opportunity 1 – The metadata solution
Let Records take over all the metadata management
for the organisation – business metadata included.
• A business owner of the big picture is badly
needed (and no-one else really wants it).
• Centralisation/standardisation of metadata is useful
for the whole organisation and enables better
records to be kept
• Needs to be done in conjunction with other
metadata custodians in the organisation.
Opportunity 2 –Metadata standards
Let us create recordkeeping metadata standards at
different levels
1. A simple standard, like Dublin Core, for people
who don’t have an eDRMS
2. An XML-based language that allows interchange
of standard recordkeeping metadata anywhere in
the world
3. Get everyone using the same standard for
eDRMS – possibly based on ISO 23081.
Opportunity 3 – Back to the future
• Let us define the “records” we want to keep,
instead of defining those that we can discard.
• Let us really push to create summaries (records) of
information instead of keeping all the data.
If we can’t do that, then we must define an automatic
(or at least really easy) process to allow people to
discard/delete information such as emails.
Opportunity 4 – the ECM solution
• If we are going to treat all information as records
then we must manage all information.
• This is too important to be left to anyone else.
– This is a trend in the USA, driven by e-Discovery
– It could happen here too
– Forget “records”, treat everything as content and
manage the whole lifecycle
• We will still need an easy way to delete
unwanted information!
The Good News …
The only way to go
is up!
And metadata may
be the way to go