Cassie FindlayTAHO Information Managers Forum

21 August 2015

Appraisal: an essential tool for digital recordkeeping

What I’ll cover

• Confirming the terminology• Resurgence of Australian appraisal• Contemporary recordkeeping landscape• The necessary response• Appraisal for strategic recordkeeping• A systems centric approach

Some terminological matters

• Appraisal: ‘..analysis of business context, business activities and risk to enable decision making on what records to create and capture, and how to ensure the appropriate management of records over time.’• Draft International Standard ISO 15489-1 2015, Clause 7

• Disposal: range of processes associated with implementing records retention, destruction or transfer decisions which are documented in disposition authorities or other instruments• ISO 15489-1: 2002, 3.5

The international community is re-engaging with the Australian idea of

appraisal. Why?• Before we were properly into the digital world,

life cycle approaches (reactive, post hoc, giving extant records a ‘value’ and then dealing with them) seemed do-able.

• However they cannot cope with volume, complexity, fluidity of business information (records) today

• Recordkeeping professionals are seeing that our role has to change

The landscape we work in is evolving rapidly

• Collaborative, multi jurisdictional, distributed work

• Massive data volumes• Data reuse and repurposing • Outsourced / shared services • Shift away from dedicated ‘records’ systems• Changing expectations for access and rights of

participation

Our response must be strategic

• Shift from service provision to systems design and monitoring, and maintaining and deploying records controls that bring value

• Flip disposal on its head; be concerned with making and protecting the most important stuff – often found in business systems – rather than trying to routinely purge systems of records

• Respect the system (even when it’s not very good)• Think records, act data

What does this mean in practice?

• Recurrent appraisal that produces context- specific record-making and managing rules

• Intervention at risk points: design, migration, decommissioning

• Light, modular architectures for recordkeeping systems and controls; not hard wiring them in

• Recordkeeping requirements & rules more granular, greater scope for definition of content and metadata

Doing appraisal

• What’s the reason? New functions, administrative change, changing risk profile, new systems introduced, passage of time?

• What functions, activities and work processes are affected?

• Analysis of the business, regulatory and societal requirements for records

• Assessment of risk• Definition of recordkeeping requirements

What appraisal can produce

• Not just disposal authorities!• Record creating authorities for use in training and

procedures development at business unit level• Understanding of where higher risk recordkeeping

needs additional resources and attention• Specifications for records/metadata for new or

upgraded business systems• Requirements for the management of

records/metadata through migrations, including what is not migrated forward

Appraisal is a vital resource for dealing with many common events in business

systems’ livesEvent Decisions helped by appraisal

Move from paper- based to digital system(s)

• Definition of record content and metadata• Identification of required relationships • Access regime• Best formats

System upgrade(s), merging and splitting of the function and supporting system(s)

• Identification and safe migration of records (content + metadata).

• Recording of the non-migration & deletion with authorisationFunction transferred to another jurisdiction, decommissioning of system.

• Migration of data / metadata to archival control• Access requirements • Essential characteristics• Retention and then deletion of any remaining data

Appraisal helps us to make and manage records through systems and business contexts

Tools Resources Skills / knowledge

• Organisational recordkeeping metadata schema

• Disposal authorities• Business classification

schemes• Metadata extraction,

analysis tools• Format identification

and conversion tools

• Enterprise architecture / information architecture

• Documented & authorised appraisal decisions

• Systems documentation

• Recordkeeping and its intersection with the business

• Knowledge of the history and quirks of the systems

• Help with extract/load/transform scripting to move records safely into new environments or adjust linked metadata, relationships

Implementing appraisal decisions: a systems centric approach

Case study: Business Registrations System

• The BRS and related systems presented as eligible for transfer to Digital Archives

• Review of existing appraisal decisions • Examination of data, metadata, record relationships• Decision making and approvals for action• Migration of data, metadata• Authorisation for source systems disposal

Thank youEmail: c.findlay@records.com.au Twitter: @CassPF