Making the Distinctions Between Information Management and Records Management

This paper was updated in "Managing Distinctions: Enterprise Information, Document, Records, Knowledge and Content Management," Records and Information Management Review (RIMR), February 2002.

Making Some Important Distinctions

• Information, documents and records
• Records vs electronic records
• Information management (IM) vs Records Management (RM)
• IM vs Information Technology (IT)

Information, Documents and Records

For relevant information policies to be established and enterprise document management systems to be developed, policy makers and developers must see the highly interconnected nature of information, documents and records. This paper briefly explores some of those distinctions. For some reason, managers are usually very interested in the use of information in the workplace, but are disdainful of records. (Though it is not the subject of this paper, it causes one to wonder: what is it that happens to information when it moves from paper form to electronic form that transforms it into something important?) Information technology functions typically enjoy a relatively high place in the support structure of most organizations -- even higher if the core business of the organization is information. Records management typically enjoys a very low organizational profile or status, low budget priority and low ranking in terms of investment in human capital, even where information is the core business.

Senior managers tend to think of records as papers that are maintained by their secretaries or in some central registry and then sent off to some distant place, never to be used again, to gather dust. Increasingly, however, these records are being created in electronic form and, if managed that way, have the potential to become part of the engine of organizational change rather than remaining as part of the paperwork problem. The first important point to be made here is that the storage or presentation medium is not what decides whether something is a record or not. The importance of the business process, in the broader scheme of things, that creates recorded information is what determines whether a piece of information is a record or not. If the business process (or sub-process) is important to the mission of the organization, then the recorded information produced from the process is a record, irrespective of whether it is created or stored or later presented in paper, microform or digital form. The relative importance of one kind of recorded information over another dictates its retention period.

While all records constitute documentation of some kind or another, and may be referred to generically as "documents", again irrespective of storage or presentation medium, the reverse is not true. Some documents do not qualify as records they are purely reference documents. Oxford Analytica and the Dow-Jones are examples of economic intelligence information sources that may be consulted in an organization through a computer-based information system or through printed version on paper. Of course if such documents or portions of them are imported into another document that is a record, then the reference material becomes part of that record, because it became part of something else that qualified as a record.

Similarly, documents in preparation or at some early draft stage are not normally regarded as records until such time as they are communicated into the business unit or corporate (institutional) domain for comment or action. As a practical matter in most organizations, the large majority of documents are also records. Depending on the nature of the organization, as much as 90% or more of all documents are also records. Just as all records are documents but all documents are not records, all "documents" constitute information -- though the reverse is not always true, depending on how liberally we define the word document. Since the terms 'document' and 'documentation' carry a connotation of permanence or semi-permanence, information contained in information stores, such as those found in dynamic data bases, is normally thought of as information but not as documents, even in the broader usage of that term. While the information in such stores is recorded, it is of often of such a volatile nature that it may change states several times (and even back) between successive incidences of information retrieval against the data base. One of the policy issues facing modern organizations is: which, if any, of our data bases should we regard as 'records' and how will such dynamic records be managed? The answer, of course, depends on the nature of the organization, the business process that the data base serves, the implied necessity of an audit trail or not, and the practical aspects of how to record individual changes to the data as part of a record audit trail.

Thus it can be seen that information systems may very well also be document management systems. Document management systems are virtually always also records management systems. Electronic document management systems (EDMS) are also electronic records systems. Understanding these relationships makes it easier to appreciate the various policy and systems issues that the use of computers gives rise to and the dangers of giving high levels of attention to computer-based information (including records) systems while giving little or no attention to paper-based records system, both of which may serve the same business operations of the organization.

Records vs Electronic Records

There has been a great deal of debate and discussion in recent years about the difference between records and electronic records, and it is not the purpose of this paper to review that field of literature. While there may be nuances that the high priests will debate about such distinctions, for all practical purposes electronic records are simply records that are captured and maintained in analog or, increasingly, digital electronic forms of storage rather than in paper or microform storage media. For the purposes of this paper, let us just say that the technology or medium in which a document is created, stored, used or presented is not what decides whether it is a record or not. What makes a document a record is the fact that it constitutes itself, or is the residue of, a business action or transaction. Whether and for how long such records are kept by the organization is a separate matter that is normally decided by an archivist or records manager in consultation with responsible operational managers. Information technology does, of course, change the archives and records management (ARM) landscape significantly in that more things are recordworthy in today's electronic environment than were even a few years ago. For example, what used to happen over the telephone that was unrecorded is in many cases today happening over electronic mail or voice mail, both of which are recorded. Technically, and often legally, this makes most such business communications records when they are among people who have the competence in or responsibility for specific business processes or portions of them that are the subject of such communications. The choices of whether to keep such records should be made on an informed basis and not because of a mistaken belief that such documents are not records even when they are. Thus, while technology does not ordinarily change the nature of recordness, it substantially changes the manner in which records must be managed and the skills that need to be brought to bear on the development and implementation of information systems. It also opens up new and growing complications in the integration of paper and electronic records.

Information Management vs Records Management

Senior line managers and information technology managers often suffer from misconceptions about the relationship between information management and records management which are normally regarded as very different activities. This is due, in large part, to historical accident, because of the fact that usually hard organizational lines have been drawn that should not exist between the computer-based operations and the paper records management operations of most organizations. Information management and technology (IM&T) professionals traditionally have been more interested in the medium than the message. ARM practitioners have typically been more interested in the message than the medium which traditionally was in paper form or possibly microform. The two groups tend to use different words to speak to sometimes very similar subjects. They each have an arcane vocabulary that is not well understood outside of their own professions, including the higher levels of management that govern their budgets and programs at the highest levels. Yet, with different tools, both groups are performing information management functions. Records management entails more rigorous forms of information management than is normally required for other kinds of information, e.g. in the areas of records appraisal and disposition management. Nonetheless, it might be said that records management is information management in disguise -- no doubt a more rigorous form of information management than IM&T professionals are accustomed to, but information management nonetheless. When we come to this understanding, many related issues also become clearer, as do the options for dealing with these issues. For example, as noted above, it becomes clear that if an organization is about to invest in an electronic document management system, it is implicitly also investing in an electronic records system, even if it is not used that way to begin with. This being the case, it follows that the functional requirements for any enterprise-wide EDMS must include archives and records management functionality. This is something that few commercial EDMS product have, although that is changing for the better as these relationships become better understood by senior managers in a position to put pressure on vendors to provide the necessary functionality in their systems.

Information Management vs Information Technology

Information Management

The term information management (IM) is often used synonymously with the term information technology (IT). Yet it is very important to distinguish between these terms, because most organizations are very deficient in the former and much too focused on the latter, leading to a situation in which technology interests rather than management and operational information needs dominate management attention, resource allocation and related decision making. Information management is the means wherein the existence of needed information is made known to managers, action officers and support staff. It fosters the effective use of information for specific business purposes and information conservation, sharing and recycling throughout an organization and between organizations with mutually supportive aims. The practice of information management in an enterprise, whether public or private sector, involves understanding and analysis of the mission and objectives of the organization (read also as business system) and the development of families of information categories that are related to one another through their inherent or organic connections with business aims and processes that, when articulated in graphic form with explanatory text, may be used to describe the organization's information architecture. Information architecture shows what information is needed for, and is produced by, its key business processes and how the sources of internal and external information relate to one another in the context of this particular organization, which will differ from how similar information is used in other organizations. It facilitates the development of information directories (or maps). Directories may be of people with needed expertise in fields where the organization may or may not have good information sources in digital or paper form. Directories may be of information stores managed by the organization. They may also be in the form of tools for the effective navigation, use and disposition management of an organization's information assets. The most effective directories embrace all of these things.

Because of the manner in which business systems analysis (BSA) is performed to develop an organization's information architecture, it is referred to as a top-down approach -- one which first looks at an organization's:

• ultimate purpose or mission, then
• objectives, then
• major business areas (operations, human resources, finance), then
• supporting business processes (hire staff) and sub-processes (check references) and related workflows, then
• information needed and produced by the process, then
• information categories (correspondence, reports, data bases), then
• appropriate information technologies.

Information management is important because it facilitates intellectual or logical control over information assets, a sine qua non for effective management of information toward strategic ends. Too often, the practice of archives and records management has tended to take a bottom-up approach and has focused on the physical control of information with woefully inadequate attention to its intellectual control. This is partly because of the fact that up until very recently, most recorded business information has been in the form of paper documents. Now, digital information systems afford the opportunity to manage information in much more powerful, efficient and effective ways in digital form rather than on paper (even though ultimately it may be printed on paper for reading). This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for managers more generally, and more particularly managers and practitioners of ARM to ensure that organizational records are dealt with not only in an organizational context but as intrinsic parts of business processes that often cross organizational boundaries and of ultimate organizational aims. As will be seen below, a well balanced program of information and records management is needed to operate an effective organization.

Information Technology

Information technology on the other hand refers to the infrastructure (often aptly referred to with terms taken from the transport sector -- the information super-highway, info-bahn, info-strada, etc.) needed to move large quantities of digitized information in an efficient and secure manner from one place or person to another. Information technology makes it possible to do a much better job of information management today than was possible even a few years ago, but it is not to be confused with information management. This is not to trivialize technology. On the contrary, just as an organization must develop an information architecture to understand how it can most effectively organize and use its information resources, it must also develop a technology architecture specifically geared to serve the needs of the information architecture. The higher the level of organization to be served, the more generic the technology architecture must be. Thus, at a national or international level, the technology must be such as to support the most diverse needs in terms of kinds of information to be transported and common protocols for access to the network. For example, access to the Internet requires the use of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, better known simply as the "TCP/IP" standard, at the network layer of the Internet technology architecture. It involves a family of lower level transport layer protocols such as Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) for transmitting electronic mail between computers and the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) standard to facilitate the transfer of files from one computer to another. As can be seen above, the information technology architecture involves the selection of important information and information technology standards. By having these standards at the superhighway level, it is possible for computers manufactured by different vendors with different hardware and operating systems software to be interconnected.

At lower levels, such as at the individual organizational level, many more standards may be required in a technology architecture. For example, for reasons of limited technical support staff and budget, an organization may require a common operating system software (e.g., Microsoft Windows™, PCDOS™, or UNIX™). In some developing countries where there are few or no internal technical support and where commercial technical support companies are very limited in their technical depth, it may even be necessary to establish hardware standards. Even in highly developed countries, especially where an organization purchases computers in large quantities, a hardware standard may be established every 4-5 years based on competitive bidding as a means of obtaining the most advantageous price concessions and to minimize technical support costs. Nonetheless, hardware standards should not be seen as substitutes for open systems standards such as TCP/IP or even de facto standards such as the MSWindows™ operating system, because over time the forces of competition, price changes and technological obsolescence may require changes in hardware standards. If software standards are not already in effect, the organization will face enormous -- very possibly prohibitive -- costs in modifying legacy information system applications to accommodate the new hardware. Open systems standards also afford one of the few feasible means of ensuring continued access to electronic archives over long periods of time.

Information Management and Information Technology Skills

Apart from the several above reasons for understanding the distinctions between information management and information technology in business terms, providing a proper balance between the two in the emphasis and work program within an organization is a major skills issue. Different skills and possibly even academic degrees underlie these essential and closely connected but different areas of information science. A person with an advanced degree in communications technology is likely to have highly technical and technology-oriented skills. A person with a library science degree is more likely to have highly information-oriented skills. A person with a degree in information science should have received a balance between information management and information technology knowledge and skills, but even here it may vary from one country to another or even one academic institution to another. Beyond academic preparation, certainly different experience bases may thrust a person into years of work in only one of these two fields. Irrespective of academic degree, it happens more often that the technology field is the area of greatest actual experience. Thus, organizations that are designated with a combined title such as the "Information Technology Department" do not typically separate the two words with an "and" or even a comma to more clearly distinguish between substance and form, message and medium, cargo and highway. The absence of the term Information Management is a clue, but its presence is not any guarantee that skills and programs in IM exist within the organization. Some don't even attempt to provide the image of a balanced IM/IT program or set of services. Some are simply called the Computer Department, or Central Computer Services, carrying even more of a hardware connotation and orientation than would be the case with such names as Office Systems Department or Information Technology Department where other aspects of technology might be included. Irrespective of the name, the focus of these departments is dominated by technology interests and skills. Whatever the level of the organization under consideration, this occurs very much to the disadvantage of the small enterprise, the large organization, the ministry, the government and, of course, in the end to the country.

If this is a problem in the IM & IT parts of the organization, it is no less a problem in the ARM organizations. Archivists and records managers are among the oldest of the information management professions, though they may not see themselves that way. Many in these fields never obtained a technology background or, if they did, do not keep their technology skills up to date. They do not always understand the lingua franca of IM&T, to embrace both IM and IT, and therefore often do not take advantage of modern information engineering tools that information management specialists use to exercise logical control over large information sources. By not engaging their IM&T counterparts, ARM professionals help retain the (inappropriately) separate treatment of information management and records management functions. They also help perpetuate the growing and very risky disconnect between paper and electronic documents and records. There is little hope for bridging this growing gap in information and records management practice, short of either great insight on the part of IM&T and ARM managers or intervention at the highest executive levels to cause the engagement, integration and attention to corporate level interests in information both as a strategic asset and as a matter of record. And that is something a lot of people should care about.