ISO 15489: Its worldwide implications and implementations

by Michael Steemson^[i], Principal,

The Caldeson Consultancy,

Wellington, N.Z.

 

 

Abstract

The International Standards Organization’s Records Management Standard, ISO 15489, is achieving worldwide importance and acceptance.  Most English-speaking nations have adopted it or its tenets and late in 2003, the second anniversary of the Standard’s publication was celebrated in Geneva, Switzerland, the home of the I.S.O., with a seminar attended by more than 140 delegates from more than a dozen countries, many of which had translated the Standard into their own languages.  The author describes ISO 15489 as a weapon of mass instruction in the armoury of information managers adding power to the elbows of recordkeepers fighting their corner for greater support and recognition for both their systems and themselves.  ISO 15489 is the World’s Records Managers saying with one clear voice: “This is important.  This must be done.  Here’s how to do it.”

 

Keywords: ISO 15489, records management, information management, translations, implementations, International Standards Organization.

 

________

 

 

Towards the end of 2003, the Americans and the Arabs were discussing and agreeing about something. It had either nothing or perhaps everything to do with their political differences.  The subject was the international records management standard, ISO 15489, the world’s guide to saving, caring for and using the information that every organization, business, urban authority or national government relies on to carry out its functions.

 

The two nations were not, actually, talking with each other about the Standard but towards the end of the year, they both declared its colossal importance.

 

In the U.S.A., after lengthy, some would say tortuous examination, the National Archives and Records Administration was nailing the ISO 15489 standard to its mast. In his Strategic Directions: Guidance and Regulations, John W. Carlin, the Archivist of the United States, boldly went where the American National Standards Institute was still unwilling to go and announced:

 

“We will base our approach to records management on the ISO Records Management Standard 15489.”

 

 

At the same time, a critical symposium was being prepared in the United Arab Emirates port of Dubai. It was, said the President of the Arab Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives, Dr Abdulla El Reyes, to “show our full commitment towards upgrading the level of expertise in the area of archiving, traditional and electronic in the Arab world”.  The first concern of the symposium was:

 

“International standards (ISO 15489) attached to the organization of archives in governmental and private establishments.”

Little more than two years after its publication, the first global standard for records management, the International Standards Organization’s (ISO) 15,489^th work of standard setting has swept the world.

 

Written in English, it has been translated into German, French, Dutch and, by Renmin University linguists in Beijing, into Mandarin Chinese making it one of the ISO’s most successful publication since the ISO 9000 series of quality codes in the 1990’s

 

The new standard was published in October 2001 in two parts:

 

ISO 15489-1:2001 Information and documentation -- Records management -- Part 1: General, of 20 pages, and

 

ISO/TR 15489-2:2001 Information and documentation -- Records management -- Part 2: Guidelines, of 40 pages.

 

The second part, the “Guidelines”, is commonly referred to as the “Technical Report”, the meaning of the “TR” in its catalogue number^[1].

 

The Australian Way

 

ISO 15489 was soon accepted as the Australian Records Management standard, called AS (for Australian Standard) ISO 15489, replacing the nation’s original 1996 ground-breaking guide, AS4390, on which the international code was based.  The National Archives of Australia (NAA) gave the standard  “formal endorsement”, describing it as “a high-level statement of principles and policy”. 

 

Then, the ISO work was issued as a British Standard, BSI ISO 15489.  The British Standards Institution (BSI) also prepared a three-part “public document” (PD) guide to the standard, PD 0025 Effective records management.  The three parts are: 

 

Part 1: A management guide to the value of BS ISO 14589-1;

Part 2: Practical implementation of BS ISO 15489-1;

Part 3: Measuring performance in records management programmes

 

The French national standards authority Association Française de Normalisation (AFNOR) published the Standard as NF ISO 15489 Information et documentation - "Records management".  In Germany, the Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN) has called it DIN ISO 15489. Information und Dokumentation – Schriftgutverwaltung, while in the Netherlands the first part only has been published as NEN-ISO 15489-1:2001 nl -- Informatie en documentatie; Informatie- en archiefmanagement; Deel 1: Algemeen by the Nederlands Normalisatie-instituut.

 

In North America, commentators have given the code a rousing reception. A Canadian consultant called it a ”milestone in records management history” and the ARMA (Association of Records Managers and Administrators) International’s Standards Committee adopted a project for the “implementation of ISO 15489 in the United States” which the association has fiercely championed ever since.  

 

But, until Archivist Carlin’s staunch support, North American national organizations have been slow to recognise it, despite the fact that Mr Carlin’s Deputy Archivist, Mr Lewis Bellardo, and the National Archives of Canada’s senior government information management project officer Ms Catherine Zongora were both members of the ISO sub-committee that created the Standard.

 

At the bottom of this apparent tardiness lies the North American zeal for self-sufficiency.  Both countries have done or are planning the Standards work themselves, like the U.S. Defense Department’s Design Criteria Standards for Electronic Records Management Software Applications, DoD 5015.2, of 1997 and updated in mid-2002.

 

In Canada, a number of provincial legislatures, notably the western prairie province of Alberta, have absorbed ISO 15489 into their information management regulation and now, the Canadian National Archives Information Management Capacity Check tool and the Canadian General Standards Board’s standard CGSB 72.34 Electronic Records as Documentary Evidence, to be published this year, have the international Standard as their bases. 

 

Canadian launch

 

The Standard was launched with colourful ceremony at the ARMA International conference in the Palais des Congrès de Montréal (the Montreal Convention Centre), Canada, before an impressive group of august world archives and records officials including Mr Bellardo, Ms Marilyn Osborne, the Director-General of the Government Records Branch at the National Archives of Canada, ARMA International President, Mr Terry Coan, and Mr David Moldrich, the ISO sub-committee’s Australian chairman.

 

British Keeper of Public Records, Mrs Sarah Tyacke, joined the ceremony in a live video link from a U.K. government recordkeeping conference in Stratford-on-Avon, England and welcomed the new standard.  She praised it as providing a “strategic and holistic approach to the management of records that senior managers can understand”.

 

Within weeks, the English-language standard was available for delivery as hard copy or on-line as an Abode Acrobat .PDF file from the ISO webstore in Geneva and from Standards Australia’s Sydney headquarters.   Other standards authorities followed with the English version and their translations. 

 

Three years’ hard labour

 

The standard had taken three years’ hard work by an ISO sub-committee, designated ISO TC46/SC11^[2], with members from a world wide community including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands Sweden, the United States, the Peoples’ Republic of China and other nations.

 

In addition to the founding AS4390 Australian Standard, a total 317 international documents were reviewed during the series of intense, three-day conferences held in Athens, Berlin, Paris, Melbourne and Stockholm.  SC11 chairman David Moldrich told the launch audience the job could probably have been written in six months, but acceptance of the document by the world-wide community required “long discussion, much compromise, many journeys and many, many cups of coffee”.

 

Members of SC11, including archivists and recordkeepers most notably from Germany, France, Ireland, Sweden, Britain, Canada and the United States, got through a lot of work. I joined them at the sub-committee’s Paris meeting at the headquarters of the French standards institution, AFNOR, in the Paris suburb of La Defense, a not inappropriate location in the event.  We argued quite a lot!

 

ISO 15489 was based on the Australian Standard, certainly, but it was not an easy passage from Wagga Wagga to the World.  At the Paris meeting, it was Australians versus the Rest as other national member bodies showed a determined antipathy for AS4390’s processes, the “Australian how-to’s” we called them.

 

Australian delegates, lead by Sydney consultant and world-known recordkeeping guru, Ms Barbara Reed, sat and gritted their teeth as other national group leaders complained: they didn’t necessarily disagree with the recommended procedures, but they didn’t do things like that in their countries and other nations shouldn’t be pinned down to doing it like this or that if they already had established national processes.

 

It was a memorable show of Australian restraint, though Barbara’s fierce doodling  --  her conference doodles should be on exhibition at the Australian National Gallery  --  reached new heights of furious complexity and colour.  Chairman David Moldrich maintained his legendary cool.

 

 

My other new colleagues, Monash University’s soft-spoken Mr Frank Upward, from Melbourne, Standards Australia’s energetic committee secretary Mr Peter Treseder from Sydney and National Archives of Australia’s thoughtful Ms Jill Caldwell among them, all kept their heads.  They harkened to their leader’s insistence that there be “no triumphalism” by the delegation. 

 

The Australians were not going to be accused of pushing their weight around.

 

It worked!

 

The German delegation came up with an answer.  Dr Nils Brübach, then a senior lecturer at the Archives School in Marburg, Germany, suggested confining the world standard to a statement of high-level recordkeeping principles about which there was little or no disagreement.

 

Then, he suggested, we could put all the “how to’s” into what ISO calls a ”Technical Report (TR)”.  A TR does not have the status of a Standard, he explained, but could offer advice on processes by which the Standard users might apply its tenets.  The TR wouldn’t have to stick to just one process, either, but could offer alternatives thereby, he supposed, satisfying all comers. 

 

It was a statesmanlike judgement, swiftly accepted by the meeting.  You could feel the tension lift as Mr Moldrich determinedly moved us on to the mammoth task of filleting the current draft of the Standard to separate application from principle.  And we did it by the end of the meeting   -- a quick and dirty cut but a start.  The Technical Report for the Records Management Standard ISO 15489 was born.

 

I later reported to my sponsors, the then National Archives of New Zealand^[3]:

 

“Log jammed with irreconcilable views on basic management practices, the International Standards Organization’s records management sub-committee has completely re-designed its approach and begun work on two separate documents, a standard and a technical report.  It was a bold move.  After a year’s deliberation, Sub-committee 11 has left itself just six months to complete a “committee draft” of the standard, designated ISO 15489, if it is to conform to the Organization’s new time limits for standard making.” 

 

My conclusion balefully exposed my lack of understanding of my fellows’ capacity for hard work.  I wrote: “I wonder if the work the committee has given itself and, in particular, Barbara Reed, who is the chief author-cum-editor of the Standard, can be completed by November.”  My doubts were unfounded.  She did it and we did it.

 

The second re-write

 

A year later, the Standard underwent a second major overhaul, this time after the internal publication to national member bodies of a draft, called the Committee Draft or CD.  Member bodies’ responses were, by and large, positive, though there was a fair amount of criticism of poor structure, woolly terminology and repetition.  A number of members complained of “inconsistencies” especially concerning metadata.  This time, it was the Canadian who came to the rescue.

 

The Ottawa-based SC11 group, led by the National Archives of Canada’s Catherine Zongora, went through the CD word by word and came up with a complete re-draft.  It was endorsed by Barbara Reed and the Editorial Group and agreed at the next SC11 meeting at the Berlin headquarters of the German national standards institute in May 2000. 

 

It improved the document enormously.  Its principals were now set out in more logical order.  Duplication had been removed and detail deleted or, in some cases, moved to the Technical Report.

 

The committee further re-arranged a number of clauses in the new draft and made some textual additions and amendments.  Working right up to the last minutes of the three-day schedule, SC11 approved the new format and cleared it for release as a Draft International Standard or “Diss” as its known in the industry from its acronym.

 

It was a very different document to the “first cut”.   The most striking changes centred round the Terms and definitions.  A number of terms were more carefully written.  Some were dropped, SC11 members considering they needed no descriptions beyond those given in contemporary dictionaries or other ISO Standards, notably ISO5127 Information and Documentation Terminology.  That’s an extraordinary document, by the way.  Almost half of it is index to the terms.  The remainder is the lexicon.

 

ISO 15489’s new list of terms and definitions was shorter, simpler and more precise.  A number of terms like “elusive evidence” and “virtual records” were omitted, sensibly, because they no longer occurred in the Standard text.  Other terms disappear because the sub-committee considered they did not need further definition.  The phrase “records capture” was amongst these, and the term “storage”.

 

Some terms were extensively redefined.  “Metadata” was originally described rather too simply as “Data describing data”.  Smart, but not very informative! The new definition was more useful: “Data describing context, content and structure of records and their management through time.”

 

The definition of “records” became “Documents created, received, and maintained as evidence and information by an agency, organization, or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transaction of business”.  The earlier definition began with the word “information” not “documents” ... another sensible change, though I have wondered if yet another definition of “record” takes us much further in understanding.

 

The word “document” was itself defined to link more precisely with this new “records” definition.  Instead of “structured units of recorded information, logical or physical, not fixed as records”, ISO 15489 now describes a “document” as being “recorded information or object which can be treated as a unit”.  The new description makes clear it refers only to the noun “document” as opposed to the verb “to document”.

 

And so, the process of defining and refining the embryonic standard went on.

 

Recordkeeping v. Records Management

 

At an early stage, SC11 even stumbled over the name of the Standard.  How fundamental can you get?  The Australians wanted the Standard to refer exclusively to “Recordkeeping”, but the Americans objected.  We discovered that our concepts of “recordkeeping” and “records management” were diametrically opposed.  Personally, I use the terms synonymously, but I’m in a minority, I find. 

 

It appeared that in Australia, we mostly use “recordkeeping” to mean the whole process of looking after and manipulating records for an organization’s business function, a process that involves, in part, “records management”.

 

In North American, conversely, the terms are used in precisely the opposite contexts  …  “records management” is the whole process, “recordkeeping” merely part of that.  This time the non–English speaking delegates sat back and watched the Anglophonic groups fight it out. 

 

Dr Brübach remarked laconically: “ In German, we interpret it to the same word.  Translation is always something of a modification, anyway?” 

 

Once again, the Australians bit their tongues and gave in gracefully, this time to the North Americans.  It was, after all, a pretty unimportant point, so long as everyone knew what we were talking about, and there wasn’t any doubt about that.  But it took us ages to weed all the references to “recordkeeping” out the documents.

 

International criticism

 

By the end of the second year’s consultation, a considerable number of different “drafts” were beginning to circulate and were being read by large numbers of recordkeeping experts outside the SC11 groups.  Some of these versions were simply rough copies, quick cuts at the huge task.  Involvement of the wider recordkeeping community was entirely planned and sort after but, inevitably, from these early rough drafts some of the experts got wrong impressions.

 

Some pretty high-powered personalities even went into print with stinging criticisms that boiled our blood, but in a sense served a useful purpose.  The critics drew the SC11 members together, helped clear heads of small, xenophobias and focused our purpose.

 

First of the barbs came from the Canadian records management icon, Professor Luciana Duranti, the fiery Italian-born head of the University of British Columbia’s Archival Studies Program School of Library, Archival and Information Studies and a leading light in the on-going InterPARES Project, the International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems. 

 

At the end of 1999, the Professor went public with her views after seeing a copy of an early draft of the Standard. Writing in the London Records Management Journal, she berated ISO 15489 from a number of angles, saying it “does not define its terms, most of which are inappropriate and inconsistently used, and recommends procedures that are badly conceived, applicable only in a few environments, simplistically and inconsistently presented and either so general as to be useless or so detailed as to be inappropriate for most contexts”. 

 

After seeing a later draft of the document, Luciana was somewhat mollified, but still managed a sting: She emailed me: “It seems much improved to me, apart from a certain amount of repetition.” But then added: “Generally speaking, the entire document is written as if it primarily referred to electronic records.”

 

Too much, too little

 

Quaintly, that same later draft was, during the next year, lambasted for precisely the opposite reason.  A German IT consultancy boss, Dr Ulrich Kampffmeyer, a director of the European board of the U.S-based AIIM International, criticised the Committee Draft because: “Unfortunately, this standard does not go beyond traditional writing on paper and is therefore of little or no use for electronic documentation …” His comment was published in the European edition of AIIM’s E-doc magazine that, for some reason, is the edition which circulates in Australia and New Zealand. 

 

However, published comments on ISO 15489 were not all bad.  The US ARMA International records management group has always been a staunch supporter of the Standard and its Australian progenitor.  In a year 2000 edition of ARMA International’s Information Management Journal, contributing editor David O. Stephens, a vice president of records management consulting division of North Carolina’s Zasio Enterprises, wrote:  “It is hard to overstate the new standard’s significance.”

 

He said it was “probably the most significant initiative in records management today”, adding that it provided “an officially endorsed benchmarking model of best professional practices for global emulation”.  In its entire history, he said, the “records and information management discipline” had never had anything like this.

 

That was more like it!  SC11 was ruffled but unbowed.  We knew we were on the right track and the job went on.

 

Pruning the Technical Report

 

By the end of the Berlin meeting, we were well on track.  The Draft International Standard, the “DIS”, was complete and the Technical Report, or “Guidelines” as the document was to become known, was taking shape.  In fact, the document was taking gargantuan shape.  By now it ran to 150 pages and some 50,000 words, some of them German and some French, and including a massive nine page Bibliography of Publications from International Bodies and Institutions formulated by me  …  a true work of love!

 

While the Draft Standard was in the hands of national member bodies for final “yea” or ”nay” approval, the committee turned its united attention to the massive TR and realised it was far too big.  The British team, lead by Australian-born Susan Healy, a records manager at the then-called Public Records Office, Britain’s national archive^[4], calculated it would cost £150 a copy (around RMB1,800) at that size.

 

The committee was unanimous in its wish to reduce the Guideline to 50 pages and so began a slash and burn campaign that had a most surprising result.  It began with a complete re-write by the Australian national member body, orchestrated largely by Jill Caldwell.  My lovely Bibliography was reduced to a shadow, out went all the incomprehensible German and French sections, to be retained for their own language editions, of course.  The original plan to match the structure of the Standard with suitable explanations, section by section, was abandoned.  All the annexes, barring the emasculated bibliography, were dumped, somewhat unwisely in my view because they contained some useful examples of policy and planning strategies.

 

With the committee’s new unanimity, brought about I’m sure by that cutting criticism and the now three-year-old acquaintance with each other, came an even greater result.  Remember all that bickering about the Australian “how to’s” and the inclusion of worldwide alternative procedures?  Well, the committee now discovered that it could, after all, really only recommend one, single process for each principle. 

 

No one was more surprised than we were.  We realised that despite the apparent world differences in process, they were all, basically the same. We did, in fact, have two methods for one procedure, in the Strategies, design and implementation section, but decided that the variation was too little to warrant inclusion.  Amazing!  After all that sweat and tears!

 

As a sop to any remaining nationalistic concerns anywhere, the committee blithely agreed to suggest that, if national members bodies felt their methods deserved independent acknowledgement, they should produce their own “workbooks” to compliment the Standard and its Guidelines.  It was all over bar the shouting for the launch party at the ARMA International annual conference in Montreal, Canada.

 

What the fuss about?

 

What’s all the fuss about, then?  What has the world got with its Records Management Standard? 

 

In some ways it’s almost a bit of an anti-climax.  To us committed and, hopefully, knowledgeable recordkeepers, it might be a bit boring: even blindingly obvious.

 

Sure, ISO 15489 is about records management but we already know lots about that, almost everything there is to know.  Whether that’s true or not, it misses the point entirely. 

 

Much more importantly, ISO 15489 is the World’s Records Managers saying with one clear voice: “This is important.  This must be done.  Here’s how to do it.”

 

So, what does ISO 15489 say?

 

Here is the Standard’s raison d’etre:

 

“The standardization of records management policies and procedures ensures that appropriate attention and protection is given to all records, and that the evidence and information they contain can be retrieved more efficiently and effectively, using standard practices and procedures.”

 

That’s almost the first paragraph in the book and, right up there at the top, it introduces that vital word “evidence” to business process.

 

It follows this up with: “Records contain information that is a valuable resource and an important business asset. A systematic approach to the management of records is essential for organizations and society to protect and preserve records as evidence of actions.  A records management system results in a source of information about business activities that can support subsequent activities and business decisions, as well as ensuring accountability to present and future stakeholders.”

 

That’s telling users about the Fourth Resource of Business  - Money, Product, Manpower   … and Information.  It comes in Section 4, Benefits of Records Management.  The Standard is full of such wise aphorisms.

 

Here’s another one: “Records management governs the practice both of records managers and of any person who creates or uses records in the course of their business activities.”

 

That’s the bit about everyone being a records manager, one way or another.  That’s how the Standard works. It describes, but not prescribes, in plain unequivocal language, the tenets of the profession we know and love.  You and I have heard most of it before, one way and another, but not with the backing of the whole world’s practitioners … barring, of course, the reactionaries whom we know and can judge for ourselves.

 

So many will benefit

 

The Standard runs to a modest 7,800 words and around 25 A4 pages, not a lot to show for so much hard labour.  But so many are going to benefit.

 

After those opening great truths, ISO 15489 gets straight down to the work setting out its scope and what ISO calls “normative references” which really only amount to signposts to associated ISO standards like the ISO9000 series and that amazing ISO5127 Vocabulary, all of which the organization hopes you will feel compelled to buy as well.

 

The Scope carries one of its few notions that I dislike, a footnote … and I don’t like end notes either … a footnote that makes a point of telling users that the Standard does not apply to Archives Management.  The footnote explains it thus: “In some countries, the management of records also applies to archives management. Archives management is not covered in this Standard.”

 

Actually, the Scope makes the point twice.  After carefully setting out the four major functions by which it seeks to “ensure that adequate records are created, captured and managed”, it shoots another hole in its foot by insisting again that it “does not include the management of archival records within archival institutions”.   

 

That is a mistake.  All right, I understand archives management is not just records management by another name, but why did we in SC11 make such a thing of it when, as we admit, they indeed are almost synonymous in some countries.  It was, I believe, included as a sop to those old reactionaries I spoke about who still get a sort of xenophobic prickly heat over the ceasefire slowly being brokered into peace between recordkeepers and archivists, especially in Australia. 

 

I suppose, in a way, it helps to defuse negative reaction from any myopic reactionaries, but I call it appeasement.

 

SC11   has this year begun the first stages of a revision of the standard, another long-term project that is unlikely to become public knowledge until near the end of the year.  I hope the new members will quietly dispose of this small irritant.

 

That apart, the Scope usefully sets out the Standard’s purpose and its intended audience:  all managers, information professionals, all other personnel in organizations and anyone with a duty to create and maintain records.

 

Then come the terms and definitions, a short, sweet list of just 21 words and phrases we considered either were not adequately defined elsewhere, or had some special meaning to the Standard.  They range from “access”, which we defined as the “right, opportunity or means of finding, using, or retrieving information”, to two definitions of “transfer”, one meaning a change of custody or ownership, the other just the simple movement from one location to another. 

 

A crib sheet for advocacy

 

Now comes one of the best bits of the Standard, I reckon, Section 4 Benefits of Records Management.  It’s magic!  Anyone wanting a crib sheet with which to compose a convincing argument for a proper recordkeeping regime need look no further.  It’s all there, in about 300 simple words.  We’ve heard them all before, but not so neatly and succinctly tabulated.

 

Just a list of the bullet point imperatives gives the taste: conduct, facilitate, provide, meet, support, protect, deliver, establish and more.  Good stuff!

 

A short section on what we called the “Regulatory Environment” simply jogs memories that “regulatory” means a good deal more than just abiding by the law.  And it returns to that important fundamental: “An organization should provide adequate evidence of its compliance with the regulatory environment in the records of its activities.”  

 

It sounds obvious when you say it now, but it’s amazing how often that gets forgotten in the excitement of new recordkeeping process.

 

The sixth section in the Standard gets down to some detailed and explicit guidance on Policy and Responsibilities.  An early paragraph says the records management policy “should be adopted and endorsed at the highest decision making level and promulgated throughout the organization. Responsibility for compliance should be assigned”.

 

I and, I am sure, almost every speaker on recordkeeping policy has said the same thing, probably in much the same words.  But this is not just Mike Steemson saying it.  This is The World speaking!

 

The World speaking

 

The Standard has all the familiar phrases: “derived from an analysis of business activities”,         “organizational environment”, “current business needs” and, once again, “need for evidence”.  It goes along with its AS4390 parentage by assigning responsibilities for recordkeeping far beyond just the professional with the title: to executives for support, to system managers for useable documentation and all employees for accurate and complete evidence of their work.

 

The seventh chapter, Records Management requirements, does more than just tells us to manage records. It requires the records management policy to dictate what records are created in each business process and what information is included in them.  It wants the policy to determine the form and structure in which records and metadata are created and captured, and which technologies used.

 

It calls for requirements for retrieving, using and transmitting records and retention rules to satisfy those requirements. It seeks assessment of the risks through failure to keep authoritative records of activity, meet business requirements, community expectations, complying with legal and regulatory requirements, applicable standards and organizational policy.

 

Not satisfied with that, it wants a programme for identifying and evaluating opportunities for improving what it calls “the effectiveness, efficiency or quality of its processes, decisions, and actions that could result from better records creation or management”.

 

It insists: “Rules for creating and capturing records and metadata about records, should be incorporated into the procedures governing all business processes for which there is a requirement for evidence of activity.”^[5]  There’s that word again  -  “evidence”.

Legal Admissibility concept

 

It crops up again in Chapter 8, Design and implementation of a records system, in a clause that is dear to my heart and one on which I rode shotgun throughout the Standard’s production.

 

Chapter 8 talks of compliance with all requirements arising from business, regulation and community expectation. It says with great clarity: “Records system compliance with such requirements should be regularly assessed and the records of these assessments retained for evidential purposes.”^[6]

 

That’s what we used to call “legal admissibility”, a process that will allow us, in the event of legal challenge, to prove that our system was working properly at all times in its life.

 

It marks a high point in a campaign that I’ve championed since getting involved in the creation of a code for the legal admissibility of electronic records^[7] with the British Standards Institution in London back in the early 1990’s.   It was a contentious subject.  Lawyers shook their heads mournfully over the odds on judges accepting these strange, new paperless documents.

 

But the code was written and the judges were a lot worldlier than their juniors gave them credit for.  Now, the principal of routine, regular assessment of records systems to confirm e-records’ evidential weight is picked up by world recordkeepers.  It’s a very satisfying result.

 

ISO 15489’s Chapter Seven deals with requirements of records while this succeeding section deals with the needs of the records system.  Superficially, they look much alike but, of course, have many differences.  It is here that the user realises what lengths the authors have gone to ensuring that the “all-paper”, “no-paper” challenges are not sustained.  The Standard concentrates on “records management strategies”, “information management strategy plans”, “records systems”, “environments” and “media”.

 

In fact, the Standard rarely specifies media or environment except, of course, where a process is peculiar to one.^[8]  It relies on its definition of “records system” as being ”information system which captures, manages and provides access to records through time” which, of course, covers any process  … paper, electronic or any other yet to be devised.

 

The Standard’s chapter nine, Records management processes and controls, is its largest and the one that, singly, engaged SC11 most.  Filling a third of the document’s pages, it contains all the directions for deciding which records should be kept, how long to keep them, how to look after them and how to dispose of them once their useful life is ended.

 

It sets out the types of documents that may be required for what is describes as “continuing retention”.  It’s a fairly long list but it really covers simply records of evidence (of actions and interactions) and rights. 

 

The Standard is clear about the purpose of retaining records in a system. The process establishes the links between author, record and it business purpose; links records to others and establishes their relationships.^[9]  It seems blindingly obvious. Nonetheless, by saying it, the Standard identifies and secures the principles that can, perhaps, be hard to isolate and express to disinterested or disingenuous organization executives. 

 

Now we are getting to the heart of what ISO 15489 is good for.  It contains no new, shocking truths or dramatic recordkeeping revelations. If you are looking for eye-opener revelations, you worldly recordkeepers won’t find them here.

 

If anything, ISO 15489 tends towards conservative approaches in deference to cultures where the concept of professional management of records is often a novelty or even a nuisance. 

 

A-weapon for I-managers

 

ISO 15489 is a weapon of mass instruction in the armoury of information managers.  It adds power to the elbows of recordkeepers fighting their corner for greater support and recognition for both their systems and themselves. 

 

For the lucky ones with established and recognised systems, the Standard will certainly hold few surprises.  For the less-fortunate, ISO 15489 offers back-up from contemporaries from all across the globe.  For the records novice, it’s a bible, a keystone, a bright light illuminating the most indistinct corners of world we know and try to love.

 

Which sound like the end, doesn’t it.  No, the Standard has two more chapters, my favourite, the shortest, Monitoring and auditing, and Training.  The Standard deals with these matters briefly because they involve more process than principle, but the Guidelines more than make up.

 

The Guidelines implement

 

SC11 didn’t quite make its target to contain the Guidelines in 50 pages.  It is nearer 60.  But we succeeded in one sense.  Some 15 pages comprise invaluable tables identifying complimentary sections in the two 15489 documents, the necessary and preferable corollary to our decision to end the slavish matching, section by section, of Standard format and the Guidelines’. It’s a small price to pay for ending such a cumbersome plan.

 

The Guidelines set out in considerable detail how to prepare a records management policy statement and how to apportion records responsibilities within an organization.  The document offers a massive, eight-step programme for the design and implementation of a records system and 15 pages of instruction on records processes and controls from “business activity classification” to “transfer of custody or ownership of records”.

 

The Guidelines’ Chapter 5 Monitoring and auditing was my personal responsibility because of my interest in the legal admissibility concerns.  Not all my colleagues shared my sensitivities, but I and those who saw the need fought the good fight with the result that the chapter opens with the statement:

 

“There are three reasons for monitoring and auditing records systems:

 

• to ensure compliance with the organization’s established standards;
• to ensure that records will be accepted as evidence in a court of law should this be required; and
• to improve an organization’s performance.”

 

And it contains a sub-section, 5.3 Evidential weight, which deals with the subject in more detail and emphasises: “Records managers employing electronic information storage systems need to be aware of the potential for legal challenge if documents from such a system are presented in evidence to a court of law.”

 

The Guidelines contain much to help recordkeepers apply the Standard’s principles, an “implementation guide” it calls itself.^[10]

 

Even on training, the Guidelines give precise indicators of who needs records training and why, how this may be achieved and when, and what needs to be done to maintain levels of expertise … a thorough manual!

 

It is, as I said, an amazing document, a condensation of the records world’s experience and expertise.  It reveals that although the world may use a variety of methods, there is an agreed “best way” to undertake the principles of good recordkeeping.  The Guidelines are, as they indicate, only a guide to the Standard and not part of it, but it is clear that the processes described will in time become the basis of all records systems, a boon for us recordkeepers all over the world.

 

Have no fears that you will have to be making big changes in the way you or your organization operate recordkeeping.  The Standard and its Guidelines fit snugly within established recordkeeping cultures

 

Since the publication and the rising acceptance around the world, sub-committee SC11 has not been resting.  Sometime this year, it hopes to be able to complete its ISO 23081 Metadata for Records Standard, early drafts for which are in circulation for comment.

 

It’s another simple document, setting out the truths of metadata creation and the different times they should be added to records.

 

It will consist of three parts:

 

1. a set of technical specifications for creating, managing and using records management metadata and explanations the principles that govern them;

 

2. practical guidance on implementation issues and on use of existing metadata sets, and

 

3. an evaluation of existing metadata sets and initiatives linked to ISO 15489.

 

Soon the world will have these important principles to absorb, along with those of the all-important ISO 15489.   And the world is absorbing them.  They are causing the recordkeeping revolution that SC11 delegates were hoping for.

 

Word across the World

 

Standards and archiving journals all over Europe have published articles about the standard, many written by members of SC11 in German, French, Dutch and Croatian, for the new state of Serbia, formerly a part of Yugoslavia. 

 

The Czech Republic has issued its own guide to ISO 15489, e-CH-0002 in German, the republic’s business language.   Central Spanish standards authorities have been slow to react to the ISO 15489, but in Barcelona, the government of the province of Catalonia last year held a seminar on the standard and has produced a version in the Catalan language.  The Catalonian Research and Information Society Department (DURSI) is developing and implementing public sector record management procedures based on the international code.

 

The Nordic nations have picked up the work, also.  The Swedish standards institution and records managers from its Civil Aviation Authority were foundation members of SC11.  As a result, the country’s Agency for Public Management, the Statskontoret, which guides government agency administration practice, includes it in its procedures. The little North Atlantic island nation, Iceland, once a province of Denmark, is translating the work

 

The former USSR satellite Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are all preparing their own language versions.  The National Archives of Estonia translated an early, 2000 draft of the developing standard into its own language (Seletuskiri ISO 15489–1:2001 tõlke kohta) and the new republic’s State Chancellery has adopted the Standard. 

 

The Estonians are now working on the final ISO Standard despite getting hung up over what some delegates of the Standards Board of Estonia’s technical committee 22, Information and Documentation, saw as inconsistencies.  But they worked their way through that and, later, Mr Tiit Arumäe, the Deputy Head of Bureau at the National Archives of Estonia, said: “The National Archives has already started to use the standard by incorporating its suggestions in guidelines to the agencies whose records management is under its supervision.”

  

The Lithuanian Standardisation Department expects to approve ISO 15489 as its official standard this year and has already created regulations in accordance with the international principles.

 

Latvian Standards’ (Latvijas standarts) Museums, Archives and Libraries Standardisation committee made the decision on February 28 to finish its work on translating the standard, despite early difficulty with some of the English words.  The translators stumbled over the international guide’s use of words like “disposition” deciding to translate it to the equivalent to “appraisal and destruction”.   “Disposition” has caused similar problems elsewhere, even in some English-speaking communities where “disposal” or “removal” are preferred.

 

The English word “control” was awkward for the Latvians, too.  In the former Soviet nation, the equivalent word applies more precisely to the time allotted for replying to correspondence  … not what the SC11 authors had in mind at all. 

 

The Baltic Connections

 

The Latvians hope to be able to report the job done to the second International Conference on the History of Records and Archives (I-CHORA 2), Archival Affinities: Adapting and Adopting Archival Cultures, at Amsterdam in September 2005.

 

To my Riga correspondent, it will come as a huge relief.  He emails: “Last year I was doing manly fire fighting by working out basic RM principles corresponding to requirements set out by laws and government regulations, defining responsibilities, authorities to certify copies etc, etc.”

 

He and his colleagues have much to do.  He writes: “Since Latvia regained its independence, the record’s only point of interest has been in the sense of it being full and accurate, capable of fulfilling its legal aims. Management issues are left for better times.”

 

The Irish consultancy, Eneclann, a campus company of Ireland’s big tertiary institution, Trinity College, recommends the Standard, telling clients:  “Any records management procedures implemented should aim to meet the criteria set out in ISO 15489 to ensure the best efficiency of your organization’s record keeping.”  The Irish National Archives also backs the Standard.

 

In my home country, New Zealand, the national archives uses the Standard as the basis for its Government recordkeeping programme, “Continuum, create and maintain”.`

 

In Africa, the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa has endorsed the Standard.  The Kenyan National Archives is showing its sub-Saharan neighbours the way with its own Records and Archives Management Standard based on ISO 15489 and the International Council on Archives’ standard for archives description. 

 

Director of Kenya Archives, Musila Musembi, tells me: “Our view is that proper and effective implementation of the ISO 15489 standard will provide reliable records keeping systems that will in turn enhance automation of records management services.”  Nonetheless, sensibly, the Kenyan’s are running a pilot project at the nation’s Ministry of Planning and National Development to test the standard’s applicability to Kenyan public sector practices.

 

In the Caribbean, the University of the West Indies has introduced the Standard to its administration.  The International Council on Archives plans ISO 15489 implementation guidance sessions at its annual congress in Vienna, Austria, next August, headed by ARMA’s Director of Professional Resources, Diane Carlisle, the leader of the U.S. delegation to SC11.

 

The congress will see, for the first time, the ICA’s Workbook on Electronic Records, a document produced by its Committee on Current Records in an Electronic Environment

 

 comprising 25 members from around the world.  The workbook’s principle reference point is ISO 15489.

 

Late last year, the second anniversary of the Standard’s publication was celebrated in Geneva, Switzerland, the home of the International Standards Organization, with a seminar attended by more than 140 delegates from USA, Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Russia, the Balkans, Pakistan and Switzerland.

 

The list of participating nations grows day by day and now that it is available in Mandarin, thanks to friends at the University of Renmin lead by Associate Professor An Xiaomi, it is taking root in this vast Peoples’ Republic of China.  I am sure you will find it of immense value.

 

With ISO 15489 in your hand, you will be able to encourage your employers with promises like: “This is how the world does records management.  We can learn from the world.”

 

Papers on line

 

This paper is on-line on the website of the author’s company, The Caldeson Consultancy, at http://www.caldeson.com/1548904.html.   Details of the Standard’s early stages are described in a 1999 paper ISO 15489: It's a vital number: Better remember it! at http://www.caldeson.com/ISO 15489.html.    The standard’s completion is explained in ISO 15489: Set it to music. You're gonna need it, at http://www.caldeson.com/hobart01.html and the Technical Report development outlined in World taken by surprise: Nations agree on "how to's". at  http://www.caldeson.com/techr011.html.