20021119 \  Artikel \  Document Lifecycle Management for the European Public Sector (3)
Document Lifecycle Management for the European Public Sector (3)
Keynotevortrag von Dr. Ulrich Kampffmeyer, Geschäftsführer der PROJECT CONSULT Unternehmensberatung, Mitglied des Board of Directors der AIIM International und Vorsitzender des DLM-Forum Scientific Committee der DLM-Forum Konferenz Barcelona 2002. Teil 3 des Artikels (Teil 1 des Artikels wurde im PROJECT CONSULT Newsletter 20020925Newsletter 20020925, Teil 2 im Newsletter 20021025Newsletter 20021025 veröffentlicht).
Challenges
“Electronic Archives are the Memory of the Information Society” - this headline of Erkki Liikanen has become most prominent in publications, marketing brochures and conference presentations. It demonstrates clearly the dimension of the challenge the information society is facing. Whilst we are still struggling with the basic technologies to create electronic archives, the development of information technology is heading for future visions like “Information at your fingertips” or “The internet is the global brain and memory of mankind”. Archive solutions are today no mainstream software. Electronic archives and records management systems are offered as special products for a special purpose. In fact, these systems should belong as infrastructure in every software and should be delivered as part of the basic operating system services. Everybody needs electronic archival. This is not a special problem of “some archivists or records managers in dusty halls below museum floors”. The preservation of valuable information is a task for everybody dealing with electronic information.
Consolidation
Electronic archival and records management is still a niche market segment. Most of the software manufacturers are middle sized companies. The crisis of the ITC industry since the beginning of this century, driven by the fallout of dot.coms, hit as well providers of solutions for long term electronic archival.
   
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The vendor market is undergoing a consolidation phase.  
This development has special impact for those who already installed electronic archives which are now no longer available or supported. On the other hand there is no reason to panic: thinking in decades and centuries of availability requires strategies for “constant” or “continuous” migration. Companies will always raise and fall over the years. Migration strategies should be independent from these natural cycles.
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The shake out already hit document management and electronic archival suppliers. 
The next wave of consolidation will hit the vendors of content management and portal solutions. There are too many product offers on the market place. But good ideas and innovative products will survive if they are absorbed by larger companies who can provide more stability.
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To provide archival software is “to do the splits” 
Customers always ask for the latest technologies and newest features. On the other hand they want from archiving and records management solutions that they keep their information available for years, decades and centuries. To serve both demands is nearly impossible for smaller sized software companies. They have not enough resources to do both, deliver latest functionality and providing stable solutions for long-term information storage. Archival and records management solutions should stick to the basic requirements.
Standards
Standards are necessary for vendors and users alike. Vendors can streamline their development, add components from other manufacturers, and link to other systems more easily using standards. Users needs standard to have test criteria, gain independence from proprietary products and insure long term availability of their information.
   
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Standards on different levels for different purposes 
Without standards and interchange formats there will be no document interchange. Without pre-defined structures and defined meta-data there will be no long-term accessibility and no cross-over usage of information.
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Standards are developing, changing and disappearing 
Although standards can provide more safety for investments and information availability, they are no final lifeline. Migration has to implemented as a regular, continuous process. Standards help to make migration easier.
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Standards must be auditable 
General standards like document formats and interfaces are normally specified in detail and easy to test for compliance. Complex standards are often restricted to a functional description. Important standards for electronic archival and records management like MoReq Model Requirements or ISO 15489 Records Management have to be enhanced with auditable compliance criteria to enable vendors to deliver compatible solutions and to enable users to test on compliance.
Redundancy
We face redundancy in different areas: development of products, sponsoring of projects, redundancy in information itself. Redundancy in computer systems and system architectures is an attribute of safety and security. Redundancy as mentioned above is a risk.
   
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Redundancy in product development 
Every supplier creates his products individually and independently. This leads to a lack of standardised, multipliable solutions. “Re-inventing the wheel” costs too much resources, money and time, and endangers standardisation and the implementation of standards.
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Redundancy in information 
Uncontrolled renditions, copies and re-use lead to a mountain of information where the original content often gets lost. New techniques are necessary to identify original content and protect it against unlawful use and re-use.
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Redundancy costs resources 
Archivists and records managers will spent a lot of their future working time on sorting out, which information is valid to be saved for future generations. Intelligent software tools are needed to support and partially automate these processes.
Co-Ordination
An European approach to develop standardised procedures, meta-data structures and best practice applications, to create stable solutions for long-term archival of valuable information, and to allow access to electronic archives to the European citizen, makes sense. To make it a success the DLM community needs to join forces. No vendor, no archive, no institution, and even no member state alone can provide the “final solution” for the “memory of the information society” “out of the box”. To achieve the goal:
   
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more and effective co-ordination is necessary,
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redundancy has to be avoided,
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initiatives like DLM have to be transformed into sustainable networks,
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criteria for auditing standards to improve compatible solutions have to defined,
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initiatives like “E-Government”, “Open Access to Public Archives” and other related topics, beginning to overlap more and more, have to be harmonised. The co-ordination body for this task could be the initiated European DLM-network of excellence.
Co-Operation
Co-operation between the ICT industry and the user organisation in the European public sector is essential. Up to now co-operation mostly happened only in individual projects to create a specific solution. Co-operation on a higher level, between competing vendors, standardisation organisations, and co-ordination bodies on the European and the Member State level are necessary to develop standards and certification procedures to create compatible solutions. The demand is that the ICT industry:
   
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co-operates with the public sector not project-by-project but in a continuous process on the European level,
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delivers standardised, affordable, easy to adopt, install and run solutions,
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takes the term “long-term availability” seriously, and provides strategies and tools to meet the challenge of the DLM community,
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undertakes own efforts to avoid incompatible, individual solutions on the European, national and local level.
A Mission ?
Information policy, standardisation, co-ordination, education and qualification issues have been addressed by the DLM-Forum since its creation.
In 1999 the DLM-Forum addressed the challenge
   
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to move the traditional archivists from the end of the information chain upwards,
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to become the information manager and
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to get control over the complete document lifecycle.
In 2002 the DLM-Forum has to address politicians and administrations to
   
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create more awareness about the value of information and the value of archives and to
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co-ordinate joint efforts more efficiently to avoid the evolving “Digital Gap”.
Three simple statements to conclude this paper:
   
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Electronic Archives are the memory of the information society.
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Information has a value of its own only if the information is used.
   
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Document Lifecycle Management is just in the beginning.
 
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