Download Power in records management--who creates a policy for public

Visions and tensions in Finnish public
sector electronic records management
Pekka Henttonen, D.Soc.Sc., Assistant professor, Department of Information Studies and Interactive
Media, University of Tampere, Finland
My paper is titled “Visions and tensions in Finnish electronic records management”. I have selected this
title, because Finnish public sector electronic records management is at the moment experiencing an
interesting phase. There are innovative and bold visions of how electronic records management should
be developed, but also tensions between theory and practice, different actors and their goals.
First, I would like to emphasize that I speak here as an outside observer, as a representative of
independent academic community. This means that what I say is only my own interpretation. I have no
inside knowledge about the discussions in the administration or in the National Archive Service. The
tensions that I will talk about are mostly hidden. I may inadvertently overemphasize some aspects of
development and entirely neglect others. Some people might even argue that some of the tensions exist
only in my imagination.
Power in records management—who creates a policy for public sector
records management?
The first question that I would like to discuss is who creates a policy for public sector records
management? Traditionally, the National Archives Service—and especially the National Archives as its
central part—has had a very powerful role in records management, because we do not make a strong
distinction between records and archives management. The current legislation gives to the National
Archives Service a right to decide what records are preserved permanently. The National Archives
Service can give binding regulations to public authorities when it comes to creating and preserving
records with permanent value. In principle, if records have no permanent value records creating
agencies may choose not to follow the instructions given by the National Archives Service.
However, the National Archives Service has more power than the legislation alone implies. Firstly, it has
a monopoly in guiding records management in Finland: there are practically no alternative Finnish
sources of guidance if an agency chooses not to follow the path marked by the National Archives
Service. Secondly, records management professionals and archivists have traditionally received their
education in the courses of the National Archives Service. Therefore, the National Archives Service is a
natural authority in the country when it comes to matters in records and archives management. Thirdly,
if an agency wants to preserve records with permanent value in electronic format solely it has to follow
the instructions of the National Archives Service regardless of the amount of the permanently valuable
records. For instance, if five percent of the records in a system are defined as permanently valuable
then the whole system must be built to fulfill the requirements of National Archives Service. In principle,
the agency can avoid this only by printing the five percent to paper or microfilm.
The National Archives Service has a good reason for promoting electronic records management. It is
running out of storage space. At the moment there 162 shelf kilometers of records waiting for transfer
to the National Archives Service, but free space only for 77 shelf kilometers.
Nevertheless, The National Archives Service is not the only player in the field of electronic records
management. There is also the State Information Technology Management Unit which coordinates
information management in administration. Also it has interest in promoting electronic records
management, but for different reasons. The State IT Management Unit wants to increase efficiency and
to lower costs by creating centralized services and by defining common information architecture for
public authorities.
Hence, both the National Archives Service and the State IT Management Unit have interest in electronic
records management. However, they look at this area from different angles: the National Archives
Service from the perspective of record and archives management and cultural heritage, the State IT
Management Unit from the perspective of information technology and process efficiency. Thus, the first
tension is between these two parties. Although they have had good co-operation together, the question
of who is ultimately responsible for developing electronic records management is unsolved.
What standard to follow in electronic records management systems?
A second tension is found when we look at electronic records management systems. Since the 1990’s
electronic records management has been based globally on electronic records management systems in
which the record life cycle is systematically managed. Today there are several specifications defining
how the systems should look like. There are, for instance, DoD 5015.2 in the United States, EuropeanWide MoReq2, Norwegian NOARK, and “Principles and Functional Requirements for Records in
Electronic Office Environments” of the International Council on Archives. Also Finland has a national
specification known as “SÄHKE”. Like its European counterpart, MoReq2, SÄHKE defines what
functionality and metadata is required from an electronic records management system and how records
and their metadata can be exported from the system.
SÄHKE is tailored to match the requirements of the Finnish law and administrative practice. Naturally,
this is a good thing. However, it also has a downside. It makes SÄHKE less attractive to those agencies
whose scope is not national. For instance, Finnish Customs co-operates and exchanges information with
other agencies in the EU area. For Finnish Customs following a national metadata model is not an ideal
solution.
Secondly, It can be questioned whether it is at all sensible to develop a national electronic records
management specification in the long run. Everything is slowly getting more and more globalized. We
hardly can think that records management is an exception to this.
In addition, international cooperation would bring more resources to the work. My personal opinion is
that the lack of resources at the national level is already visible. SÄHKE covers basic functionality which
is essential for the records and archives management, like maintaining a classification scheme and
defining retention times, but it has nothing to say about other features, like workflow, remote work or
integration with content management systems (which are included in Moreq2). Still, even though SÄHKE
ignores them, they are important for the records creating agencies, perhaps even more important than
functions those required by the records and archives management.
In the future the complexity and number of specifications is likely to increase. The bigger the distance
between the national and the international records management “landscape”, the more resources it will
take to develop all the solutions that are required to keep electronic records accessible through their life
cycle. One may ask why a small nation with only five million inhabitants should invest in this if there are
adequate international alternatives. When we talk about permanently valuable records, every decision
is reflected far in the future, because preservation is literally an eternal task.
A third problem is the relationship between electronic records management specifications and the
actual information systems that exist in the government. An electronic records management system is
rarely a complete solution alone. For instance, it was estimated about ten years ago that there are about
one hundred information systems in use in the Finnish Defense Force. Only one of the systems is an
electronic records management system. What should be done to records in other systems? So far there
is no good answer to this. For instance, there is no solution to long-term preservation of relational
databases even though they are commonplace everywhere. There are plans to tackle this issue in
SÄHKE3 (which is scheduled to appear in 2013), but again I ask, why should we try to find a solution at a
national level when the same problem exists everywhere?
Visions of the future
The final tension that I want to discuss is the direction to which electronic records management is being
developed in Finland.
Traditionally, Finnish records management has been based on AMS (abbreviated from the Finnish word
arkistonmuodostussuunnitelma, literally “Archives creation plan”) which lists all the document types
that are created in an organization. For every document type the AMS defines retention time, access
rights, place where the records are to be kept and how and where they are to be filed and archived. In
paper environment, an AMS was a bunt of paper—a kind of handbook for records professionals and
other personnel in the organization—but in the electronic environment it is a system component from
which record metadata gets its default values when a record is captured in the electronic records
management system. The core of an AMS is a functional classification scheme which describes
organization’s all the functions.
The direction to which AMS is developed is currently governed by three ideas. The first idea is that an
AMS ceases to be an integral part of an electronic records management system. Instead, it is separated
from the electronic records management system and becomes a system of its own. The electronic
records management system communicates with an AMS via an application programming interface.
Thorough this interface the AMS guides the life cycle of records. What is more, this does not limit itself
to electronic records management systems. In the future an AMS guides all information systems in the
administration. Naturally, for this to happen, other information systems have to be modified to
communicate with the AMS.
The second idea is a processed-based AMS. This means that steps in all administrative processes are
described and modeled in the AMS. Because of this the AMS can modify the metadata values as needed
when the process goes further. For instance, when an electronic records management signals the AMS
that the administrative process has been completed, the AMS may send the electronic records
management system new metadata values which (for instance) change access rights to records or define
a new retention time.
The third idea is to create centralized electronic records management services for the whole public
administration. There have been several fuzzy ideas about this during the last years, starting from
creating a common functional classification scheme to all public authorities and ending with one
national electronic AMS-system in which all functions, processes, and record types of the whole
administration are described and modeled. To some extent, at least, this seems like a rational thing to
do. For instance, there are over 300 municipalities in Finland. They all have same functions, are guided
by the same legislation, and create, by and large, similar records. So, there should be no need to do the
same records management planning work again and again in every municipality. However, there are
plans to go beyond this and use the same approach also everywhere in the government administration.
This has raised more doubts among some records professionals.
Tensions of today
In summary, the current plans to develop Finnish electronic records management are ambitious. There
are both theoretical and practical obstacles on the way. For instance, will organizations really use their
scarce resources to make all information systems compatible with records management requirements
like the vision suggests? Is this possible even in principle? Are Finnish records managers qualified to do
process modeling like the new AMS vision requires them to do? Is it possible to create a common
functional classification which serves the needs of records managers and users everywhere, both in
small and large organizations? And if a common classification scheme is created, how is it maintained:
who makes a decision to change it, when and where?
In my opinion, viability of the visions of the future is not clear. Unfortunately, records and archives
management is a new research area from the perspective of information sciences and information
management research. Therefore, there is no research data to back up decisions. We are proceeding in
an uncharted territory. For instance, there are no studies showing whether a common classification
scheme would actually benefit records management throughout the administration. Public discussion
has been minimal, but privately records professionals take a stand both against and for the new ideas.
These are some of the tensions currently waiting to be solved.