Content management (CMS)
As time moved on the software used to create documents got more sophisticated and we saw the introduction of the World Wide Web. Suddenly electronic publishing moved from being a niche market to become a mass market. Instead of just managing documents more and more organisations realised that they needed to manage the "content" of their documents at a lower level. They needed to hold the components of a document - the text, the graphics, the images etc - in a form which allowed them to reuse those components to create other documents.
The name coined to describe this new generation of sophisticated management systems was "content management" systems. Documents were marked up using languages such as SGML and HTML and XML and the components or content objects were managed in a content library.
Of course, for legal reasons it was still vital to know which components appeared in which document on a certain date so within a content management system you can still manage content at the content or component level; at the document level and at the folder level.
Web content management (WCM)
A number of suppliers developed systems that were only designed to manage content for publication on web sites and they called those systems Web content management systems. They can best be seen as a subset of content management systems.
With WCM systems you can either create content using office software, scanning etc and then transform the content into html or other approved web formats or the creators can be provided with browser-based templates for content entry. The content is structured to follow approved publishing styles. WCM systems provide content versioning facilities and the facility to assign metadata to content and manage the content in a repository just like content management systems. WCM systems offer integrated content approval workflows to control the review and approval of content and ensure it is passed for publication. Crucially, WCM systems support the publishing of content across intranets and the Internet. WCM systems offer facilities to design new web sites and support content personalisation to cater for specific audiences. WCM systems provide administration functions to track the status of content and monitor the usage of web sites etc.
Electronic records management (ERM)
In parallel with the move to content management we also saw the introduction of Electronic Records Management software. This came from two directions. Firstly, the suppliers of paper records management software looked at the development of EDM systems and started to adapt their software to manage not just paper folders but a mix of paper folders; electronic folders and hybrid folders where one part could be paper and another part electronic. Secondly new suppliers came in with folder based ERM software that included records management facilities.
Users in government and large regulated industries were interested in this new ERM software but were also somewhat cautious. Where were the standards and how could they use these systems to manage both paper and electronic folders in future? There was also an internal problem in that the records managers in most organisations did not control the IT department and hence were in no position to dictate to their IT department which software they should roll out to all the users.
The first attempt to standardise ERM functions was made by the US Department of Defense. Their "Design criteria standard for Electronic Records Management software application" outlined some of the key functions that any ERM software should provide and was used as the basis of a test programme to test and approve software as being DOD compliant.
In the UK in the late 1990s the then Public Record Office--now the National Archives (TNA)--worked with the Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency--now Office for Government Commerce (OGC) and a number of government departments to define a set of "Functional Requirements for Electronic Records Management Systems". The result was a standard published in 1999. The PRO also set up an approval programme and some fourteen to fifteen suppliers were approved against the 1999 standard for a period of 2 to 3 years. We had a standard for ERM systems and this was followed by a further standard sponsored by the European Union called MoReq (Model requirements for the management of electronic records) which was more international in scope and not limited to the public sector. It also added a number of key additional requirements.
Finally, in 2002, the National Archives issued a second version of their requirements which was more prescriptive and included a number of significant new requirements based on three years of experience of working with departments to implement approved solutions - "Functional requirements for ERMS 2002". By June 2004 some 6 suppliers have been approved by the National Archives and some 17 are going through the approval process.
