Electronic records management
EDM and content management systems were designed to manage all the documents and content held by organisations but the main focus was on managing those documents and content objects and providing access to them while they were new and active and while they were being edited.
There was much less attention paid to how they would be managed over the long term and how they would be preserved and eventually disposed of.
As described in the historical background section above, public sector bodies need to manage a subset of their electronic documents as records and need to be able to apply records management controls to them. To address this requirement the US Department of Defense, the National Archives in the UK and the European Commission have all defined requirements for ERM.
The core functions which must be supported to meet the National Archives ERM requirements include the following:
They must support a corporate classification scheme and file plan i.e. a hierarchy with at least three levels or classes. The hierarchy comprises the classification scheme, classes, folders, parts, records, documents and content components.
They must support declaration, i.e. a subset of all documents/content objects will be declared as records and will then be frozen and protected and preserved throughout their life.
They must support disposition, i.e. the ability to define how long records should be retained for; when they should be reviewed and after review when they should be destroyed or transferred for long-term storage
There are basically four approaches to implementing Electronic Records Management.
The first is to run a hybrid system. Paper records are still held in folders and registered on a records management software package. Electronic documents are held in folders on shared drives and the folders are linked to the metadata held for the paper folders on the records management system. This is very complex and labour intensive and is now largely only used as a transition to full ERM.
The second is to put in a dedicated ERM system. This is typically used in organisations with no EDM or ECM systems. They manage electronic documents on shared servers and incoming paper in paper folders. Then when a project is complete or at an agreed point the paper is scanned and the digital images indexed in digital folders on the ERM system and the digital documents are saved into the same folders. The result is a corporate ERM with folders held for all the main topics covered by the organisation. The problem with this approach is that the organisation does not get the benefit of active EDM/ECM and there are no controls over what users place in the ERM folders. .
The third approach is to implement an integrated EDM and ERM system referred to as an EDRM system as described above.
The fourth approach is to implement a full Enterprise Content Management suite that comprises EDM plus ECM plus WCM plus ERM plus collaboration and BPM facilities.
In the medium term, ERM will just be a module supported by all document and content management systems.
