Recently Microsoft along with Applied Information Sciences Inc announced about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 has obtained the DoD 5015.2 standard.
The official press release from Microsoft is available here:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/may07/05-29SharePointDoDPR.mspx
The US Department of Defense has a strict set of guidelines for benchmarking and testing vendors who offer solutions for electronic document/records management. Information about how and what these criteria are available on the JITC web site. http://jitc.fhu.disa.mil/recmgt/
From a pure play records management perspective I wanted to understand how all this would stack up with the current New Zealand Public Records Act (PRA) as outlined by Archives New Zealand.
Information about the Public Records Act is available here:
http://www.archives.govt.nz/publicrecordsact.php
Then there is the “Continuum” which defines how Electronic Records Management “should” be carried out by public agencies that should follow the PRA as stipulated by Archives New Zealand. It is stated on the web site that:
“The Act applies to all public offices, as defined in Section 4 of the Act including all government departments, CRIs, SOEs and tertiary institutions. Local government is covered by a slightly different regime.”
Electronic Record Keeping is covered here: http://www.archives.govt.nz/continuum/digitalrecordkeeping.php
The Public Records Act defines a record as: "information, whether in its original form or otherwise, including ... a document, a signature, a seal, text, images, sound, speech or data compiled, recorded, or stored... in written form on any material, or on film, negative, tape or any other medium so as to be capable of being reproduced, or by means of any recording device, or process, computer, or other electronic device or process."
The Continuum Resource Kit (in sub parts) is available here for agencies to download and use as a guideline when implementing a solution.
This provides agencies with a set of guidelines that will allow agencies to start their “journey” in the right direction of being compliant. I call this a journey because quite simply you cannot “flick” a switch or “buy a product” that has a branding all over it saying “NZ PRA Compliant”. This is where I find that a lot of vendors and partners who offer Electronic Content Management offerings (Microsoft included) need to understand the surrounding factors around a successful implementation. Basically for New Zealand agencies it means that content published in Intranets, Collaboration software and email require having process around the creation, management, disposition and retention to obtain compliant status.
Archives New Zealand is working with Australasian Digital Recordkeeping Initiative as a collaborative partner in setting out common guidelines for Australia and New Zealand.
So can SharePoint really set us on this journey?
I believe so. SharePoint already offers out of the box functionality for ECM such as collaboration workspaces, blogs, wikis, intranet, portals etc) So from a perspective from organisations who have already invested in a SharePoint implementation it is important to understand how to plan and prepare for the journey ahead to implement Records Management (RM) with SharePoint.
Microsoft has promised to offer an add-on module which will extend the current capabilities of “Records Center” and provide the framework for RM which is already part of MOSS. These new enhancements will include:
File Plan Builder
This feature provides the capability with an updated user interface for configuring a file plan in a SharePoint Records Center. This new user interface supports creating record categories and other file plan-related constructs, like SharePoint folders, which can be closed to new records and can also have their own retention and disposition rules.
Metadata Propagation between Categories, Folders, and Records
This feature addresses the propagation of metadata values between categories, folders, and records. Metadata is stored in three separate wells: metadata about categories, metadata about folders within those categories, and metadata about records within those folders. Each well has a separate schema with defined columns. Under some circumstances, metadata needs to be propagated between those wells to ensure consistent processing and lifecycle management of the records managed in the Records Center.
Closing Record Folders
This capability specifically addresses closing a Record Folder within the Records Center so that users no longer can file or add additional records into the closed folder. Users can still view records of closed Folders and policies are still enforced on closed Folders. There is no concept of closing a SharePoint folder in baseline MOSS 2007, so this capability provides new functionality within SharePoint.
Preconfigured DoD Data Structures
New content types, lists, and other data structures are being provided as new features which can be enabled in the Records Center to provide compliance with the DoD 5015. These data structures and lists provide the infrastructure for many of the additional functional capabilities including multiple-phased lifecycle disposition rules and event-based retention calculations.
NOTE: That Microsoft New Zealand and Australia "may" provide a localised version of this feature to assist local agencies to apply a data structure. Local partners (like us) who are capable of delivering SharePoint solutions can build and extend on the "Feature" framework to provide a solution that would best meet the agencies preferred data structure.
Read the complete white paper on the new additions to “Records Center” from AIS.
These new additions along with "Content Types" (Content Types allows organisations to specify how meta data is applied to document and also set individual information policies for documents based on the Content Type) will provide a very good and viable option to extend and use existing investment of a MOSS 2007 deployment for Records Management or at least provide a good road map in understanding how to apply the policies and procedures prior to making a “big” RM solution investment.
In the end don’t forget that any system/solution that you choose will need to have “unobtrusive” experience from a user’s perspective. In a typical day to day user scenario the last thing a user would want is a pop up box which will have 100 questions asking them about meta data and which “type” of classification the document they are writing should be filed under. A smart solution should have already pre determine these based on the task the user is doing.
Further reading: