Table of Contents
Introduction
This material is part of Metadata and Electronic Document Management: Searching for a Common Understanding, prepared for "Information Technology in Electronic Commerce" (COMP3410), at the Australian National University, semester 2, 2003.
Electronic Document Management allows legally recognised documents used in e-commerce transactions to be created, transmitted and stored. Without electronic document management, fast and efficient e-commerce transactions would be buried under mounds of paper documenting the transactions, or be tied up in litigation over the authenticity of the electronic originals.
In 1995 a government committee, chaired by the author, made recommendations for electronic document management in Australian Government Agencies. Here is an overview of the issues, from the report:
Principles
Fully effective management of electronic documents requires consideration of an agency's total information environment. No single medium now holds all the documents relating to an agency's business activities. All sources should be managed in a co-ordinated way, in a manner appropriate to their environment, in order to preserve and provide access to business documents.
Electronic document management systems are more than just systems for tracking the location of electronic documents. Such systems should manage documents for their complete life cycle based on the value of the document to the agency's business. Just as there are standard procedures for the registration of paper documents and records, suitable procedures should be implemented to manage each electronic document throughout its life from creation to disposal...
Requirements
Whatever strategy is adopted, the document management system must:
provide adequate context information for documents;
provide means to prove the authenticity of documents used as evidence
provide for the disposal of records in conformance with the Archives Act 1983;
be robust against organisational or technological change;
provide levels of support for different types of document that accord with agency policy; and
provide links between paper and electronic documents.
Evidence
All agencies must manage evidence. Evidence is the proof of how we acted. It is how we deal with our clients, customers, other agencies or bodies in the private sector, and how they deal with us. It is the basis from which we report to government and the voters. It is what we use to show we run our agencies efficiently and effectively. Above all it is what we use to discharge some obligation because we are held accountable for our actions...
It is not a new problem. The need for evidence has been around for a long time. What is changing is the way we keep the evidence. More and more the proof is moving from traditional paper documents to electronic media. This poses problems because traditional records management disciplines that have been applied to paper documents are not necessarily being applied to electronic documents...
Problems With Electronic Documents
confusion between different versions of a document (e.g. because there may be multiple copies, none of which is the authoritative version);
loss or destruction?of documents that should be kept (e.g. because there is no central repository analogous to the paper file repository, and the author is unaware of the need for retention);
questionable authenticity, because of possible manipulation of text in electronic documents;
loss of context of documents (e.g. because related documents are not linked or kept together); and
documents becoming inaccessible because of technological change (e.g. changes in software or storage media make the files unreadable).
Design Issues
Provision of context
In electronic systems, documents are stored as discrete entities, without any necessary relationship to other documents. In a business environment, documents rarely occur in isolation. They may, for example, be part of a transaction, part of a discussion on a topic, or a progress report on a project. They may refer to other documents. These relationships are part of a document's context. The context is important in locating and retrieving documents and groups of documents. ...
Authenticity
... How do we know that a retrieved electronic document is a correct representation of the original document? If we wish to use it as evidence, how do we prove that it is? ...
Disposal of documents and records
Disposal of documents and records is dictated by the archives policies applying to the agency or organisation. In the case of agencies covered by the Archives Act 1983, disposal is based on the concept of disposal classes, each of which has a designated retention period. ...
Robustness against organisational change
Government agencies are subject to internal reorganisation, splitting into multiple agencies, mergers with other agencies, and transfer of functions to and from other agencies, on a timescale which is short compared with that required for records management. ...
Robustness against technological change
Electronic documents rapidly become unreadable due to changes in hardware technology and in software. ...
Management of working documents
Although working documents are not part of the corporate store, there are situations where it might be seen as useful if the document management system has some knowledge of them. ...
Links to paper systems
Where paper and electronic documents exist within the same agency, links between documents in the two media must be possible. ...
From: Improving Electronic Document Management: Guidelines for Australian Government Agencies, Office of Government Information Technology, 1995, Archive copy at URL: http://www.defence.gov.au/imsc/edmsc/iedmtc.htm Original was URL: http://www.defence.gov.au/imsc/edmsc/iedmtc.htm
Design Responses
For the information technology specialist, the problem is to translate these requirements into working systems. The current approach to this is to use:
Metadata in a text readable format (mostly supersets of Dublin Core) to describe the records. The metadata can be held with the record or separately.
Standard document formats to store and transport the documents. Implementations either use the original format the document was created in, a standardised format (such as XML or PDF) or multiple formats.
Security to identify and protect the integrity: using digital signatures.
Records Management
Electronic document management is a specialised form of records management. The International Standard on Records Management (ISO 15489) covers both electronic and paper records management. The international standard was based on Australian Standard AS 4390-1996, which it has replaced for use in Australia:
This part of ISO 15489
applies to the management of records, in all formats or media, created or received by any public or private organization in the conduct of its activities, or any individual with a duty to create and maintain records,
provides guidance on determining the responsibilities of organizations for records and records policies, procedures, systems and processes,
provides guidance on records management in support of a quality process framework to comply with ISO 9001 and ISO 14001,
provides guidance on the design and implementation of a records system, but
does not include the management of archival records within archival institutions. ...
From: ISO 15489-1:2001 : Information and documentation - Records management - Part 1: General, Standards Australia 2001, URL: http://www.standards.com.au/catalogue/script/Details.asp?DocN=ISO98837076582
Like other standards, ISO 15489 is a voluntary code of practice. However, such standards are commonly adopted by government agencies and companies to satisfy courts that their records are well kept. This is particularly important with electronic commerce, where there may be no paper records to present to a regulator or court as evidence of a business transaction. A court will need to be convinced that electronic records are well kept by an organisation for those records to be used in evidence.
Recordkeeping Metadata Standard for Commonwealth Agencies
Recordkeeping Metadata Standard for Commonwealth Agencies (RKMS) defines 20 elements (eight mandatory) and 65 sub-elements for the record keeping systems used by Commonwealth government agencies. It has similarities to the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) metadata standard, but AGLS was designed to improve the accessibility of services by the?general public, but the record keeping standard is for maintaining internal information to keep the government functioning:
Compliance with the Recordkeeping Metadata Standard for Commonwealth Agencies will help agencies to identify, authenticate, describe and manage their electronic records in a systematic and consistent way to meet business, accountability and archival requirements. The standard is designed to be used as a reference tool by agency corporate managers, IT personnel and software vendors involved in the design, selection and implementation of electronic recordkeeping and related information management systems. It defines a basic set of 20 metadata elements (eight of which constitute a core set of mandatory metadata) and 65 sub-elements that may be incorporated within such systems, and explains how they should be applied within the Commonwealth sphere.
From: NAA (1999) Recordkeeping Metadata Standard for Commonwealth Agencies (version 1.0), National Archives of Australia, Commonwealth of Australia 1999, URL: http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/control/rkms/summary.htm
Unfortunately RKMS is not a strict superset of AGLS. There is a degree of compatibility, but not a straightforward mapping:
|
|
Element |
AGLS Equivalent |
Extends AGLS |
|
1 |
CREATOR, PUBLISHER, OTHER CONTRIBUTOR |
Yes |
|
|
2 |
RIGHTS |
Yes |
|
|
3 |
TITLE |
Yes |
|
|
4 |
SUBJECT |
No |
|
|
5 |
? |
DESCRIPTION |
No |
|
6 |
LANGUAGE |
No |
|
|
7 |
RELATION (also incorporates SOURCE) |
Yes |
|
|
8 |
COVERAGE |
No |
|
|
9 |
FUNCTION |
No |
|
|
10 |
DATE |
Yes |
|
|
11 |
TYPE |
No |
|
|
12 |
TYPE (Aggregation Level qualifier) |
Yes |
|
|
13 |
FORMAT |
? Yes |
|
|
14 |
IDENTIFIER |
Yes |
|
|
15 |
DATE (partial only) |
Yes |
|
|
16 |
- |
Yes |
|
|
17 |
- |
Yes |
|
|
18 |
- |
Yes |
|
|
19 |
|
Yes |
|
|
20 |
MANDATE |
Yes |
From: NAA (1999) Recordkeeping Metadata Standard for Commonwealth Agencies (version 1.0), National Archives of Australia, Commonwealth of Australia 1999, URL: http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/control/rkms/summary.htm
Standard for the Management of Electronic Records in the Victorian Governme?t
The Public Record Office of Victoria has issued PROS 99/007 Standard for the Management of Electronic Records (VERS) This is more prescriptive than other Australian efforts, covering:
System Requirements for Preserving Electronic Records
Metadata Scheme
Standard Electronic Record Format
Long Term Preservation Formats
Export of Electronic Records to PROV
VERS uses a superset of the National Archives of Australia (NAA) Recordkeeping metadata. VERS allows multiple encoding of one document and fixes the record at the time of creation using digital signatures. This requires new metadata to be kept separate from the document, or wrapped around the original record to form a new compound record. It also assumes that a particular digital signature will be readable over a long time and that the digital signature standards used will be supported in the long term. VERS uses text, PDF and TIFF for its standard formats.
Anecdote: Do As I Say Not As I do
The previous version of this material noted that the UK Public records office detailed a similar approach to the Australian Government, including the use of a Dublin Core derived set of metadata, for UK Government records. But the organisation demonstrated a lack of commitment by not tagging its "Management, Appraisal and Preservation of Electronic Records" document with the metadata tags recommended in the document. That has changed with a new version of the document having Dublin Core tags, however, the title of the document in the tags does not appear to be correct. This document will have little credibility until its authors do what they are recommending others do and take the trouble to include correct metadata:
<title>Public Record Office | Records Management</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/includes/pro.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/recordsmanagement/includes/rmd.css" type="text/css">
<meta NAME="DC.Rights" CONTENT="http://www.pro.gov.uk/about/copyright.htm">
<meta NAME="DC.Creator" CONTENT="Public Record Office">
<meta NAME="DC.Publisher" CONTENT="Public Record Office">
<meta NAME="DC.Language" CONTENT="en-UK">
<meta NAME="DC.Type.category" CONTENT="document">
<meta NAME="DC.Format" CONTENT="text/html">
<meta NAME="Robots" CONTENT="all">
<meta NAME="DC.Date.created" CONTENT="2001-03-08">
<meta NAME="DC.Identifier" CONTENT="http://www.pro.gov.uk/recordsmanagement/default.htm">
<meta NAME="DC.Title" CONTENT="Public Record Office | Records Management">
<meta NAME="DC.Subject" CONTENT="Public Records; National Archives; Documents; Government; History; selection; archives; electronic records">
<meta NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Public Records; National Archives; Documents; Government; History; selection; archives; electronic records">
<meta NAME="DC.Description" CONTENT="Records Management: services for government departments and other Archives">
<meta NAME="Description" CONTENT="Records Management: services for government departments and other Archives">
<meta NAME="DC.Date.modified" CONTENT="2001-03-08">
From: Management, Appraisal and Preservation of Electronic Records, Public Record Office, UK, 2001, URL: http://www.pro.gov.uk/recordsmanagement/erecords/guidelines/procedures-full.htm
Examples
Organisations will typically have a document called the Records Management Manual, describing procedures to be used, paper forms and the electronic system used:
As a general principle, information created on, or maintained and processed in, the University's information technology (IT) based systems or personal computers (PCs) is to be managed by observing the same practices and standards as for conventional paper-based records. Disposal and transfer of this information is regulated by the Archives Act 1983.
For the purpose of maintaining a document or record in electronic systems, a document is defined to be any 'information' input, processed, stored and accessed via a computer system (see Section 103 for definitions of an electronic record and document).
From: ANU RECORDS MANAGEMENT MANUAL, 16 September 1999, URL: http://www.anu.edu.au/records/manual/six.html
Many government agencies list on their web site a subset of the metadata for records held. These lists can be found with a web search.
Further Information
Copyright © Tom Worthington 2000 -2003