Guidelines for Managing Electronic Documents in Australian Government Agencies - Putting electronic document management principles into practice

PUTTING ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE
1. PRIORITIES
2. CHANGES TO BUSINESS PROCESSES
  1. Need for contextual information
  2. Document migration plans
3. 3 CHANGES TO AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY
  1. Special requirements of government agencies
  2. Electronic Mail
  3. The Internet
  4. Changing Document Formats
  5. Formats in common use
  6. Formats with Potential
  7. Plain text and compound document formats
  8. Protocols and Interfaces
4. ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS: FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATIONS 38
5. USE OF DOCUMENT ATTRIBUTES
6. FINDERS/KEEPERS
7. SPECIALIST USES FOR ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTS
8. SOFTWARE
9. AVAILABLE ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Putting electronic document management principles into practice

PRIORITIES

One of the most disruptive elements to effective document management is organisational and technological change. Change can result from organisational re- structuring, business functional changes, the implementation of new systems, or a requirement to upgrade to new technology.

Technological change can involve high information conversion and migration costs both in terms of human resources and technical resources. Information quality and accuracy levels need to be clearly specified before the commencement of conversion, along with the associated risks and costs.

Those responsible for government documents must take a cautious approach to new technological developments. The secure retention of documents must be first priority. Efficiencies with new technology or processes is a lower priority. Changes must not place at risk current document holdings. New technical developments must be reversible, if necessary. Two types of changes may be anticipated: changes to business processes, and changes to available technology.

Not all changes may be in the direction of increased automation. There may be cases where it is desirable to revert to less automated, or even manual document handling processes.

CHANGES TO BUSINESS PROCESSES

Need for contextual information

In paper documents certain contextual information is evident ( eg from a letter head, a registry file folder, or from the order of the documents within a registry file that is not evident from the document in its electronic form.

The ability to establish the original business context of an electronic document is as important for the purpose of retrieval and future usefulness as the physical preservation of the records themselves over time.

In a typical PC DOS environment, the only managed attributes are eight-character document names, date of creation and date last modified. In thirty years time an eight character name will convey little or no meaning and will have little use as a retrieval aid. It is therefore considered vital that adequate document attributes be applied in order to manage electronic documents effectively. A suggested range of electronic document attributes is contained in Table ???. Further details are provided in Appendix A. It should be a conscious decision not to use any particular attribute.

Electronic document attributes need to be incorporated into document management systems to ensure that :

the records are adequately managed over time;
the records can be accessed quickly and with precision; and
the context in which records were created and used is understood.

Determining which document attributes an agency needs to assign and manage over time will be more evident after appraising the value of documents managed by an agency.

It should be noted that, although an agency may not need to apply all of the document attributes shown in Table ???, they should seriously consider designing or purchasing document management systems that would allow for the management and monitoring of most - if not all - the document attributes listed.

[Table: Contextual information] to be added

Document migration plans

Implementing an electronic document management system is a specialised IT application, which will require a plan for the translation of existing documents and document indexes to the new system. This may include documents which are currently on paper. The migration plan should also address the possibility of future changes to the hardware/software environment.

CHANGES TO AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY

Special requirements of government agencies

Currently-available electronic document management products display their diverse origins. There are products that come from records management and were originally for tracking paper files. There are products derived from databases. There are products added to word processing, E-mail and computer conference systems. (See MEDAPS section 5. )

The increasing availability of computer applications for generating and transmitting electronic documents will increase the use of electronic mail (electronic document transmission). It may be some time before there is a consensus in the industry as to what an electronic document management product is and does. Until then, there are likely to be rapid changes in the products available and their features, in the face of pressures from new and emerging technologies. This aspect is discussed in further detail in Section ??? of these guidelines.

Commonwealth Government agencies have some difficult requirements for records management. Agencies are large, compared to many commercial organisations in Australia, have specialised security requirements and diverse technology infrastructures. Many product vendors assume that all agencies have the same computer equipment on one network system. These products don't scale up to national networks of interconnected (or non-connected) diverse computers.

Agencies need to interchange documents with each other and with outside organisations. Product vendors tend not to provide for interchanging records management information with other systems.

Electronic Mail

Increasing availability of computer applications for generating and transmitting electronic documents will increase their use. One immediate pressure for the adoption of electronic document management is the use of electronic mail. Agencies are installing connections to the public X.400 electronic mail network and to the Internet.

Uncontrolled use of electronic mail is a major risk for agencies. It allows documents to be transmitted electronically, bypassing all existing paper document management procedures.

The Internet

The Internet poses a special risk for agencies' records management, if appropriate planning is not in place. About one third of Commonwealth agencies now have an Internet connection. This is likely to increase to more than one half by early 1995. Banning Internet connections is not an option for agencies. Internet connections are as easy to install as a personal computer and as cheap as a facsimile machine.

Changing Document Formats

It is essential that documents are retained in a format which can be read over their planned lifetime. It may be necessary to compromise the features and efficiency of the document management system to ensure this. The most stable long-term formats for document storage are the simplest, oldest and, in IT terms, most primitive.

There are many formats used for electronic documents. These formats change as products are upgraded. As a result, documents can quickly become unreadable.

Formats in common use

For images, the most stable formats are CCITT Group 3 and Group 4 facsimile format, which provide only for black and white images. For text, the most stable format is ISO646 (equivalent to ASCII). This format allows for unformatted text using Latin alphabets (suitable for English and other European languages). These formats are likely to survive for a long time. They are also efficient in use of storage. , It may be appropriate to retain ASCII text and image versions of documents for long-term retrieval.

Formats with Potential

These include:

the Joint Photographic Expert Group (JPEG) standard for images (which allows for colour images and compression); and
ISO/IEC 10646 (commonly known as Unicode), which is an encoding of various scripts - software incorporating Unicode is now becoming available.

Plain text and compound document formats

Standard Generalised Mark-up Language (SGML - ISO 8879) may emerge as a long term format over the next year. SGML encodes formatting as ASCII text. This provides an upgrade path from unformatted text.
Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) is an implementation of SGML developed by the academic and research community. It was designed for electronic publishing on the Internet. It may emerge as the default format for SGML documents, due to its large installed base and available free software. An enhancement of HTML, called HTML+, is under development to address some of the limitations of HTML.
Microsoft RTF (Rich Text Format) provides a reasonably stable, widely-supported interim de facto standard

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Protocols and Interfaces

One of the features of information in electronic form is the ease with which the information can be retrieved and copied. However, whereas for sharing information on paper, all that is required is a physical or hard copy of the material, sharing of information in electronic form requires the ability to communicate through a maze of protocols and interfaces, so that a person in one physical location, using a particular Word Processing package and Local Area Network (LAN) can exchange information with another person using a different Word Processing package and LAN. This is an area where close cooperation between corporate records managers and agency information technology specialists is vital. The latter will be familiar with such protocols as:

GOSIP : Government Open System Interconnection Profile - a Government standard supporting the exchange of information between diverse computing environments;
EDI : Electronic Data Interchange - International Standards Organisation (ISO) EDIFACT standards (EDI for Administration, Commerce and Transport), encouraging electronic transactions in commerce, banking and administration; : an international standard for message handling systems for the exchange of electronic messages between diverse computing networks; and
TCP/IP : Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol - a popular industry de facto 'standard' for the movement of information in electronic form, based on protocols for the use of Internet services.

The technical and procedural requirements of these, and other relevant industry and international communications standards, will need to be considered in the context of sharing information. Further information is available from the following :

ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS: FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATIONS

The IESC report Management of Electronic Documents in the Australian Public Service discusses the document life cycle and the appropriate technology for each phase of the life cycle. This has been reproduced at Figure ???. The effective application of electronic document attributes is a key requirement of any automated process based on document life cycles.

It needs to be emphasised that 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 their appraised value. All relevant document attributes and links between documents should be maintained and managed over time. A compound document (ie, one involving text plus links to other documents, images, graphics, sound etc) should be capable of being managed as a logical entity now and in the future, even after the technology that created the document has been replaced.

The business rules associated with the management of documents should be automated where practical. In some situations it may be necessary to maintain audit trails of document changes over time. The document management system should handle the migration of documents and their attributes from the personal management level to work group stores and to corporate stores.

The complexity of any electronic document system will depend on user requirements and the mix of records of differing corporate value that the system needs to manage. The management and associated technology requirements for short term value documents will be significantly different from those for permanent or long term value documents. Not all document attributes will need to be applied for short term value documents, but those that are applied should be sufficient to meet an agency's search and retrieval requirements, based on users' needs. An assessment of long-term or permanent value documents must be considered prior to finalising a statement of requirements (specification) for an electronic document management system.

USE OF DOCUMENT ATTRIBUTES

It is recognised that accepted methodologies already exist for document registration (eg the International Standard Bibliographic Description). The following processes build on document attributes outlined in Management of Electronic Documents in the Australian Public Service, and provide a general framework for the application of appropriate document attributes for consideration when developing or purchasing an electronic document management system. These serve several purposes:

identification: uniquely identifying an electronic document
description: description, and monitoring of changes to a document over its lifetime, including contextual information
categorisation: placing a document in context within an electronic document management system in terms of access;
archiving and disposal: indicating temporary or permanent status of a document, and providing an audit trail for records that have been destroyed

These processes are summarised in Table ??? and are explained more fully in Appendix A.

Adaptation of these processes provides a methodology for :

identifying or naming documents ;
identifying the originator of the document ;
identifying the owner/manager/controller (or steward) of the documents ;
keeping track of when the document was created and last modified, for each version of the document ;
determining the status of a document in terms of draft, final etc. for each version of the document ;
keeping track of any letter head or form template that is associated with the document ;
identifying the components of a document that are saved and managed
as separate documents and the relationship between those components ;
ensuring that the document's context is maintained ie. identification of
the creating organisation or work group ;
ensuring that a document is classified and subject described ;
managing the document security with respect to organisational policy and
access provisions for various types of records such as personal, group,
corporate, public and archive ; and
ensuring that the document is stored and is able to be exchanged using
acceptable standards and formats appropriate to the document.

[Figure: Managing the document life cycle] to be added

FINDERS/KEEPERS

The concept of ‘finders’ and ‘keepers’ is addressed in detail in the IESC's Report Management of electronic documents in the Australian Public Service (Section 4.5).

The 'finders and keeper’ concept is not confined to the registration process. Implementing standards for finders and keepers at registration level for electronic documents can lead to the progressive implementation of standards throughout an electronic office and its systems. Essential functions of such software are summarised below.

Finder

searching on contextual information, e.g., name of the document, author, etc.
free text searching, i.e., searching on words contained in the text;
thesaurus and keyword searching;
context and content available from the same search screen; and
search software independent of keeper software.

Keeper

appropriate versions;
audit trail to allow tracking of amendments to content and access controls;
provision for access restriction;
keepers software independent of search software; and
compound document management - including image, sound, animation,
video etc.

The following functions should be considered in any evaluation of electronic document management software :

(a)the standard system log-on id and password should also be used by the document management system; if a separate log-on-id or password is required, it must conform to local standards;
(b)allow users to easily move documents in and out of the document management system, with the ability at all times to be able to identify the authoritative version of a document;
(c)allow users to easily restructure the documents into a new logical organisation;
(d)cross-reference documents or folders;
(e)index and search for documents by a range of criteria (as detailed in Section 4);
(f)allocate different security levels for documents, folders, drawers etc;
(g)view an on-line index of archived documents;
(h)share "folders" simultaneously with defined groups of users;
(i)preserve native document format specifications eg word processing, spreadsheet, etc;
(j)electronic mail; ie at least be able to file and retrieve mail;
(k)word processing; ie at least be able to create and modify folder contents with word processing;
(l)be accessible for opening, saving, searching from applications (at least word processing, preferably spreadsheet as well) in a manner that is transparent to the user;
(m)support the administration tasks associated with document management eg new users, re-assigning document ownership etc;
(n)provide automatic access to files from the registry system;
(o)maintain automatic access of new users added to the system;
(p)provide an on-line help facility;
(q)have an interface that complies with standards for GUI interfaces (Windows, Apple, X-Windows, etc);
(r)provide integrity for documents and document attributes;
(s)provide adequate performance (response time criteria within nominated bounds, system availability 24 hours a day, 7 days a week);
(t)allow direct viewing/printing of documents without having to copy the documents out of the document management system;
(u)be able to operate from portable computers;
(v)provide archiving & disk space management (archiving and recovery of documents from archive);
(w)security such as:
- on documents, on groups, on sub-groups;
- down to work group level (as well as division, branch, section and personal);
- that is flexible and able to be easily managed (including display of groups/users); and
- for passwords that is compatible with the standard password security;
(x)performance monitoring using tools (either interactive or batch) to monitor resource usage, storage availability, charging for usage, etc;
(y)provide adequate vendor support and support documentation, including training for users and technical support; and
(z)ability to link document classes with authorised disposal authorities and manage the retention and disposal of documents appropriately.

SPECIAL USES FOR ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTS

Specialist uses for electronic documents, for efficient use for corporate memory purposes can include:

bulletin board services

Information is likely to be of two types: news, which is quickly replaced, and reference, which changes slowly and incrementally.

precedent documents

A precedent document will generally require little variable text to be included in the document itself. A document generated from one or more precedent documents may use the precedent documents as they are, or with modifications.

template documents

Template documents include forms, form letters and other documents requiring completion. Template documents can range from the bare outline of a minute to multi-page complex documents.

SOFTWARE

This Section addresses a range of features that agencies should consider in assessing the variety of software products available for the management of electronic documents. It is not intended to be a comprehensive coverage of all available products, but should at least provide agencies with some pointers in their evaluation and acquisition of document management systems.

Document Management software should allow control of documents by document authors and provide:

for the storage and retrieval of electronic documents;
backup and restoration of documents; and
disk space management preferably through the storage of documents on
secondary storage (commonly referred to as archiving although not to be
confused with the archiving of records in compliance with the Archives Act).

As well, the document management system should be compatible with other software services such as:

any records management system;
provide links to CD-ROM;
desk top publishing systems; and
electronic exchange of documents (eg using X.400 standards).

The continuing role of paper documents in an agency also needs to be considered. Some agencies already have become predominantly electronic, including the scanning of all incoming correspondence, and the parallel storage of electronic and paper copies of documents can only be regarded as an interim solution,

The security classification capabilities of a system will also need to be considered in the context of document security arrangements that will already be available through the agency's network system.

AVAILABLE ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

To be added.

RECOMMENDED ACTION

To be added.