Spotlight

Its always fun getting up to speed with a new agenda. Working with new people and organisations; understanding new drivers and obstacles; learning about new technologies and processes and, of course, trying to get your head around new acronyms.
And so it has been with research information management over the last few months as I have begun supporting JISC’s ongoing major programme of work in the area of Research Information Management.

For most institutions the forthcoming implementation of the HEFCE Research Excellence Framework is providing the impetus for making a strategic assessment of their current provision and future requirements when it comes to ‘Research Information Management’ whilst maximising organisational efficiency and research potential continue to be key drivers for investment in this area for many HEIs.

Of course for all that may appear immediately different about the research information management agenda there is also enough similarity and overlap with the records and information management area that is my particular background to give a pleasing and potentially useful sense of symmetry.

For example, both records management and research information management:
- are strongly influenced and driven by external regulatory factors
- have an important part to play in increasing organisational efficiency
- require a consistent, strategic and organisation-wide response
- involve the effective management of information throughout its ‘lifecycle’
- require an understanding and rationalisation of business processes
- are change management activities which cannot be successfully tackled purely through the introduction of new technology alone

But records management isn’t the only agenda with strong links to Research Information Management. Flexible Service Delivery, Business and Community Engagement and Open Educational Resources are, amongst others, also of related interest and all areas that we at JISC infoNet are actively engaged with.

And so, as the first part of JISC infoNet’s support programme we have tried to reflect both these facets of Research Information Management on our new homepage for this agenda. So our RIM page attempts to start to define a little of what is unique to this area and provide links to the specific initiatives and agendas which are driving it whilst also placing it firmly in the broader context of these related areas of work.

Through the new Digital Repository infoKit, also available from this page and created in association with the Repositories Support Project, we also have a practical ‘how to’ guide to setting up and running digital repositories. The kit contains information on a broad range of topics running from the initial idea of a digital repository and the planning process, via detailed sections on repository set up and promotion, through to the maintenance and ongoing management of the repository.

Both these resources will continue to be added to and updated as the outcomes from our Research Information Management support and synthesis programme start to emerge over the coming months and as further information on the implications of the Research Excellence Framework become available.

Enjoy!

Doesn’t time fly? It doesn’t seem many months since we were announcing the results of our annual Information Legislation & Management Survey for 2008 and here we now are, launching the same for 2009.

This will be the 5th year we have run the survey, covering every year that the sector has been coping with the full implications of the Freedom of Information Act. But although the introduction of FOI specifically and the impact it was having on institutions may have been the initial stimulus for this work its scope has broadened considerably over the years to include a more rounded coverage of the other legislation (both old and new) which directly determines the way in which our organisations must manage their information.

With there soon to be five years of accumulated data to draw upon, what originally started as interesting ‘point in time’ snapshots of how institutions were dealing with these laws has now become a fascinating longitudinal picture of its impact on the sector over time. As such it is no wonder that it its results are looked to by practitioners, senior managers and policy makers alike as both a barometer of current levels of compliance and the likely nature of future challenges.
But of course we rely totally on the time and effort devoted to this by those responsible for FOI in institutions the length and breadth of the country to make this happen. The continued support of Universities UK and GuildHE in promoting the survey certainly helps enormously but this year, in a bid to ensure that we continue to meet the needs of the sector we have gone even further. Last December we encouraged interested parties to review the questions we ask and the answers they generate and to suggest ways in which the survey could be improved. Where possible we have acted on the feedback we received for this year’s survey. One of the main results of this consultation process will be felt a little further down the line in the spring when the survey is closed and the results launched. For as well publishing our own take on the data as we have done in previous years we will also be making the raw data available for people to slice, dice and interpret as they wish.

This year’s survey is available from now until Friday March 5th from our website

The JISC infoNet Information Legislation & Management survey has been run annually since 2005 and has established itself as an important reference source regarding the sector’s compliance with information-related legislation and the impact this is having on institutions. We are aware that completing the survey is time consuming and want to be sure that every question and the data it provides is considered useful by the sector. We are also aware that many institutions collect their own data regarding their own performance in this area and, where possible, it makes sense to harmonise our work with any emerging standard practice within the sector.

This review is therefore intended to give practitioners working within the sector the opportunity to influence future iterations of the survey, starting with the survey for 2009 which will be launched in January 2010. We do not expect reviewers to comment on every question (though please do if you wish) but would welcome any thoughts and comments provided. Please click the ‘Review’ button after the question you wish to respond to and complete the information requested.

We will consider all comments and suggestions received but obviously will not be able to incorporate all of them. We would also ask reviewers to bear in mind that one of the ever-growing advantages of this survey is the longitudinal picture that is beginning to emerge and which will get more illustrative each year the survey is run. This has only been possible by using the same questions each year. Reviewers are therefore asked to weigh up the advantages of changing a question against the potential disadvantages of losing any continuity and opportunity for cross-analysis with results from previous years.

The review survey is available from the JISC infoNet website

This review is open until Friday 27th November.

Please note: Due to the remit of the survey participation in this review process is only open to staff from the UK FE and HE sectors

Your participation in it is greatly appreciated.

JISC infoNet is pleased to announce the launch of its Records Management Maturity Model for the Further & Higher Education Sectors

This Maturity Model is designed to help further and higher education institutions to assess where their institution currently sits in relation to meeting the recommendations set forth within the revised Lord Chancellor’s Code of Practice on the management of records issued under section 46 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 issued on 16th July 2009. The Code is a supplement to the provisions in the Freedom of Information Act and its adoption will help authorities comply with their duties under the Act. Consequently, all relevant authorities are strongly encouraged to pay heed to the guidance in the Code.

The Model provides statements summarising 4 levels of ‘maturity’ against 33 aspects of what constitutes a records management programme appropriate for ensuring compliance with the Freedom of Information Act taken from the Revised Code of Practice.

Upon completion of the Model you will be in possession of an accurate, reliable and honest summary of the current level of maturity of your records management measures within your institution to assist with auditing, planning and resource allocation.

JISC infoNet is keen to hear your thoughts about and experiences of using the Maturity Model and is also very keen to have access to a copy of your completed Maturity Model. Any completed Models submitted will be treated confidentially and used to enable JISC infoNet to gain a picture of the overall maturity of records and information management across the sector, thus enabling us to better target our future work in supporting its development.

Further information on the background to the Maturity Model and the factors which influenced its development is provided in my RMfuturewatch blog for those interested

Earlier in the year we put ‘Should we be measuring the impact of records management?‘ under the Spotlight, this blog post referred to a selective literature review ‘An assessment of the current evidence base demonstrating the benefits of investing in the improvement of records management’ undertaken by JISC infoNet during 2009.

As a result of the discussions initiated by this review, JISC infoNet have developed an Impact Calculator; launched last week.

The Impact Calculator is a freely-available downloadable tool, that provides a mechanism for measuring the actual impact of a change initiative. The Impact Calculator has been developed to measure the wider impact a change initiative has on an organisation, not just the impact of records management.

Using the premise that most change initiatives have an effect on an institution’s administrative processes, the Impact Calculator uses process redesign as its focus for measuring impact. The introduction of a new student record system, a move to the centralised storage of records, or a move to use collaborative tools in the workplace, are different examples of change initiatives that can occur within an institution. Although these examples are very different they will all, to varying degrees, have an effect on the administrative processes within the institution. Focusing on the changes in these processes provides a mechanism for identifying the impact that such change initiatives have on the institution, whilst also placing the changes in its appropriate broader institutional context.

Here a methodology of deconstructing the process before and after the change initiative has occurred provides a systematic way of identifying the different ways and degrees that the change impacts on the institution. Deconstructing the process and comparing the before and after states assists in determining individual discrete areas of change. These areas can then be assessed for their potential for measurement. However, without a consideration of the costs incurred to achieve the benefit realised it is impossible to fully appreciate their significance, so the Impact Calculator allows you to record costs too.

This tool includes the means by which any organisation considering or currently engaged in a change initiative can capture and measure three distinct sets of data: performance information before and after completion of the initiative and the costs of implementation, thereby allowing an accurate calculation of its measurable benefits to be achieved that can be quantified in both monetary and non-monetary terms.

Using the Impact Calculator is primarily an exercise in collecting and recording information. Depending upon the scope of the initiative in question this could involve a significant amount of effort. Although there is a minimum amount of data required without which the Impact Calculator simply cannot function, we have also tried to design the tool to be flexible, allowing the user to define the level of granularity of data they wish to capture and subsequently generate via the tool depending upon their specific requirements.

The Impact Calculator and associated guidance is now available for download from www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/impact-calculator

JISC infoNet is also pleased to announce that it will be providing funding for a small number of UK further and higher education institutions to pilot the Impact Calculator within their institution. These pilot projects will suggest improvements to future versions of the Calculator, report back on their experiences of using it within their institution and publish the data they produce through its use. The pilots will be run between January and June 2010 and further details regarding how to formally express an interest in taking part will be announced in November.

We look forward to hearing about the experiences of anyone using the Impact Calculator and would be grateful if anyone blogging or tweeting about it could use the tag ‘impactcalc’ to allow us to track any such comments.

This is one of the questions posed in the literature review, the first deliverable of the JISC infoNet project ‘A common framework for measuring the impact of records management’.

HE and FE institutions are being asked to brace themselves for cuts in funding. Particular emphasis is being placed on protecting and enhancing the quality of teaching and research, with institutions being guided to make efficiency savings and cut administrative costs. Where does this leave the records management (RM) function?

Certainly it seems that the case for RM will need to be argued far more than it has in recent years, where there has been a reliance on the intangible benefits of regulatory compliance.

Is the RM function an overhead, a cost or burden that an institution can look to sacrifice as it moves forward in these uncertain economic times; or it is part of the arsenal an institution can utilise to make efficiency gains in the administering and support of its core business of teaching and research? Does RM actually hold the answer?

According to the literature RM can make claim to a number of intangible and tangible benefits, but how these are articulated to an institution’s management is key. Is it sufficient to note the benefits of regulatory compliance or will managers look for further evidence of the benefits received by an institution from the investment of its resources?

Articulating the benefits of RM is no easy task, especially if there is little hard evidence to support the claims. Understanding how the RM function impacts on an institution is an important factor in selling the benefits of it, but are we speaking the same language as senior management? If teaching and research is the core business of an institution should we be looking to articulate the benefits of RM along these lines?

The literature review which aims to look at the extent of evidence available to support claims of efficiency savings made by the RM function is now available. The literature review is the first of three deliverables for this project, the remaining two deliverables ‘Records and Information Management Impact Calculator’ and ‘Records Management Maturity Model’ are scheduled for release in the late autumn.

The results of the annual JISC infoNet, Universities UK and GuildHE Information Legislation & Management survey for 2008 supports the anecdotal evidence that the FE/HE sector has seen a marked increase in the number of requests received under information legislation during 2008.

It was a year which saw an unprecedented level of interest in information held by institutions; but also witnessed a sector largely ready and able to meet these demands as a result of increased expenditure and experience.

For further information, the full results and analysis please go to www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/foi-survey/2008

Our thanks to all those who took part in this survey.

Has your organisation recently undergone a change concerning the way it manages its records and information?

Have you introduced a new corporate file plan, outsourced your data storage to a commercial 3rd party host, undergone a major appraisal and disposal exercise, facilitated electronic workflow, used new web technologies to enable collaborative or flexible working, introduced an EDRMS or embarked on something similar?

How did you know if it was a success? Could the impact of your initiative be measured and were you able to calculate how much it all cost to achieve? If not, would you find a collection of publicly available accurate, empirical data which ticks these boxes useful when forming the business case for your own next project or justifying to management the benefits of investing in good information and records management?

JISC infoNet is currently undertaking a JISC-funded project ‘Creating a common research framework for measuring the impact of records management’. The Framework will include the means by which a record-related process or task can be deconstructed and measured both before and after the implementation of the RM solution, allowing the effect of the change to be measured and compared with the costs incurred by achieving it.

Part of the project involves carrying out a process of research to discover the current state of the evidence base for demonstrating the quantifiable benefits of implementing records management processes. To this end we are interested to discover the extent to which organisations are currently measuring or monitoring the impact of records management processes and also to assess what metrics the profession will find of value.

We are keen to get in touch with organisations which have implemented records management initiatives and undertaken any form of measurement of the impact that these initiatives have had. Such initiatives can be large or small and the means of measuring their effectiveness either complex or rudimentary – we are interested in them all.

As such, we would be grateful if you could take a few minutes to answer this short survey by 12th June 2009. Please note that this survey is open to all sectors and is not just limited to universities and colleges and we would welcome the thoughts and views from practitioners working in other sectors too.

Having only been in post for two weeks I was whisked off to sunny Brighton. And from Sunday 19th to Tuesday 21st of April Brighton was indeed sunny, not least because it was the venue for the Records Management Society Annual Conference 2009. Titled ‘Back to the Future’, I thought the conference would be a good opportunity to see where the profession saw itself and where it was heading. The conference was a great success, providing a novice of Records Management (RM) like myself with an insight into the profession. I wasn’t disappointed as the conference gave me an appreciation of the day to day, the future and the breadth of RM.

An animated case study was delivered by Wiltshire County Council (as was) regarding ‘gaining user buy-in’ and ‘reaping what you sow’. This session caught my eye as the project that I am working on with JISC infoNet is about measuring the benefits to records management, so I was intrigued to know how the council set about their harvest, so to speak. Unfortunately only a taster of the measures were covered in the session, but when approached the people from Wiltshire were more than happy to share the detail out of conference. Interestingly the facilitator for ‘user buy-in’ had a marketing and communications background, was the concept of records management given the hard sell? Either way Wiltshire is enjoying the benefits of the change of culture, as it moves on to its next challenge of merging with 4 other district councils to become a unitary authority.

Wiltshire was also a case study in a later session around Records Management and the merging or dividing of organisations. The second case study of this session, by the Northern Ireland Office, provided a great insight into the assistance RM can give to support the significant organisational change affecting people, processes and technology when establishing a new government department. This case study provided a very tangible application of RM and illustrated to me the benefits of metadata, a term I am only just coming to grips with. The presenter of this session very much saw people at the heart of an organisation and referred to the support that must be shown to them during a change in organisational structure, a sentiment I very much echo, and illustrated how RM could assist this.

A confusion of terminology meant that I happened upon ‘Electronic Discovery and Records Management’, rather than the expected ‘Electronic Documents and Records Management’, but a session which gave food for thought none the less. The presentation centred around being able to retrieve information from structured database systems. Familiar territory to me I thought, as I am used to working with large student record databases. The perspective of the session was one of being able to scope, acquire and analyse relevant data in the case of a dispute or investigation. The session highlighted that the ‘black box’ or operational database should be fully documented and accessible, especially those that had been superseded and were no longer in active use. From an initial impression that structured data is easy and takes care of itself, the session left me thinking that in the here and now this may be the case, but historically the ‘black box’ could prove problematic.

In a similar vein a later session gave a brief introduction to Digital Forensics and went on to discuss similarities in the development of this field to that of RM. The speaker talked of the growing need for clear communication between Records Managers, IT and Legal Departments and the language barriers that may exist between these groups. The speaker suggested that the new field of Information Assurance and its growing terminology may provide a common language and Records Managers with an opportunity to be involved in the right meetings, at the right time, and be part of the discussions regarding an organisation’s infrastructure. An interesting session, not least because of the strategies illustrated to support communication between professions.

I found the event very informative and entertaining, but with this new outlook on Records Management the question of how do we ‘Create a common research framework for measuring the impact of records management’ only seems to grow.

I’m not sure what the collective noun for a group of records managers should be: maybe a ‘classification’, or perhaps a ‘compliance’? Whatever it’s called, we certainly had one over the past two days at our ‘Building Bridges: the connective power of records management’ conference held at Gateshead College.

Over 70 records professionals from the F/HE sectors and beyond gathered to discuss some of the most challenging issues facing us today and to hear from an array of speakers including leading practitioners, vendors and – critically – representatives from the stakeholder groups that records manager’s either work with or for, including Deputy Vice Chancellors, IT Managers and Administrators. What emerged was a truly 360 degree view of our profession.

Its always a good sign if the discussion continues outside the conference venue and judging by the general hubbub at the evening drinks reception at The Sage Gateshead delegates had found plenty to get their teeth into (aside from the canapés!).

Day 2 focused around the thorny issue of whether records management needs- particularly in the current economic climate - to be able to quantifiably demonstrate its impact. After all, lots of claims are often made about how improvements to the way you manage information and records will reduce overheads and increase productivity, but there seems to be precious little evidence to demonstrate that this is, indeed, the case. A great deal of interesting discussion was had about measuring the impact of records management, focused around a JISC-funded project that we are currently engaged with (of which more in later posts). The general consensus was that we do have a great deal to offer in this regard, but that quantifying it is not easy.

Perhaps, on second thoughts, an ‘efficiency’ of Records Managers is as accurate a collective noun as any!