strategic

Recordkeeping Through Change: A Strategic Context

 

Greg Goulding, Acting Chief Archivist and Chief Executive, Archives New Zealand 
        
 

Overview

• Technological change
• Economic change
• Structural change
• Historic responses to these type of changes on recordkeeping
• What change means for records management – (what the changes do to the profession and what the profession offers for the change)
• Some observations (but not answers!)

 
Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be
John Wooden
 
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.
Maya Angelou

Time takes time
Ringo Starr
 

Why Focus on Change ?

Because now is one of those points where we see a number of factors come together for significant change – i.e. technological, economic and structurally
 
 
 

Ask this question: Has the way we think about public services and public policy changed as rapidly as the world around us? The answer is no, not yet, but larger forces of economics, technology and public demand mean our thinking will have to change.
 

 

Hon. Bill English - speech to ANZSOG 12 August 2010
 

 

Technological Change

 

 

Moore’s law – 45 years on
 

 
 

Personal Computers

 

• 1977 48000 PCs were sold
• 2008 – number of PCs passed 1 bn
• projected to reach 2bn by 2014
• 2008 35 million pcs dumped in landfills

 
 

Internet Use

•  2010 estimated 1.8bn users worldwide –
•  nearly 400% increase since 2000
•  400,000 blogs posted may 4th 2010
•  20 hours of youtube videos uploaded every minute
•  200 billion emails sent every day
•  in 2005 the world created 150 exabytes of data
•  in 2010 will create 1200 exabytes
•  and in 2020 expected 35000 exabytes,

Source - AMD in VM Blog June 21 2010
 
 

Data Explosion

• Gap between data created and storage for it = 35% shortfall
• will double between now and 2020

 
Source - EMC²
 

Cloud Computing

•  by 2012 $42bn will be spent on cloud computing
•  where are the records – and does this matter
•  radical change – or just another form of outsourcing?

Source - EMC²
 

Social Media And User Generated Content

•  Facebook reached 500bn users
•  employees independently use social networking for business purposes, often with no corporate policies or rules to guide them.
•  Organisations are carrying significant amounts of user generated content on their systems
   

 

Issues For Recordkeeping ?

•  volume
•  complexity – working in a networked world
•  control
•  being part of the solution

 

Economic Change

•  Government Debt relatively under control going into recession – but now starting to grow
•  Between 2003-08 govt spend increased 53% - and since then another 10.5%
•  Add to this reduced taxes and slower economy = deficits

 

Private Debt

 
International top 5 for private debt to international lenders:

• Iceland
• Greece
• Portugal
• Hungary then ……
• New Zealand –
• followed by Spain (current focus of concerns) and Latvia (IMF and 35% fall in GDP)
   

 

Lower Spending

 

• One in every seven dollars the government will spend in 10/11 will have to be borrowed
• Government aims at holding the operating spending allowance to $1.1bn indefinitely - means that if tax rates are held constant, 1 in 7 dollars being spent will have to be cut

Source – Michael Reddell to GOVIS, May 2010
 
 

Challenges for Recordkeepers

 

• Reduced resources for the function
• Increased pressure to demonstrate value to the business
• Responding to strategies taken to deal with economic climate – e.g. restructuring

 
 

Structural Change

 

• 1989 New Zealand had over 700 territorial authorities
• 2010 = 73
• And continuing - Auckland super city
• Departments (including Archives NZ) merging

 
 

Challenges For Recordkeepers

 

• Structural change can be a period of high risk for an organisation’s records
• often the last issue dealt with and resource needs not always understood.
• Irony is that good records can be best means of ensuring continuity between one structure and the next.

 

How has recordkeeping been affected by change previously ?

 

How did it respond?

•  Initially - not well
•  Structural and Technological change in Government (Local and Central) since 1980s led to a virtual disappearance of recordkeeping
•  Public Records Act 2005 as a response to the problems that have emerged
•  The recordkeeping profession has developed a range of solutions to the questions around how we ensure that evidence of business can be carried forward over time and boundaries
•  Training opportunities have increased over time

A Response From The Records Profession

 

• We will have to demonstrate value and prove the business case
• We will have to do this in terms that are meaningful to the business
• We too will have to do more with less
• This will mean using creative approaches
• We will have to do more together (e.g. Horizons Archive, Archives NZ and National Library digital archiving)

 

A Response From The Records Profession

 

• And always being up with the play – an information profession obviously needs to be up with what is happening with the industry, both to anticipate challenges and understand solutions
• Wary of sacred cows– these are problems for two reasons : 1: they turn our business clients off and 2: they get in the way of developing new solutions for new challenges
• Focus on objectives and outcomes, not process
• But – always with rigour and robustness (the source of the success of the discipline since 1980s)

 

What we bring to the table

 
“Digital archivists will be required to appraise, arrange and preserve digital records for legal and regulatory purposes. Gartner expects around 15 per cent of companies to add a digital-archivist role by 2012 compared with fewer than 1 per cent in 2009. …
Organisations typically have vast quantities of records, which require specialist expertise to access, appraise and preserve.”

Gartner, Jan 18 2010
 

Conclusion

• This is one of those periods of increased change for many
• Significant challenges
• It may mean re-examining some of the things we hold dear
• The profession is in good shape to deal with all of this
• Knowledge gained from previous events
• Training and education now available
• Strong professional bodies
• And it will probably require a good deal of tenacity

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