Interview session - What's next for TNA?

An extremely interesting and informative session highlighting the work the TNA is doing in the knowledge/info/records management area. It outlined what they are doing now and what has been happening since they gave up testing EDRM products.

They spoke of the Machinery of Government change project. The ability to move electronic files from one govt dept to another... from one EDRM system to another...which relied on defining a detailed metadata mapping regime. Designing workable solutions. It has to work.

It makes me wonder whether it's technically possible and, even, desirable to have a national, central government EDRM system. Wow, now that would be something, wouldn't it?

James Lappin, who conducted the whole interview with his customary intelligence and sensitivity asked if EDRM had been a success...

Has edrm been a success?

The reply, of course was a qualified yes. Change (management and culture) was the biggest headline... Richard Blake noted that we didn't realise how big it was going to be... Another big issue was how users interact with the systems. There was a widespread belief that EDRM systems were too intrusive. That's a view I certainly subscribe to. See below My intelligent office.

Early EDRM systems were said to be quite crude. Vendors are now developing and providing technology which is moving into the background. We're in a period of considerable evolution.


James wanted to know what lessons TNA had learned from the exercise.

What would you have done differently?

Richard noted that the 2004 target was challenging. 2004 was a steep learning curve for everyone; particularly as there was no detailed guidance on how to do it.

I'll say amen to that. I helped my organisation be the one of the first to roll out an EDRM system, only to realise that hardly anyone else was meeting the target.


What have been the alternative solutions?


DEFRA has built their EDRM system using Sharepoint. (I'll come back to this in a later post.) Islington Council use Alfresco. Sharepoint isn't free.

The environment is moving from edrm to ecm. For TNA, it doesn't matter what system you use so long as you're managing your information to suit your business needs. A wise way of doing it.

It takes huge intellectual effort to manage an EDRM system with lots of components, especially as you have to think carefully about how things integrate - or even, if they do. Orgs have to think carefully about how they work.

James wanted to know what TNA thought about Sharepoint as an EDRM system.

What about Sharepoint?

The out-of-the-box system is very basic for Records managers. For example, there's no easy way of getting emails in to it... you have to create new environments and manage them both.

But it's on lots of people's agendas so we have to consider how we'll use it.

Can TNA influence Microsoft?

It's on the agenda. TNA's testing programme might have finished but they still need to have dialogues with suppliers about how their products meet our needs.

TNA has a programme to work with other National Archives to help influence and explain their concerns. The jury is out on how successful TNA will be but there's an indication that people are willing to talk to them.

Which countries are in the lead...what can we learn from them?

It's important to note that we, in the UK, have achieved more that some countries. Comparisons are not necessarily fruitful as different countries are developing along different lines, even though the issues are the same everywhere.

A stimulating debate was appreciated by the very large audience. It's always really interesting to get the latest update from TNA about how their world is working.