viewed as retrospective, non-strategic and administrative and is consequently much
less well-resourced. However recordkeeping is in reality a critical support to data
governance initiatives, even though it is not a standard inclusion in these programs.
Issues and risks to evidentiality, accountability and longevity will not be addressed if
recordkeeping perspectives are not considered in conjunction with data governance
programs. Proactive appraisal is a strategy for actively building these requirements
into systems and services, as is shown by the following scenario.
Many large public and private sector organisations use cloud applications for the
management of multi-million dollar construction projects. These projects generally
involve collaboration between multiple parties. The exchange of records in the form
of plans, communications and approvals are at the heart of this collaboration and
therefore recordkeeping is central to the value and functionality of these systems.
The processes performed in these collaborative construction project management
systems include centralised information storage and management, approval
workflows in accordance with project-defined rules, security and audit management
for project documentation, calendar organisation and timetabling for parties
involved in the project, coordination and dissemination of all project
communications and document revisioning and review.
As many organisations are doing, building proactive data governance perspectives
into this service acquisition and system design for construction project management
will help to ensure that accurate, timely and standardised data values are input into
the system at all necessary points. For a multi-million dollar project, this improved
standardisation, accuracy and consistency will contribute to improved reporting,
project management and delivery and will therefore contribute significantly to
project outcomes. However proactive appraisal is also needed in the development
and deployment of these systems as without it, there will be unresolved
recordkeeping issues which will also adversely impact project outcomes and long
term asset management. Unless recordkeepers advocate for proactive appraisal, the
following scenarios could occur.
Loss of a single source of truth
In project management, progressing in accordance with agreed plans is challenging.
Many iterations of key documents exist in emails and in multiple different storage
environments. This means that various parties can progress the project, each using a
slightly different version of the same key plans. Another challenge is that frequently
as-built plans are never completed or are never transferred to the ultimate owner of
the project. By identifying this need for a single source of truth, proactive appraisal
assessments should be used to ensure approved plans are officially finalised and
made universally accessible in a secure location to all necessary project staff, and
that as-built plans are defined as a project deliverable and transferred to the
appropriate organisation upon completion. The project costs and ongoing risks
associated with the lack of a single source of truth would therefore be mitigated.
Cloud-based, collaborative systems are shared environments. Parties collaborating
on a project work collectively in a shared environment but when the project is
complete, access to the system will be locked down to only the organisation that
originally procured the system. Any other party will lose access to project
information because the procuring organisation will only maintain information
accessibility for the length of their contracted period of business collaboration.
Should the contract not be renewed, access to project information will be lost.
Proactive appraisal identifies these issues in its assessments of information
requirements and technical contexts. It should identify where ongoing information
access to information is required for project, legal or community requirements, help
to define strategies to enable ongoing information accessibility and identify the
requirements governing information retention, thereby helping to ensure that
information remains accessible for as long as required.
Loss of key data that is not in a document form
In these large and multifaceted project systems, key evidential records include audit
and approval trails, project-specific workflows, communication chains, the names
and roles of project staff, security controls governing information accessibility to
name a few. This system data governs and authenticates the performance of
business and is an important project record. It is however easily lost, overwritten or
altered unless it is specifically identified and managed, an issue that frequently
occurs because non document-based records are still not adequately recognised and
their value understood. The consequence of this data loss is incomplete project
records that lose their context and transactionality. Project outcomes can also be
delayed or jeopardised, and longer term legal issues and liabilities can become more
costly and complex to manage. Proactive appraisal is required to identify, define and
protect all necessary aspects of records, before these issues and liabilities occur.
Loss of business continuity
Frequently project management is subject to long-term outsourcing arrangements.
A third party is brought on to provide a service for a defined time period and at the
end of this period a competitive tender is usually initiated for another extended
period. The same third party may win the contract again, but frequently the service
will be provided by a new party. Unless proactive appraisal and recordkeeping
requirements definition are part of these outsourcing arrangements, significant
threats to the continuity and effectiveness of the outsourced service are likely. This is
because, unless it is contractually pre-defined, the original third-party will not make
its systems and information available to the new third party taking over the
outsourced service, nor will it necessarily repatriate the information to the original
organisation that outsourced the service. Business continuity is therefore
threatened, as is the long term accountability and governance of the outsourced
service, due to information inaccessibility. Proactive appraisal which defines
information requirements as key upfront business requirements, enables these
continuity issues to be identified and managed, thereby mitigating costs and risks.
These scenarios show that in combination, proactive appraisal and data governance
mitigate business risk, enable business efficiencies and improvements, and ensure
systems are designed or deployed to make and maintain all necessary records.
Proactive appraisal guards against business risk and recordkeeping failure in a way
that traditional post factum appraisal cannot, and in ways that other widespread
information and data-related initiatives themselves cannot. Proactive appraisal is
therefore a necessary adjunct and support to all contemporary digital information
management initiatives, to ensure their 'duty to document' can be achieved.6
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6 L. Miller, 'Coming Up with Plan B: Considering the Future of Canadian Archives', Archivaria 77 (Spring
2014) 124.
