5. Future directions - further development of the concept of appraisal
In the AS 4390 framework, appraisal begins with questions: What is the purpose of
making and keeping records? Why do people want them? What will they do with
them? What will they do without them? Who else besides the formal creators needs
the records and why?
One of the consequences of the digital world is the accumulation of large volumes of
data. The availability of extensive storage combined with the processing and
analytical powers of modern technology has identified significant value in volume.
There is increasing corporate and potentially long term value in 'big data', for
example, leveraging existing information stores to build layered views of customers,
markets, products or services. While noting the need for adequate data governance
and management from design and creation to realise that value, the degree of
potential control and manipulation which big data offers governments and
corporations alike is a challenge to democratic accountability. Appraisal in this era
is, and increasingly will be, politicised.
Over a decade ago the distinguished Canadian archivist, Dr Terry Cook, proposed a
model of macro-appraisal which identified the interaction between citizen and the
functioning of the state as the focus of appraisal in a whole of society approach.
He wrote:
First, macro-appraisal focuses not just on function, but as seen on the
three-way interaction of function, structure, and citizen, which combined
reflect the functioning of the state within civil society, that is to say, its
governance. That is its theoretical justification. Second, the methodology
used to assess (or appraise) functions is a means to weigh the impact of a
program (and thus the importance of its records) on society. The
theoretical focus remains societal, that is, to appraise (or identify) those
records providing evidence of the greatest impact of the government on
society (and on government itself), not to provide evidence of government
functions per se as an end in themselves.22
Today the government-private corporate boundary is blurred which requires
including the private sector in the macro approach. Another factor which Cook
could not have anticipated is the contemporary mass migration of people fleeing
from war and famine so it is no longer a matter of the rights of citizens only but of
the human rights of people without citizenship displaced from their homelands that
appraisal needs to focus on. While the focus of this article has been principally
appraisal in the organisational context (the third dimension of the records
continuum), the fourth dimension of society is the whole context for what macro-
appraisal seeks to achieve. The business needs of any organisation are defined and
located in the social context. The warrant to operate for government or corporation
is provided by society. This perspective needs to be brought to bear on the continuing
development of recordkeeping in the rapidly changing technological environment
in which society works. Recordkeepers need to bring in this perspective: it is not the
perspective of IT design engineers or enterprise architects focused on delivery of a
specific business application.
Appraisal has become a much more complex process which involves identifying the
business and community value of information, considering mechanisms by which
that value can be achieved, and applying these mechanisms in partnership with
other colleagues across the organisation in its societal context. At the other end is
the increasingly mass communication use of social media across the globe which
offers an extraordinarily rich environment for the task of documenting society as
well as potential for agency beyond the control of either corporation or government.
This is an aspect which cannot be ignored. On the contrary recordkeepers should
accept responsibility for finding ways to support, manage and preserve the records to
serve the multiple communities using these platforms. In that sense the concept of
stakeholders from the definitions of appraisal from 10-20 years ago is no longer
sufficient.
Appraisal is not a single instance exercise. The requirement to analyse and design
recordkeeping into systems to enable them to perform their specific activity
adequately does not eliminate the need for post-factum appraisal. That is, the need
to re-examine the documentary adequacy of the records, to assess their usefulness as
the societal context changes. Appraisal is a re-iterative recordkeeping process which
always seeks to apply the social context's changing requirements to what had been
designed and created before. To connect these two opposite ends recordkeepers need
to apply their practice in a digital, connected, collaborative, citizen-centric and
constantly changing context. They need to partner strategically and cleverly with
business. They need to think big, think long term, think connected and to plan for
the ongoing use, management and leveraging of information and records, the
invaluable assets that government and other organisations, and the communities
they serve, create from the investment in IT systems and services.
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22 T. Cook, 'Macroappraisal in Theory and Practice: Origins, Characteristics, and Implementation in Canada,
1950-2000', Archival Science 5 (2005) 132, accessed via http://web.utk.edu/~lbronsta/cook.pdf (accessed
25 April 2016).
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