The Need for a Metadata Model

The following post was written by my guest blogger and colleague, Carl Weise.

 

In teaching AIIM’s ERM course, considerable time is spent on records retention and disposition.  I find it interesting that we can so easily talk about long term retention of content.  I, personally, do not consider PERMANENT an appropriate retention period, but certainly some records will need to be retained for the life of the organization.  For government entities and many businesses, that means for a very long period of time.  To manage and retrieve records over long periods of time, there is a need for consistently labeling content.

 

For those of us who have taken over Records Management (RM) departments, we are well aware of the situation.  As new Vice Presidents, Directors or Managers of these functions, we improve policies, procedures and operations in these areas.  This is no different from taking over any other operation in the organization.  What is unique for RM professionals is that we are also still responsible for all of the records that have been previously captured or stored in the past.  Quite often we are asked why we can’t find the records that were retained years previously. It is evident that the the records management discipline that we are currently instilling across our organizations was not present and documentation regarding its status is non-existent.  Documentation about previous holdings? – What documentation?

 

Where there is previous documentation, it often becomes apparent that descriptive terms they were using varied across departments and/or locations.  We often notice that, over time, the descriptive terms used by a department or, perhaps even an individual has changed.  From this experience, we clearly understand the need for consistency in how we describe and label our records and other content.

 

It is imperative that employees use consistent metadata – descriptive terms, to identify their physical and electronic records.  A major business driver of Electronic Records Management is the sharing of information across divisions/departments and locations. Getting back to long term retention of records, employees need to know and understand the metadata that was applied years, and decades, earlier, thus the importance of a metadata model.

 

A metadata model is a collection of metadata that will be used across the organization and over time.  This metadata are often called the “official terms” that will be used to manage and retrieve content. From experience, we know that establishing a structure for managing records and information – a metadata model, is often difficult.  Individuals want to use their own jargon and terms they are comfortable with.  This is where the broader perspective of records and information is important.  Content belongs to the organization and needs to be shared by other staff and be retrievable years later.

 

In condensing the metadata model, you must have strong senior management support ensuring that all parties share the pain of compromising for the good of the organization. It is important to recognize that implementing a metadata model in your organization does not preclude other descriptive terms from being used.  The ERM solutions allow additional fields to be created that can hold jargon and favorite terms that are applied by the users as well as synonym rings that can be designed in these systems.  With these mechanisms in place, various identified terms can be used and linked to the official term used to manage the content.

 

What say you? Have you implemented a metadata model in your organization? Do you have a story to tell? I want to hear from you and learn what you and your organization are doing.

 

Carl Weise is an instructor with AIIM and can be reached at cweise@aiim.org

Looking to increase your level of knowledge? Join Carl in Kirkland, WA August 25 for the ERM Certificate course.

 

 Bob Larrivee, ECMm, ERMm, BPMm, IOAm, E20m, EMMm – AIIM

Follow me on twitter – BobLarrivee and remember to visit www.aiim.org/training and www.informationzen.org, AIIM’s free social network created just for you.

 

Comments

[Harold Rozario]

I totally agree with what you say here. However the key and as you have indicated is senior management support. In a world where these individuals still act as goons with a "careless attitude posing questions such as who dares to challenge me" we the information management community have very little leaverage and more often as patriots to the cause to have such priviledges. Personally, I have involved my 5 step Business Process Improvement modal effectively displaying analysis and to weigh the reasoning but this too gets shot down due to a myriad of excuses these individuals in higher positions easily generate. Personally, I believe the global perspective towards information management should change from a more diciplined method through perhaps regulations, legislations and business standards before such reality can transpire. t is all not lost but when you look at organizations where there is implementations taking place, how many derailments do you see? How many are taking shortcuts just to quickly implement a solution (any solution) without doing their own R&D or understanding if their process work before migrating it to an implemented system? At the end there is much blame to share or wonder why the ROI was not as glorious predicted. Many vendors today do not help this effort with their big band implementation moving inefficient process into a system where it continues to suck resources and costs. I recently had the pleasure to learn some interestings lessons from an ice water vendor in Vegas which I will be focusing on as I teach Information Strategies this September.

[Dan Antion]

Great post! I'm going to pass it around to the people working with me on our metadata model. But, I'm going put this part in bold: "It is important to recognize that implementing a metadata model in your organization does not preclude other descriptive terms from being used."