AIIM Knowledge Center Blog

Open document standards to be obligatory for state information

The Norwegian Government has decided that all information on state-operated web sites should be accessible in the open document formats HTML, PDF or ODF. This means an end to the time when public documents are published in closed formats only.

The mandate set out by Norway's Ministry of Government Administration and Reform and will come into effect in 2009. Heidi Grande Røys, Norway's IT minister, claimed that the decision would improve the competition between suppliers of office applications. "'Everybody should have equal access to public information," she said. "From 2009 citizens will be able to choose which software to use in order to access public information." Please visit the Norwegian Government's website for more information.

Adobe Systems release in early 2007 their full Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.7 specification to ANSI and AIIM for the purpose of publishing it as an ISO standard, and I expect the PDF format to become ISO/DIS 32000 in 2008.

By Atle Skjekkeland

Moreq2 Roadshow in Germany

Moreq2 is getting closer to its final version. For the last year, Serco, formerly Cornwell Consultants, has been developing the Moreq2 standard for Records Management for the European Commission. Now, as the final version is getting closer, AIIM has decided to support the independent Consultants PROJECT CONSULT in Germany to bring this standard closer to the end-users. PROJECT CONSULT is also part of the editorial committee for this standard.

From the 26th-30th of November a series of Seminars will be held in Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Munich Frankfurt and Berlin. The Roadshow will cover content and ways to implement this important standard and will introduce it into the German market for the first time. The content will be entirely in German and will be supported by a number of vendors who have written Records management on their banners.

PROJECT CONSULT is run by Dr. Ulrich Kampffmeyer, formerly Board of Directors of AIIM and a well-known figure within the German market. He will be supported also by Marc Fresco, lead from Serco on the Moreq2 project and a familiar face to those who have taken the AIIM Electronic Records Management online courses.

Places are limited and if you are in the right city at the right time, or to any of our German readers, I strongly suggest that you get up to speed on this Records Management standard. This Roadshow is the easiest way to get an insight into the new and important standard.

For sign-ups and more information please visit www.moreq2.de (in German)

For more information about Moreq2 and draft versions visit www.moreq2.eu and www.dlm-forum.org .

by Hanns Köhler-Krüner

PDF will become an ISO standard

My colleague Betsy Fanning has a nice blog about standards relevant for the ECM industry, and her latest post addresses PDF. From her blog post;

"In late January 2007, Adobe Systems announced their intent to release the full Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.7 specification to ANSI and AIIM for the purpose of publishing it as an ISO standard. The specification is in the ISO fast-track process which means that the standard is submitted for vote as an enquiry draft or DIS which is a 5 month ballot. It qualifies for the fast-track process in that it is an established specification that has been submitted to ISO by the ANSI or the US which is a qualified P-member of ISO. The DIS ballot opened July 2 and will close December 2, 2007.

The US is forming a committee to represent the US interests at international meetings with regard to this standard. The first meeting of the committee will take place on Monday and Tuesday, July 16 and 17 in Silver Spring, Maryland. All interested parties are welcome to attend the meeting. For information on the agenda and the location of the meeting please visit http://www.aiim.org/standards.asp?ID=33223. Here you will find the agenda and the ability to download the draft standard as well as a change sheet that details the changes made to the document in the process of formatting it in the ISO format.

If you plan to attend the meeting, please let Ebony Dowtin at edowtin@aiim.org know that you will be attending the meeting or if you would like to be added to the listserv for this group.

A second meeting for the US committee is tentatively being scheduled for November 2007 in San Jose, California. The first International meeting will take place in January 2008 in the United States, most likely the Orlando, Florida area."

And I recommend that you take a look at her previous post for more information about the value of formalized standards.

By Atle Skjekkeland.

Moreq2 update

I am delighted to inform you that the presentations from the last month DLM Forum in Berlin, Germany, are now available on the DLM Website.

You will also notice a message from Malcolm Todd regarding the method for commenting on the Moreq2 project. I have in this previous post explained the review process in more detail.

Please do not forget to add the DLM Forum Members Meeting 22nd and 23rd November 2007, Lisbon, Portugal to your diary, if you have any suggestions for topics please let me know.

I look forward to seeing you in Lisbon!

By Atle Skjekkeland.

BPM Standards

The latest AIIM E-DOC Magazine contains an interesting article about BPM standards by Nathaniel Palmer, founder of Transformation+Innovation, and executive director of the Workflow Management Coalition. He addresses proposed and emerging standards such as BPDM and BPRI, but also "real live" working standards such as eBP/BPSS, BPMN, XPDL, BPEL, and the industry's best kept secret-Wf-XML.

By Atle Skjekkeland.

A Pan-European Initiative - The Moreq2 Standard

On the 25th and 26th of April the DLM Forum came together in Berlin. Because of the presidency of Germany of the European Union, the National Archive of the country usually invites all DLM members and other interested parties for a 2-day conference and discussion.

This time the meeting was held in the rebuild and changed “Auferstehungskirche” an old church from the 19th century which was rebuild into a ecologic environment initiative with conference facilities. We shared the premises with the delegates from the Instada Conference.

The DLM meetings brings together many of European National Archives, Vendors and consultants who are active in Records Management and some ministries from various countries in the common understanding that Electronic Records Management is a discipline that is gathering more and more importance and that some standards need to be developed that are Pan-European. Moreq2 is the one that is being worked on and anyone who is interested can join a review group or download the various drafts from the official website.

While the Executive Committee, a small group elected by the DLM members were looking for a new chair – here again congratulations to Tom Quinlan from the National Archives of Ireland – the rest of the delegates listened to various presentations from Cornwall Management Consultants on the Status of Moreq2 development, AIIM’s own Director of standards, Betsy Fanning on some of the testing, compliance and governance issue involved with creating a standard, Ian McFarlane from the National Archives on the Review of Moreq2. This was followed by the experiences of the National Archives of the UK through the person of Richard Blake to talk about their TNA 2002 experiences.
A panel debate round off proceedings which gave everyone the chance to ask the various speakers questions.

The second part of the afternoon was taken up by presentations from various National Archives about their efforts to get information under control in an organized fashion as well as some of the Software and tools they use for Electronic Records Management today. Andrea Hänger from the German Bundesarchiv, and Jacqueline Slats from the National Archives of the Netherlands spoke about their approaches, Raivo Ruusalepp followed with a very interesting presentation on the business requirements and the methodology for getting an architecture in place in Estonia and finally a live demonstration of the Spanish PARES Project by Jose Ramon Cruz Mundet. The proceedings were ended through the soft-spoken conclusions of the newly elected Chair of the DLM Forum and the new Dates set for Portugal and Slovenia in the Autumn 2007 and Spring of 2008 respectively.

As always, all presentations and much more information can be found on the DLM Forum Blog. Anyone from Europe who has a serious interest in Electronic Records Management and wants to be at the forefront of developing this standard should join one of the many different review groups available. Currently there are people from 31 countries present in those review groups, which shows the world-wide traction that this standard is already gathering before its official release.

By Hanns Köhler-Krüner

Standards for Electronic Records Management

There are a lot of standards available within Electronic Records Management, but we are also lacking standards in some areas, e.g interoperability. Press here to download a document we created last month isting some relevant standards for helping you manage electronic records: Download erm_standards_271006.doc 

Please be aware that many standards such as Moreq and ISO 15489 covers many of the listed concepts but we have tried to only list them where most relevant using the structure from AIIM’s ERM Practitioner training program. This list of standards and resources is not complete and please inform me of any additional standards that should be included.

Moreq2 – status report

The DLM Forum developed last year for the European Commission (EC) a scoping report for the next generation of the Model Requirements for Electronic Records Management specification, known as MoReq2. AIIM Europe runs the DLM Forum secretariat, and my role is to support the day-to-day operations as the General Secretary of the DLM Forum.

Moreq2 contractor and supporters:
The EC awarded in late 2006 Cornwell Management Consultants PLC the contract of developing Moreq2 based on the scoping report from the DLM Forum, and Cornwell is developing this with a number partners;

• They are advised by eight international experts, who form the Editorial Board.
• Draft versions of MoReq2 will be published for review by a number of "panels" of reviewers, and a full list of the Vendors and Specialist Organizations to date can be found here. ARMA is one of the organizations supporting Cornwell.

Cornwell is also developing test scripts for a Moreq2 testing regime.

Moreq2 Review Group:
DLM Forum’s Moreq2 Review Group is reviewing Cornwell’s deliverables on behalf of the EC, and this group has the following core members;

• Bundesarchiv, Andrea Hänger
• Estonian Archives, Toivo Jullinen
• Archives de France, Olivier de Solan
• Finland, Päivi Happonen
• Slovenia, Jože Škofljanec
• Archives of Spain, Dolores Canicer Arribas
• UK TNA, Ian Macfarlane
• AIIM Europe, Atle Skjekkeland
• Göran Kristiansson, Swedish Archives (on EEIG) and nominated by ICA Programme Commission
• InformConsult, Martin Waldron as previous co-author.

The DLM Forum is currently planning how to set up and govern a Moreq2 testing regime. This is coordinated by Doug Miles, Managing Director of AIIM Europe.

For more information visit the DLM Forum’s website and Cornwells Moreq2 website.

MoReq2 Testing Regime

The DLM Forum is currently planning how to set up and run a MoReq2 testing regime for Electronic Records Management software. Cornwell is developing test scripts as part of the MoReq2 development, and the DLM Forum will from early 2008 set up and run a pan European testing regime for MoReq2. I expect a number of countries to adapt MoReq2 in Europe, but some countries will also add local requirements in Chapter 0 of MoReq2. This will most likely mean that Electronic Records Management software approved by the DLM Forum will be accepted in a number of countries, but some countries may require additional testing. I will keep you informed about the progress, and AIIM Europe Advisory Trade members will also discuss this testing regime in more detail at their next meeting.

High-level Standard Metadata Model and Classification Scheme for the Federal Government

Do you know about the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) in the US? The FEA is being constructed through a collection of interrelated “reference models” designed to facilitate cross-agency analysis and the identification of duplicative investments, gaps, and opportunities for collaboration within and across Federal Agencies

The FEA includes an updated version of the Data Reference Model to better support information sharing and reuse, but also a Business Reference Model that provides an organized, hierarchical construct for describing the day-to-day business operations of the Federal government. This model presents the business using a functionally driven approach. For more information: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/a-2-EAModelsNEW2.html