There’s been a whirlwind of important activity in records management over the last couple of weeks. I can’t possibly discuss each new development in individual articles, so I am going to try to address everything briefly in this one post.
Here goes.
NARA DoD 5105.2 Endorsement Revoked
First the good news. After a quarter of a century of causing incalculable harm, death, and destruction (and nearly nine years after I wrote this AIIM article), the National Archives has finally revoked its disastrous endorsement of the DoD 5015.2 Electronic Records Management Software Applications Design Criteria Standard.
If you blinked you probably missed it, but NARA quietly made their announcement in this April 19th bulletin.
As I’ve said here before, if you are purchasing a records management “application” or set of records management “services,” make sure the vendor explicitly tells you it is not designed to meet the DoD 5015.2 specifications. If they cannot ensure this is the case, you are wasting your organization’s money on a product that will never provide the information lifecycle management functionality you need.
But now the bad news. According to the bulletin, the DoD 5015.2 Standard will be replaced by NARA’s Universal Electronic Records Management (UERM) Requirements. This set of ‘requirements’ is incomprehensible and openly laughed at by solution vendors, who are only obliged to self-assess their own products against it. (And surprise! Nobody has ever failed themselves.)
Do not bother with NARA’s UERM requirements. I’ve spent 23 years designing, building, and implementing electronic records management solutions. If you need to know the few critical capabilities required for a system to manage the lifecycle of your organization’s information, I have listed them out in this blog post from two years ago.
Happy to answer any questions you may have on these fundamental solution requirements.
Microsoft Changes ‘Information Governance’ to ‘Data Lifecycle Management’
Attention, “information governance” professionals! Your Big Tech Overlords (BTOs) at Microsoft have officially renamed your phony discipline. You are now “data lifecycle management” professionals.
See this recent tweet from a company spokesperson:
As a show of support, I have taken the liberty of updating the Electronic Discovery Reference Model for you:
(You’re welcome.)
But unfortunately, you will have to adjust your own branding yourselves.
It’s not hard. Just go through your sales collateral and find all the locations where you changed “records management” to “information governance” just a few years ago. Now change “information governance” to the latest piece of Orwellian doublespeak, “data lifecycle management” – and you are all set! (At least until the BTOs arbitrarily decide to change the name to something else.)
ARMA Continues its Support of the War on Records Management
Lastly, as predicted, it has been more than two weeks and I have heard nothing from ARMA International President, Michael Haley in response to my open letter to him on corruption in his association leadership and its effect on the global war on records management.
As I said in the original letter, the war on our ancient profession has extracted a very heavy toll, and for Mr. Haley to do nothing is simply not acceptable. If he is unable to either defend the actions of his association’s former leadership or properly investigate my accusations, he must resign from his position as President, so he can be replaced by someone capable of doing the job ARMA’s members elected him to do.
We are well beyond the point that even my biggest critics have started to wonder why I can say the things I say about these powerful organizations and the people who lead them and suffer absolutely no negative consequences.
The truth about the war on records management will eventually come out. There is nothing anyone can do that can stop that. I have ensured it. If Mr. Haley refuses to act on my allegations and refuses to resign as President, he, above everyone else, will be responsible for the tragedies this war has caused.