It has now been more than a month and a half since I published this open letter to ARMA President Michael Haley…and yet he still hasn’t responded.

Please understand, this is far more important than most of you know. I was right nine years ago when I publicly declared that applications built in compliance with the DoD 5105.2 Electronic Records Management Software Applications Design Criteria Standard were abject failures as information lifecycle management solutions. That’s why the National Archives and Records Administration quietly revoked their 25-year-old endorsement of the DoD Standard back in April.

It is hard to calculate the number of tragedies that could have been avoided had NARA not waited so long to admit their mistake in endorsing the DoD 5015.2 Standard. But at least they finally made the decision.

This is essentially the same problem Michael Haley faces now. There is a global war on the centuries-old records management profession. This war is being waged by some of the most powerful organizations in the world. Multi-trillion-dollar tech companies, corrupt politicians, dishonest media outlets, and crooked government bureaucrats all have a hand in attacking records management.

Mr. Haley knows this is true. He also knows that previous (and possibly current) ARMA executives are willing participants in this war. To be fair, I’m sure Mr. Haley is a decent man, and I have no doubt he wants to do the right thing and reply to my letter, but these same organizations simply won’t allow it. This must be a very difficult time for him.

But the results of this war on our profession have been tragic on every level, and it must be stopped. This is why it is so important that Mr. Haley respond to my open letter, regardless of the consequences. If the truth about ARMA’s past leadership’s dishonesty is made public, I can then discover who these association leaders got their orders from and who they conspired with at IBM. From there, I can work my way up the ladder to much bigger, more powerful tech companies, and their allies in business and government.

But it all starts with getting some response from ARMA President Haley.  

Perhaps this may help convince him to do something. If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you know that I have objective evidence of former ARMA leadership’s efforts to destroy my career. But if Mr. Haley still needs more, I offer this March 19, 2018 voicemail message from my then manager responding to my claim that IBM fired me because someone from ARMA used her industry influence to convince IBM to force me out of the company:

Of course, my former manager is not being honest when he says my termination from IBM was “solely based on utilization.” At the time the “woman from ARMA” contacted IBM senior leadership and convinced them to force me out of the company, I was billing fulltime work supporting electronic records management at the FDA in Maryland. Just a week or two after her intervention, IBM suddenly reduced my FDA hours by more than half.

Almost immediately after IBM slashed my FDA hours, I was told by my manager that I would need to find more billable work on other existing IBM contracts or my future with the company would be in jeopardy. I tried my best to find more billable hours, but it quickly became obvious that the company had no intention of letting me find work on a different contract. At the beginning of March 2018, I was told I would be terminated at the end of the month due to my “low level of utilization”.

This is how IBM fires people without technically firing them. This is how they were able to comply with the demands of the “woman from ARMA” – the “ARMA thing” my former manager so clearly mentions – and it is a disgusting and inhuman way for a company to treat their employees.

But I digress. The point here is that there is absolutely no doubt that I was terminated from IBM at the insistence of someone from ARMA leadership who had used her industry influence to do the bidding of the people who want to destroy the records management profession.

This is an irrefutable fact. And, while I am sympathetic to ARMA President Haley’s situation, if he does not have the courage to disobey the powerful people at war with records management and formally investigate this matter, he must immediately resign and make room for someone who does – for the good of our critically important profession and the customers we so faithfully serve.