Manual for the Design and Implementation of Recordkeeping Systems (dirks)

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Содержание How far can you take the design strategy? Standards strategy What is the standards strategy? Why use technical standards? Tip: Standards require little of users When should the standards strategy be used? Tip: This strategy is not about 'best practice' standards Examples of the standards strategy Example: Use of standards for records management Example: Use of standards for system development Tip: Conduct conversion appropriately Tip: Apply standards in your Step F

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How far can you take the design strategy?

Potentially, the sky is the limit with the design strategy, but you have to remember that technical solutions to problems can come at a significant cost. If you have a large budget, however or significant technical expertise at hand, what you can achieve with the design strategy need only be limited by your imagination. 

For example, a way to solve your problems may be to adopt a graphical user interface based on its business activities rather than software applications and documents so that when an employee selects the activity they are undertaking, the necessary applications are launched and resulting records are automatically tagged with information applicable to that activity. [3]
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Standards strategy

Overview

What is the standards strategy?

Why use technical standards?

When should the standards strategy be used?

Examples of the standards strategy

Need for ongoing maintenance when using the standards strategy

Further information

Overview

This section examines what the standards strategy is and explains how it can be used to help you meet your recordkeeping requirements. It provides a number of examples of uses of the standards strategy. 
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What is the standards strategy?

This strategy concerns the use of technical standards as means of ensuring that recordkeeping requirements are met. 

Technical standards usually apply to the creation and management of electronic records or to the design of electronic systems, although they can also be applied in paper based environments. Different areas that can be governed by technical standards include:

• technical system and communication protocols
  
• computer, personnel and/or physical security
  
• documentation
  
• record formats, and
  
• record storage.
  

Note that the standards strategy has a strong relationship with the design strategy. To incorporate technical standards within systems, you will need to consider elements of technical design. 
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Why use technical standards?

The use of open technical standards for the creation and management of records will serve to improve their chances of being accessible over time. This is not only because the systems they are kept in will be more compatible with new systems, making migration easier, but also because many technical standards are non-proprietary and consequently have published codes which will allow formats and information to be re-constructed later on if the records and/or the recordkeeping systems become obsolete. 

Technical standards, particularly when they are non-proprietary are also less subject to change. Storing records in these formats can therefore lessen the need for system migration. The adoption of a standard format may occur at the creation of a record, or the record may be converted to a standard format. 

Using standards for the design and development of the software and hardware that will be used in your system may also help to address some of your recordkeeping requirements. Use of such standards can facilitate:

• interoperability with other U.N. systems (e.g. departmental systems, systems of other offices)
  
• maintainability (these standards are subject to less change and have published codes)
  
• portability (enables systems to run on a new platform or work with new languages, business rules and other controls)
  
• modularity (minimal disruption to other components of a system when a change is made to one particular component), and
  
• reuseability (one approach can be used in multiple applications within your organization, thereby promoting data inheritance and flexibility).
  

^ Tip: Standards require little of users The standards strategy generally requires little user involvement. If you have issues with system interoperability and know you need to maintain records for long periods of time, consider the standards strategy as a means by which you can achieve these objectives with little user involvement.

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When should the standards strategy be used?

Standards are a useful strategy to:

• manage software and hardware dependencies
  
• ensure electronic systems' interoperability, and
  
• foster the creation of electronic records that will be useable, understandable and available over time.
  

Given it may involve technical issues, the standards and design strategies are often used in combination. 

 

^ Tip: This strategy is not about 'best practice' standards The standards discussed in this strategy should not be confused with the records management standards issued by ARMS, or with best practice requirements such as ISO 15489 or sector specific standards. The standards referenced in this tactic relate to record format, display or networking capacities of systems. These standards relate to technical capacities, not to broad best practice requirements.

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Examples of the standards strategy

Examples of technical standards used for record formatting

Non-proprietary technical standards which are widely used for text and image formatting include:

• HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language)
  
• SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language)
  
• XML (eXtensible Markup Language)
  
• ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)
  
• JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
  

Some proprietary standards are widely used and accepted. If non-proprietary standards cannot be used, widely used and supported proprietary technical standards should be selected, as these have a better chance of being supported and maintained through time. Examples of these types of standards include:

• formats employed within the Microsoft Office suite of applications, by Microsoft Corporation (including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and FrontPage)
  
• GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)
  
• TIFF (Tagged Image File Format), and
  
• PDF (Portable Document Format by Adobe Systems Inc)
  

Example: Use of standards for records creation Organization X has a requirement to keep all its Board records as archives (i.e. forever). They therefore need to be sure the format in which they create these records enables them to do this.  Applying the standards strategy, they decide to use archival quality paper for Board record creation that complies with technical standards issued for paper production, as this paper is manufactured to survive for the long term.  It is important for Organization X to apply this strategy in relation to its Board records, as some paper, such as many recycled papers, may not survive longer than 20 years. Using the standards strategy will enable them to ensure that this recordkeeping requirement concerning record retention will be met.

 

^ Example: Use of standards for records management In Agency Y, license records, created and maintained electronically, need to be kept indefinitely. XML is used to encode these records after their creation. A Word version is also maintained on the agency's network.  Encoding records in XML facilitates their long-term maintenance as it means the records will be easier to migrate, are subject to fewer migrations and can be accessed and read using a number of different hardware and software combinations.

 

^ Example: Use of standards for system development In Enterprise Z, Board records are generated in three different systems. Currently these systems cannot communicate and so compiling Board reports is a laborious, paper based process.  To facilitate their requirement to maintain Board records indefinitely, Enterprise Z is going to redevelop the systems used to create and manage Board records.  It will use a variety of technical standards in its system design process to ensure the different systems can communicate and data can be exchanged between them. This will help them to ensure that their recordkeeping requirement to manage their Board records is easier to achieve.

 

^ Tip: Conduct conversion appropriately If part of your Step E strategy is to convert existing records to standard formats, be sure to conduct this conversion process in a controlled, tested and documented way, that ensures the integrity of your records is not compromised.

 

^ Tip: Apply standards in your Step F: Design recordkeeping systems work If you decide to use technical standards in Step E to facilitate system integration and extensibility, you would determine exactly how you want these standards to be applied in the course of your Step F design strategies.