Developing an Information Management Strategy

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Developing an Information

Management Strategy

Head of Information Services

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1. Information Management Strategy

Throughout this strategy the term ‘information’ refers to all material – documents, records, web pages and so on.

1.1 Openness

Agree an ‘open’ approach to information.

The FOIA legislation promotes open government, we need to ask ‘is there any reason that this shouldn’t be published?’ rather than ‘should we publish this?’

1.2 Organisation

Agree a structure, or file plan for the Council and not for a department or group.

This is a major piece of work that will involve managers and staff with the Council. The topic-oriented structure needs to take into account the security. This includes exceptional situations where most staff should not have any access at all. The structure also needs to take into account which staff can actually update what.

This Information Management Strategy will result in publishing far more material internally. This will lead us to re-thinking our intranet.

The intranet will need to be organised to ensure that it can satisfy the demands of the Information Management Strategy.

1.3 Life-cycle

Recognise that information has a life cycle. Typically a document will go through these stages:-

• Roughs – often being worked on by only 1 person

• Drafts – typically being consulted on, with possibly several people collaborating on the document – ready to publish as a draft

• Final – ready to publish as a record

• Historic – ready to archive (much content doesn’t need archiving though) • Dead – ready to delete

1.4 Retrieval

To ensure that we can retrieve the information. The Council shall adopt the following:

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• Ensure that the structure of the Council’s file plan is intuitive;

• Provide a front-end to the file plan that can be personalised. This will ensure that each individual can, for example, include hot links to the most-used parts of the file plan;

• Provide search tools that work well and return sensible results. The search tools should allow the user to set up specific search ‘scopes’, e.g. to search all areas

that may have something to do with e-government stored within them. Such search tools will also provide, for example, the ability to search across both the intranet and the South Lakeland District Council website in a single search, returning results from both locations;

• Implement an indexing tool which develops an index that allows the creation of multiple different ways to access the same information. For example, one index

may generate an A to Z of services. If we choose ‘A’ and then ‘Abandoned vehicles’ we will find the same content as if we followed a different route;

• Provide access to information through maps, by making use of web-based mapping.

1.5 Retention

The Council shall make use of an electronic records management system which will allow:-

• Embedding of the information retention policy

• Identify at information creation time which category (retention span) that content belongs within.

• Have information deleted automatically when the retention period has expired.

1.6 Format

All Information created internally shall be to agreed standards:

• MS Office documents are the format of choice for all internal information. (We must recognise that not all members of the public have ‘MS Office’, and so this isn’t a suitable format for publishing material onto the website).

• Adobe PDF shall be used to ‘freeze’ the layout of an Office document so that it can’t be tampered with easily. Adobe provides a free and easily downloadable viewer for PDF documents, and so this makes it suitable for publishing content to the web. PDF documents are also smaller than their Office equivalents, saving download time.

• Web pages are ideal for publishing content to the web, because they are

accessible. The Council’s content management system, Immediacy, is designed to convert word documents into web pages without the user needing any

specialist skills.

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1.7 Management and Control

In adopting an Information Management Strategy a more disciplined approach shall be taken. As a minimum:-

• Word documents should be developed using corporate approved templates and styles.(this will enable an easy transition to the website)

• All created information, requires metadata and a retention categorisation. • Information shall be published to the right place, rather than sending out copies,

and versioning tools will be adopted

1.8 Communication

It is recognised that information is of little use if you don’t know that it is there. It isn’t enough to just publish information – we also have to communicate the existence of that information. Alerting people to the presence of something, rather than expecting them to go & find out if something is there, is a huge step towards making life easier for people.

1.9 Security

and

Integrity

A key principle to be adopted will be to ensure maximum availability and reliability of information.

1.10 Roles & Responsibilities

Identify and train further authors, editors and publishers (‘approvers’) for the content management system. This will need to be extended to cover all content, not just web-based content.

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2. Recommendations

The Council is under continuous pressure to improve. It is unlikely that any authority can achieve top performance unless it properly manages all four resources available to it: people, money, property/plant and information.

Information management has a critical role to play, because information is at the heart of everything a local authority does. The Council’s activities are so diverse that it isn’t really possible to manage information effectively without an information management

framework and a coordinated approach.

We need to be realistic about the Council’s capacity for change in view of its current commitments. The approach to implementing this strategy should be measured with a number of steps being initiated.

The following recommendations are in three parts, essentials, deploying current technologies, investigating and deploying new technologies and techniques to bring all aspects of the strategy together:

1. Essentials

1.1 Management Team support the Information Management Strategy and nominate

a Director and Portfolio Holder to act as sponsors to the strategy;

1.2 Develop through the Service Transformation Board an information structure or

file plan for the whole organisation;

1.3 Promote the information management strategy to prepare staff for changes to

current ways of working through the Improvement Board and HR.

2. Deploying current technologies

2.1 Implement Excelsior at a local level to provide an Index and Searching tool which will enable information accessibility.

Search tools rely on metadata. Updating documents with relevant metadata is time consuming and often doesn’t get done.

Excelsior is a framework that, amongst other things, employs a tool that automatically updates content with metadata that complies with the Integrated

Public Sector Vocabulary (IPSV). The Connected Cumbria Information Hub is

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built on the technology and we can use the framework tools to tag our internal information at minimal cost.

2.2 Extend the use of anite@work as a corporate document imaging and workflow

tool to capture all ‘white mail’ (mail that requires the Council to respond) coming into the Council.

Information Management must also cater for material that originates outside the Council on paper. Document image processing (or ‘DIP’) and workflow is a vital contributor to information efficiency.

2.3 Utilise GIS software to provide access to information retrieval through web-based maps

This will be a key area of development work. The Council is making use of GIS in particular application areas; it is possible we can do a great deal more by

enabling staff to search for information by geographical location.

2.4 Use ‘Right Now’ to support the development of “corporate knowledge” through

building ‘frequently asked questions” and building a customer knowledge base.

The development of corporate knowledge through responding to customer FAQ’s enables access to the tacit knowledge held within the Council.

3. Investigating and deploy new technologies

3.1 Establish a project to investigate select and implement tools which support the implementation of the strategy in the following areas :

1. Collaboration tools

2. Automatic metadata management 3. Records management

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Background

The CPA regime, the modernising agenda (e-government and service transformation), the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act are activities/process which put pressure on the way that we hold, retrieve, distributes and destroy information. The documents within the following appendices support the proposed Information Management Strategy and include:

• Why Information Management?

• The “nuts and bolts” of Information Management • A path to Information Management

• Some reference information to explain what is meant by terms used within the document.

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Appendix 1: Why Information Management?

1.1 A valuable and under-utilised resource.

Information is a valuable resource that must be managed with the same care and

attention as the traditional resources of people, money, buildings and plant. It is an asset that needs to be used effectively to the benefit of our customers.

Information is not ‘information technology’. Everyone employed by the Council has some responsibility for information management. Implementing information

management involves change, because the way we work is changing. In a typical local authority:

• only about 4% of data and information stored is easy to use and readily retrievable,

• 16% of data and information is accessible but only after cleaning up by data migrations, conversions and configuration management (version controls). This combined figure of 20% is that information managed by ICT. It represents structured information held electronically.

That leaves 80% of data and information in the Council that is irretrievable and un-usable in its current state. This is the information on an employees laptop, in the bottom drawer of someone’s desk, or in the head of a long-standing employee who is about to retire. Such untapped information is a massive ‘memory loss’ which implementing ‘Information Management’ standards can help us to reclaim.

The Council holds information on a wide range of subjects. Diagram 1 (below) shows these assets from the perspective of the Council and the public. Most of these areas will be well understood within a given department/group of the Council. But outside of that department/group it may be far more time-consuming to retrieve relevant information. Information Management can make this much easier, and contribute to an improved CPA score in the process.

Information management is all about making it easy to find the information you need – whether you are writing a committee report at home, or answering a customer query in the contact centre. The easier information is to find, the more likely it is to be re-used, and the greater the value we get from that resource.

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Diagram 1: Information Assets

1.2 Benefiting citizens and the Council

On 1 January 2005, the Freedom of Information Act came into force, and individuals now have the right of access to information. This right extends to all local authority information, not just that held on a computer. Compliance with the legislation demands at the very least a high-level inventory of an authority’s information assets. The Council has produced a ‘Publication Scheme’ to meet the requirements of the legislation, this requires continual review to support the individual right of access.

The legislation will be of little use to citizens unless the Council’s underlying information systems are effective and reliable in the storage, maintenance and retrieval of

information. There is a need for an organised approach to codifying, cataloguing and storing all our records. The ideal solution would be to have a single unified and

searchable view of all the council’s information. This is the only way to conduct an integrated search, and also to establish effective cross-referencing between paper and electronic records. This is much easier to say than it is to do.

The information assets need safeguarding, electronic records require care to ensure the continuing integrity of their contents. The Public Records Office recommend that the ‘records management function’ should be ‘a specific corporate programme within an

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authority and should receive the necessary levels of organisational support to ensure effectiveness’. This function should coordinate management responsibility for records in all formats, not just electronic. This responsibility should extend throughout the life cycle of the records from initiation through to disposal or archive.

1.3 Organised information – removing duplication

A formal records retention policy has been adopted by the Council; this forms the basis of the record lifecycle within the Council.

Information management tackles the issue of information overload directly. The effective use of the retention policy will remove the clutter of unneeded documentation.

Complementing the retention policy with an appropriate classification system which drives the filing or electronic information management system effectively removes duplication.

1.4 Access to services and South Lakeland Direct

The modernising agenda relies on proper management of information. Many customer interactions involve requests for information, and so that information must be properly classified and coordinated. Although we have e-enabled services through the delivery of web based services, it is clear that for most South Lakeland residents initial access to Council services will be via the telephone or face to face. South Lakeland Direct is able to meet customer queries by using a computer and accessing information relevant to the customer request. South Lakeland Direct offers a limited range of services, to extend beyond these services information has to readily accessible without searching through filing cabinets.

South Lakeland Direct will operate effectively when agents have access to a good view of the customers’ previous needs. The Council provides a much more complex array of services than any commercial organisation, so good systems to support South Lakeland Direct staff is more important.

1.5 Removing information problems

The following situations can be found in many of organisations:

• Departments create information about the same services or initiatives, based on the same basic data but aimed at different audiences. This means duplication of effort, and delivery of mixed messages.

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• Information is not up to date or accurate. When information is managed

disparately, and particularly when it is delivered on paper, there is little chance of ensuring that it is kept current.

• The demand for information from within organisations is an ever-increasing burden. This suggests that the information being delivered is not accessible enough, and possibly not comprehensive enough. Having a portal to share information with employees or the public is of no help if the information on it is confusing, badly structured, or poorly written and presented. Effective service documentation can increase the productivity of support staff, and reduce the time spent on trouble-shooting.

1.6 Knowledge management – the key?

Over time there has been a shift in attention from data to information to knowledge management. Data processing is now thoroughly embedded within most organisations, along with clearly understood disciplines, policies and procedures. However information and knowledge management are less well defined, and are commonly regarded as being technical issues. There is much scope for service improvement through considering all three areas together, and managing them corporately.

Diagram 2 (below) shows one way of relating data, information and knowledge:

Knowledge

Information put into productive use and made actionable

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Data processed and arranged into meaningful patterns

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Diagram 2: Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom

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Knowledge Management (KM) is an approach to improved performance, by making better use of the knowledge that employees possess. There are two main aspects to KM:-

• The creation and management of processes for acquiring new knowledge that can then be deployed to improve council performance. For example, new knowledge about the preferences and concerns of citizens can be used to allocate resources effectively.

• Ensuring that existing and relevant knowledge is shared readily, and is available to those who need it, when they need it. For example, customer services staff can provide a better service if they know about the history of the individual – including their previous requests and concerns.

So KM is actually about managing the Council better – to improve services, to be more efficient and to develop better policies.

There are two main types of knowledge – explicit and tacit. Explicit knowledge has been captured somewhere, maybe in a document or a database. Tacit knowledge is personal knowledge that is rooted in experience; people demonstrate this knowledge through their know-how. This knowledge is difficult to capture in explicit form.

Nonetheless, KM aims to share knowledge through two types of processes: • Making connections. The focus is on the interactions and communications

between people – getting people to share their tacit knowledge. eg Team meetings where a leader facilitates conversations to exchange knowledge. • Codifying knowledge. The focus is on capturing tacit knowledge and making it

explicit. The basic idea is that ‘content is king’ and therefore should be made explicit whenever possible.

Through knowledge management we can access some of the 80% of information that is hidden away, and use of it.

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Appendix 2: Information management – the nuts and

bolts

2.1 Information architecture

Diagram 3 (below) illustrates an ideal information infrastructure. Enquiries from customer access points (at the top of the diagram) are satisfied by information provided from the technology infrastructure (at the bottom of the diagram) as directed through the

information management components (in the middle of the diagram).

Diagram 3: information architecture

This infrastructure has a number of nuts and bolts:- .

• Content - managing the content, wherever it is located, with the same rigour as traditional resources such as money.

• Navigation - signposting where to find information; making it easy to find what you want.

• Communication - ensuring that when using information we can understand one another.

• Presentation- allowing others to use information in a way that is meaningful to them.

• Rights - providing the security framework to safeguard information and access for those with a legitimate right.

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2.2 Content

Having the right information at the right time and from an authoritative source is

essential to supporting citizens, continuous improvement, joined-up service delivery and meeting legal requirements. Current and obsolete information stored in different systems (physical or technological) and locations in many organisations make for an unworkable and chaotic situation.

Before we can manage content, we have to know what information assets we have. An information asset register is more than just a simple list of information items; it should also describe the information held:

• description of the data sets and even individual data items • location and access rights information

• data custodian • creation date • review date

• data retention and archive information.

Effective records management demands an organised approach to cataloguing data about information, categorisation systems and thesauri.

2.2.1 What are the current issues?

The Council invested in a pilot document management system – anite@work within the revenues group. There is a current approved project to develop this pilot into a corporate document management system covering all aspects of the Councils work. The

document management system manages documents.

Relatively recently, a new form of content emerged – the material on web sites and intranets. A number of new systems sprang up to help manage this new form of content. Many systems that you find today which are called ‘content management’ systems are specifically geared to web and intranet management. The Council uses such a product - Immediacy.

Managing content is an activity that covers all the Council’s information assets – and those assets may in turn be managed by content, document, database or records management software – or something else.

At the moment most content can be found in Word or PDF documents, Excel

spreadsheets, web pages and so on. However other forms of content are increasing in importance, such as images (e.g. photos and plans), video, and audio. The need for a digital image library was identified as part of the Web development project; this is another symptom of the need for an Information Management strategy.

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The Council has tools to manage web content, and has potentially a tool to manage the vast numbers of documents received at a corporate level.

2.2.2 What action do we need to take?

Agree an information management strategy which covers:

• Who will take the roles of author, editor and publisher for the creation of information content?

• Where will information be stored?

• How will the many disparate systems (e-mail, corporate, departmental) be brought together to provide a single unified view of the authority’s information holdings?

• Who will have access to what information? • How will it be distributed?

• How long will each information item be retained? • How will it be disposed of, or will it be archived? • Where do we start?

2.2.3 Things we need to consider

• How well do employees throughout the Council engage with the website or intranet?

• How many departments/groups see ‘web publishing’ as an additional duty which they may get to eventually?

• Is it difficult to get contributions and keep them up to date?

• Is the web/intranet the first point of reference for anyone who wants information, or do they just ask their colleagues?

• Can a record or document be accessed through a single access channel?

2.3 Navigation

2.3.1 Why is it important now?

Citizens, Members and employees must be able to get to the information they need as quickly as possible. Inefficiency in finding information leads to wasted time and

frustration. Multiplied across the Council such inefficiencies represent significant waste. Highly effective access systems can help manage the problem of information overload.

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2.3.2 What is involved now?

Accessing information requires direct look-up through an index, browsing or a search. The main ways of doing this are:

• A–Z listing

• Structure of the website • Search facilities.

These facilities require some data about the information stored, and a classification system.

Some improvements can be implemented quite simply, ie providing a good search tool. A good search tool combined with accurate metadata and a good file organisation will enable improvement.

2.3.3 Data about Data

Whatever systems the Council uses, we are faced with the same problem of trying to find information resources quickly and easily. There is often a lack of basic information about the resource itself. Many information resources are published which don’t contain a title, or a date, or a creator.

This is where information management standards for tagging digital resources (metadata) and filing information resources (taxonomy / file plan) come into play. Metadata is defined as ’structured information about a resource’.

The elementary details – the metadata – that we need to know in order to manage information include:

• what information does the Council have? • where is this information held?

• when was it stored, and by whom? • who is the custodian of the data? • when was it last accessed? • when is it due for review? • when should we get rid of it?

The e-Government Metadata Standard (e-GMS) is shown in Table 1 (over). All

information the Council holds should be tagged with at least the mandatory metadata.

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Audience Format (R) Rights

Contributor Identifier Source

Coverage (R) Language (R) Subject –

category/keywords

Creator Location Title

Date Preservation Type

Description Publisher Approved date

Disposal Relation Approved by whom

Table 1: Standard government metadata

Elements in bold type are mandatory, those suffixed by ‘R’ are recommended, and others are optional.

Whilst there is a need to have a complete picture of our information assets, this could add to the burden of the service staff that collect, hold and maintain the information. They might consider that the effort required to deliver this picture isn’t necessary to do their job.

It is possible to use a software tool to trawl through the Council’s information resources, and automatically classifies those resources according to the Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary (IPSV).

A file plan is the second key tool. Metadata enables easy searching and management, information resources need to be organised into an agreed file plan or taxonomy. This makes things easier to find.

To draw an analogy with a financial management system, information is an asset that needs to be managed like finance and physical assets. Consider a financial

management system. We wouldn’t consider just having a single list of all transactions – it would be too difficult to find the bits we were interested in. So we classify transactions by budget, supplier, and transaction date and so on – we organise the information we hold.

2.4 Communication

One of the problems with referencing information is that we all tend to express our requirements in slightly different ways. For example, if a member of the public wants to know which day their dustbin should be emptied, how might they find out the answer from the website? They might find the authority refers to ‘refuse disposal’, ‘dustbins’, ‘wheelie bins, ‘environmental cleansing’, ‘collection rounds’ or ‘waste disposal’. To link these alternatives to the term preferred within the Council an information management system will use a thesaurus.

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2.5 Presentation

2.5.1 What is involved now?

From a customer perspective, the main tools are maps, portals and websites. The content management system will provide the appropriate information to populate the presentation that the customer sees. The ability to personalise information needs contributes to clarity for the customer.

2.5.2 Maps

People are familiar with maps. They offer a simple means of delivering large amounts of complex data in an understandable way. Bringing up a map centred on the location of your choice, with overlays showing just the data that you require, is a good way to make sense of information.

The IDeA has identified three key data themes for information held by central and local government:

• Places - 85% of information is held by reference to an address

• People - 75% of information is referenced by a person’s name, generally including an address

• Organisations - 35-40% of information is referenced by an organisation’s name, again generally including an address.

The geographic approach to information management has many attributes: • So much information can be spatially referenced, the GIS is a convenient

corporate repository.

• Data objects other than map symbols can be stored in the GIS: these include text documents, building plans, video clips and sound files.

• Experience with linking database structures to GIS systems is mature, and these data management techniques can ease the load of data security and

maintenance effort.

• Citizens and elected members know well the geography of where they live, and their perspective on issues and problems is very much centred on their location. Elected members particularly appreciate having information about what is

happening within their ward rather than having to trawl through information based upon individual departments or functions.

• Maps are a familiar device for presenting complex but related data.

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• Cost and copyright issues in relation to usage of Ordnance Survey (OS) products have largely been resolved.

• Standards in relation both to mapping and local authority spatial information are well developed.

2.5.3 Portals

The portal approach is widely used as a method of allowing the community or partners to access information from a group of authorities and/or agencies acting together, and indeed a user-customisable portal is a key component of the Connected Cumbria Information Hub project.

Definitions of the term ‘portal’ vary, however ‘a website that allows access to variable

content depending upon the wishes of the user’, is the definition that we need to adopt,

personalisation is an important factor in ease of use. It is essential that staff and customers area able to configure the site to work in the way that suits them best.

2.6 Rights

This area should be dealt with by an Information Security Policy, which should be aligned to BS7799.

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Appendix 3: A path to information management

3.1 An information champion

As with all major projects, implementing information management requires a strong champion for the cause. The role demands leadership and political skills to unify and coordinate diverse and often conflicting interests.

3.2 Getting staff involved

Whilst the strategy provides the broad approach to information management, tactically a project team needs detailed plans. These plans should provide a steady stream of

business benefits which the champion and the team can use to demonstrate the benefits of their work.

These benefits may be tangible or intangible, but should be newsworthy in order to maintain the project momentum.

3.3 An information culture

Building an information culture is about getting employees to value information as a resource in the same way as they would any other traditional resource, such as money. It requires:-

• a long-term plan of approach which the Management Team fully owns • a consistent, sustained message about the value of information • use of all available communication channels to promote the message

• inclusion of information skills as a competency within the authority’s management competency framework

• provision of suitable training

• managers leading by example through their words and actions.

This is not about implementing a technology solution, but it involves changing people’s attitudes to the way they work and the responsibilities that they have in relation to the information they hold and use.

The strongest resistance to the programme may come from those who feel that information management is just another initiative adding to the workload. Information management should be about the way in which people work in their normal activities, not about introducing something new. It is a solution to the workload and resource issues arising from other initiatives, rather than yet another initiative in itself.

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3.4 Approaches

and

solutions

The application of technology is not the solution to successful information management. Technology will support an information strategy but will never address some basic issues. This section describes some of these issues:

3.4.1 Shifting the balance

A big part of the problem involves shifting the balance of where information reside. Typically, most people tend to store their information locally, either on their personal computer, home drive on the server, laptop or perhaps as hardcopy in the bottom drawer of their desk or filed in a cabinet.

Some information gets stored at a team level, perhaps on a network server, or if

hardcopy in a shared team filing cabinet. An even smaller proportion of information gets stored at a corporate level, perhaps on the Intranet or in a corporate library if hardcopy. This typical scenario is one where the sharing and re-use of information assets is

difficult and minimal. It is far better when most information is stored at the organisation level, with perhaps only those information assets that are used frequently held at a team level, and any documents being worked on or needed for immediate reference being stored locally.

The FOIA legislation promotes open government, internally we need to ask ‘is there any reason that this shouldn’t be published so that all can see it?’ rather than ‘should we publish this?’ This will lead to a change in the way that both the web and the intranet are used.

Diagram 4 (below) illustrates the point:

Team _Team Team C o m p an y Company In divi dual Individual Shar_ing Sharin g

Now

V o lu m e

Managed Information

Future

V o lum e Team Team _Team Team C o m p an y Company In divi dual Individual Shar_ing Sharin g

Now

V o lu m e

Managed Information

Future

V o lum e Team

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Diagram 4: Shifting the balance of information storage

3.4.2 Firm foundations

Information can’t be managed successfully without good design, detailed planning and a clear understanding of the organisation’s purpose and processes. We need a properly structured and accessible repository of information. This will allow information to be stored digitally, retrieved and used to maximum effect, with the minimum of effort.

3.4.3 Integrated approach

By maintaining and creating information in a more inclusive way, where departments work more closely together towards common or sympathetic objectives, the organisation can radically reduce medium-term costs and deliver far more consistent and usable information.

3.4.4 Training and Support

By ensuring that information is made available to support priority services, leaps in quality and effectiveness can be made towards performance and information delivery. In situations where processes and procedures exist in a variety of disparate styles,

provided sometimes on paper and at other times in online format, and where there are multiple contributors and a lack of version control, consistency and purpose, then both staff and citizens suffer by struggling with unusable and inaccessible information.

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Appendix 4: Information flows (how we operate today)

Result 2

Result 3

Result 4

Result 5 Create Modify Delete

Personal Shared Directory Information Personal Computer Intranet Internet Share Councils Councils Public Publish to Intranet Publish to Internet anite@work Filestore Revs and Benefits Receive Email Store Search personal Search shared Search intranet Search web Search email Result 1

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Appendix 4: Information Management (where we should be)

Result Create Modify Delete

Personal Information Personal Files Intranet Internet Share Councils Public Publish anite@work filestore Recieve Email Store Search Main File Store Manage Collaborate

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Appendix 5: Glossary

Content Management

If this were a logical world, ‘content’ would include all material in web pages, documents, records and elsewhere. But it doesn’t. Document and Records management systems have been around for a while, and most such systems do not cope well with web sites. So a new form of management system developed which was devoted to web sites. These systems became known as Content Management Systems.

A content management system (CMS) is a system used to manage the content of a web site. It allows the content manager or author, who may not have any web skills, to

manage the creation, modification, and removal of content from a Web site without needing the expertise of a webmaster. Generally this relies on staff using a set of agreed corporate templates. The features of a CMS system vary, but many include Web-based publishing, format management, revision control, and indexing, search, and retrieval.

Document Management

A Document is defined as information, stored on paper, as a scanned image, or electronically, that may be subject to revision.

Document management is "the process of retrieving, sharing, tracking, revising, and

distributing documents and the information they contain".

Document Management Systems enable you to store documents electronically. This facilitates the process of retrieving, sharing, tracking, revising, and distributing

documents and the information they contain. A complete Electronic Document

Management System (EDMS) provides you with all the software and hardware required to insure that you maintain control over all your documents, both scanned images, and files that were created on a computer—like spreadsheets, word processing documents and graphics.

This management includes the ability to restrict access to certain documents or group of documents to only authorised users. Along with security controls, these technologies enable users to be granted different levels of access.

For example, the author of a document might only grant read access to all users outside of a specific department while granting "check-in/out" control to others who are working on updating the document. As the other users prepare to update the document, they

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would "check" the document out of the library, update the information, and then "check" the document back in.

Document Management systems ensure that any other user attempting to check the document out would firstly not be allowed to check it out, and secondly they would be notified that someone already has a copy being updated. Upon completion of the update cycle, the system automatically updates the version number of the document and makes it available to all authorised users.

Document Imaging

As an organisation expands and the volume of work increases, the amount of

documentation grows at an enormous rate. These growth forces organisations to either dispose of documents not considered essential or increase the storage areas used for the filing of these documents. The problems that may occur are significant and could have an adverse impact on the overall client service provided by the organisation. To alleviate these problems, many organisations began using microfiche and microfilm technologies as well as establishing complex manual procedures to support

organisational demands.

However such systems don’t integrate well with computerised systems. What we really need is to have easy electronic access to material that was originally paper-based. Document imaging systems do this for us by doing three things:-

• Allowing input - typically document scanners or other input devices such as facsimile, which convert hard copy documents into a digital format

• Storing the images in a document management system

• Providing Indexing - allowing users to identify incoming documents for easy retrieval later.

• Enabling retrieval – the image can be retrieved through the document management system or other integrated applications

Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary (IPSV)

IPSV will bring together the three main controlled vocabularies available to public sector bodies in one merged vocabulary or taxonomy. The vocabulary can be used to populate Subject Metadata and index and categorise information across the public sector.

The vocabularies that are being merged:

• The Government Category List (GCL) – a high level category list owned by the Cabinet Office E-Government Unit for use across government

• The Local Government Category List (LGCL) – a product of the LAWs National

Project for use in the Local Government Community

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Knowledge Management:

Knowledge There are many definitions of Knowledge A common definition is "the

collection of processes that govern the creation, dissemination, and leveraging of knowledge to fulfil organisational objectives."

Knowledge encompasses both tacit knowledge - in people's heads - and explicit knowledge - which is codified and expressed as information in databases, documents etc.

Knowledge Management

The IDeA defines Knowledge Management as “the creation and management of an

environment that encourages knowledge to be created, shared, learnt, enhanced, organised and exploited for the benefit of the organisation and its customers.”

Records Management

A Record is defined as a Document or other data that is regarded as complete and unchangeable. It may exist as paper, as a scanned image or electronically.

A record provides evidence of organisational activity. It can be created (or received) during or on completion of the activity. For example, completed application forms, invoices, and hard copy ledgers are records.

Records management is about making sure an organisation manages its records to meet its operational, legislative, regulatory and accountability requirements. Good records management:

• ensures that you can find the information you need at the time you need it • supports decision-making

• provides evidence of your work

• ensures that you are complying with legal requirements to keep records and destroy them systematically when appropriate

Records management addresses the life cycle of records, i.e., the period of time that records are in the custody of the organisation. Tools for maintaining and using records include file plans, indexes, controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, data dictionaries, and access and security procedures.

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Appendix 6: References

‘Charting Information – an overview of information management in the public sector’: SOCITM

‘Information Management’: CRM National Project output ‘An introduction to knowledge management’ – IDeA Information and Knowledge Management: SOCITIM

Developing an Information Management Strategy