Category Archives: Information Management

KM World 2008: Frank – Whither Documents

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I was dubious about attending this session.  The subtitle was ‘Putting Hypertext to Work on the KM 2.0 path’ which seemed destined to send me into fits of yawning but I hung in there and got some interesting bits and pieces out of it.

The main point was that we are moving from information that is document based to information that is based upon activities and relationships.  For example, as well as using subject tags for information people are now tagging based on time related tasks, activities and their own emotional reactions: @toread; @tobuy; @fun.

In addition, the more information is structured the more tightly it is connected to a point in time.  In contrast, raw information retains the context.  Hence blogs, wikis and project workspaces can provide more information than documents published to an intranet or into an EDRMS.  Where documents do exist knowing who authored these merely gets you picking up the phone faster.

So, here’s the challenge for those of us that are into archives and records. We can’t turn back the tide and change how people work.  Nor have we had much luck compelling people to publish their documents into an EDRMS or onto an intranet.  How do we need to be changing our thinking to accommodate these ways of creating and describing information while still allowing for records to be managed where this is needed?

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KM World 2008: Gray & Reid – Enterprise Social Software

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My biggest takeaway from this session was the statistics from Intel about their social software tools.  1% of users author and comment  often, 9% occasionally author and comment, 90% find value in editorials etc.

I suspect that the 90% is overstated – does everyone read this stuff or do many people just ignore it? However, regardless of the accuracy of the statistics, there is an interesting point here.  This is that we shouldn’t be too alarmed if not everyone is contributing.  In a sense these observers are merely leveraging the work of others.  I subscribe to a number of blogs because their authors act as filter for me, sorting a lot of information and summarising the results.  Because my interests are aligned with these blogs they act as both time savers and discovery tools.

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KM World 2008: Neo & Singh – Enterprise System for Knowledge and Learning

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This paper really hit a hot button for me.  How and where do documents fit into all of this Web 2.0 stuff?

This was part paper and part demonstration from the Singapore Armed Forces.  They started out by identifying the key activities of knowledge workers, boiling them down to four: writing papers; attending meetings; attending courses; and communicating.

They built an enterprise system to support their knowledge workers comprising a learning management system, a content management system, an enterprise search engine, a knowledge mapping tool and a collaboration portal integrated all integrated their EDRMS Livelink.

What struck me most of all was how clean and easy to follow their interface was.  The user home area was split into three columns. The first column contains a reference space for news, feeds etc.  The middle column is the workspace for email, my documents and my learning.  The third column is the sharing space for blogs, wikis and shared workspaces.

Very simple but with lots of power packed into it.

The main open source components are JOOMLA for communities, forums, blogs and wikis, MOODLE for learning management and the OpenOffice productivity suite.

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KM World 2008: Theresa Regli – ECM and Search

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The focus of this paper was federated search. Federated search works across multiple repositories – typically the extranet, EDRMS and intranet – and returns the results together.  The user interface presents the results either sliced by repository (top 3 intranet searches; top 3 EDRMS searches) or by relevance using tricky behind the scenes algorithms.

The key challenges faced by vendors developing search tools are:

·        De-duping (removing duplicate entries)

·        Developing algorithms that generate useful relevance rankings

·        Reflecting the security models present in each repository

When a tool meets these challenges then a vendor has a ‘viable’ federated search tool.  However, that doesn’t account for that nasty thing: human behaviour.  Letting humans at your repository can really stuff the accuracy of the search tool.  The nasty things that humans do include:

·        Changing content types

·        Adding and removing directories

·        Creating new workflows

·        Creating versions

·        Opting out of metadata

·        Changing taxonomies

All of these can conspire to seriously challenge your search tool.

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KM World 2008: Noble – New KM Environment: From CoLLection to CoNNection

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I thought this presentation was both alarming and compelling.  

Yves Noble told us about how Capgemini (a global IT services provider) is moving from its EDRMS to a more interactive and people oriented system.

Here’s the alarming bits:

·        In the 8 years or so that their EDRMS had been in place they’d experienced a 20% year-on-year decline in usage

·        The average age of documents was 3.5 years

·        Their EDRMS was generally considered to be complex and confusing

So, they had a simple idea – to copy what works on the intranet.

They chose open source technologies based purely on cost.  With 80,000 employees in 30 countries the cost of proprietary software was too high.  Interestingly, in their high level evaluation sheet open source had many more marks against it than the two proprietary tools they considered.  In particular, they identified clear risks around available expertise, vendors, internal skill base; and deployment.  However, despite these negatives the dollar imperative was too strong to ignore.

Their solution comprised:

·        Drupal – for CMS

·        phpbb – for forums

·        Mediawiki – for wikis

·        Google search – for search

They also have links with their other tools including the regional portals and the corporate communications portal so this is probably not the ‘one solution to rule them all’ but is an interesting start. 

Note: this is early days so while there are good indicators of success in the short term, it is hard to predict the medium to long term impact. 

They have developed no training, suggesting to users that they just dive in.  For some of the tricks and quirks users themselves have created a ‘how to’ wiki.

Lessons:

·        People love getting rid of institutional control

·        Users are creating content in unexpected ways

·        Community moderators are taking their roles seriously

·        Auto-administration is not a dream – people are voluntarily alerting and cleaning up the parts that are not right

·        Moving from email to instant messenger and collaborative tools

·        Easy to deploy

·        Simple, intuitive, fast, cheap

Challenges:

·        Transparency is a concern as is IP protection and security

·        Redefining and/or requiring the role of Knowledge Manager

·        Measuring the actual impact

·        The generation factor

·        Push back from IT over the lack of vendor support

·        RSS savvy users are not so common

·        People getting used to switching from document folders to tags and folksonomies

·        Getting connected with the outside world and involving clients

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KM World 2008: Dave Pollard: From Content and Collection to Context and Collaboration

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Dave Pollard’s paper focused on how KM is (and should be shifting) from a discipline that requires very structured tools and technologies to one that is more fluid.

The slide deck is here: www.slideshare.net/davepollard

I found his discussion of the Gen Millennial fascinating.  This generation, used to using instant messenger and texting, has a focus on conversation not on content.  This can lead to ‘true enough’ thinking where an answer doesn’t necessarily have to be well researched or grounded in fact but rather if it is validated by enough of my peers it can be true enough and hence sufficient.

Oddly enough this echoes the book I’ve been reading while travelling lately: True Enough by Farhad Manjoo. I’m not quite through it yet.  The point he makes that has really struck me so far is that through the internet we gravitate to the opinions that reflect or support our own.  In the face of many voices, saying the things that I intuitively agree with, my own position is reinforced regardless of objective fact.  A little scary and perfectly human.

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IBM’s Innovation Jam

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MIT  Sloan Management Review has just published an article on how IBM harnessed the ideas of its 150,000 employees and stakeholders to get its latest technologies to market.

Using bulletin boards and intranet pages, IBM opened discussion of innovation up to its entire global team. 

The findings of the research are that good ideas didn’t bubble up but rather that there was a huge number of ideas identified that then needed sifting and evaluating.  The authors identify the following lessons:

On the positive side:

·         Many people have important strategic ideas

·         Online conversation and sophisticated technology can provide a way for those ideas to impact on problems and generate value for a company

The limitations:

·         Few contributors built constructively on others comments in this online environment.

·         Analysts and managers were essential for taking the ideas generated and making them useful.

IBM’s Jam had a defined goal and process to help manage the movement of a brainstorming task from a real-time, real location exercise to one that took place 24/7 in an electronic environment. 

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PRA Myths – Beware the Scaremongers

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On Friday a friend sent me an email advertisement from a company purporting to be “a leading Knowledge Management consultancy within the local government sector”.

Their offer? – a Public Records Act Compliance Health Check to help local authorities prepare for the PRA audits.  They want to “assist you and to ensure you are on track for 2010 PRA audits”.

Hmmm…sounds reasonable?  Maybe even useful?

Well, yes but…..local authorities do not get audited under the Public Records Act. This kind of advertising by salespeople, consultants and vendors is irresponsible. 

I think local authorities should absolutely have a plan for good recordkeeping, which includes their requirements under the Act.  I don’t think that to get them there we should be misleading them, intentionally or unintentionally about these requirements.  This is simply not necessary.

Other PRA myths….

“XYZ system is compliant with the Public Records Act”

What exactly does this mean?  Are there detailed system requirements hidden in the PRA?  Of course not.  Until such point that there is a mandatory standard for systems, this statement is untrue.  Furthermore, systems are not compliant – organisations are.  If I buy a fully-featured system and install it on everyone’s desktop but no-one uses it have I achieved compliance?  I don’t think so. Systems can only support compliance.  If a vendor tells you their solution is compliant with the Public Records Act ask them to tell you how – and whether people in their current implementations are actually using it. 

“All emails must be kept”

This is a favourite of some of the sellers of email archiving solutions.  There are many emails that you would no more keep than you would the post-it left on your desk by a colleague suggesting a time for lunch.  It is not the format that is important it is the content.

“We will be audited in 2010”

As above, local authorities are not covered by the audit provisions of the PRA.  For public offices you may or may not be audited in 2010.   2010 is when audits start and, in time, there will be an audit timetable released.  You could have 18 months up your sleeve or you could have 18 months + 5 years.  What does this mean?  Well, now is a good time to start putting a plan together and acting on it so that you are on the journey.

Here’s another example of snake-oil salesmanship from a recent PC World Supplement:

“Unified communications means all forms of communication from a person – their phone calls, txts, emails and instant messages – are centrally stored.  This not only makes it easy to keep track but puts organisations like xxxxx in compliance with the Record Management Act, which comes into effect in 2010.”

How many errors can you spot in the above?  What other PRA myths have you come across?

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New Records Managers

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I’ve been asked about 3 top pieces of advice for people new to records management.  Here’s my top three:

·        Don’t overcook things – there is a real temptation to feel daunted by how much there is to do and a related temptation to really overcook things.  Thinking about business benefit and business risks often provides a helpful cross-check

·        Make a plan – before diving in, make a plan and test this with peers, superiors, staff and trusted advisors.  This will also help you to set and manage expectations.

·        Communication and technical skills – you need to be able to talk with the business about their needs and you need to be able to talk to the I.T. team about what is possible.  Start looking for opportunities to practice and improve these skills.

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