CA Standardized recordkeeping metadata allows for access to essential evidence of business activities and promotes reliability and authenticity. The Australian records and metadata community have been working hard to define standards and identify requirements as well as support interoperability.
Phrases
<P1> But records, as accountability traces and evidence of business activity, have additional metadata requirements. Authoritative, well-structured metadata which specifies their content, structure, context, and essential management needs must be embedded in, wrapped around and otherwise persistently linked to them from the moment they are created if they are to continue to function as evidence. (p.2) <P2> People do business in social and organizational contexts that are governed by external mandates (e.g. social mores, laws) and internal mandates (e.g. policies, business rules). Mandates establish who is responsible for what, and govern social and organizational activity, including the creation of full and accurate records. <warrant> (p.3)
Type
Journal
Title
Describing Records in Context in the Continuum: The Australian Recordkeeping Metadata Schema
CA RKMS is based on traditional recordkeeping thinking. However, it also looks to the future by viewing records as active agents of change, as intelligent information objects, which are supported by the metadata that RKMS' framework provides. Through RKMS, the dynamic world of business can be linked to the more passive world of cyberspace resource management.
Phrases
<P1> As long as records remain in the local domains in which they are created, a lot of broader contextual metadata is "in the air," carried in the minds of the corporate users of the records. When records move beyond the boundaries of the local domain in which they are created or, as is increasingly the case in networked environments, they are created in the first place in a global rather than a local domain, then this kind of metadata needs to be made explicit -- that is, captured and persistently linked to the record. This is essential so that users in the broader domain can uniquely identify, retrieve and understand the meanings of records. (p.7) <P2> The broader social context of the project is the need for individuals, society, government, and commerce to continually access the information they need to conduct their business, protect their rights and entitlements, and securely trace the trail of responsibility and action in distributed enterprises. ... Maintaining reliable, authentic and useable evidence of transactions through time and space has significant business, social, and cultural implications, as records provide essential evidence for purposes of governance, accountability, memory and identity. (p.6)
Conclusions
RQ There is a need to develop typologies of recordkeeping relationships such as agent to record and better ways to express them through metadata.
Type
Web Page
Title
The Electronic Records Strategies Task Force Report: An Australian Perspective
CA The archival profession has a brief window of opportunity to become stakeholders in the realm of electronic records. In order to accomplish that, they must answer not only the "what" but the "why" of recordkeeping in all of its implications.
Conclusions
RQ How will American archivists deal with the re-invention of professional roles that have traditionally been bifurcated by records on one side and archives on the other? Where does continuum thinking leave SAA and its primary constituency of historical archivists?
Type
Web Page
Title
Documenting Business: The Australian Recordkeeping Metadata Schema
In July 1999, the Australian Recordkeeping Metadata Schema (RKMS) was approved by its academic and industry steering group. This metadata set now joins other community specific sets in being available for use and implementation into workplace applications. The RKMS has inherited elements from and built on many other metadata standards associated with information management. It has also contributed to the development of subsequent sector specific recordkeeping metadata sets. The importance of the RKMS as a framework for 'mapping' or reading other sets and also as a standardised set of metadata available for adoption in diverse implementation environments is now emerging. This paper explores the context of the SPIRT Recordkeeping Metadata Project, and the conceptual models developed by the SPIRT Research Team as a framework for standardising and defining Recordkeeping Metadata. It then introduces the elements of the SPIRT Recordkeeping Metadata Schema and explores its functionality before discussing implementation issues with reference to document management and workflow technologies.
Critical Arguements
CA Much of the metadata work done so far has worked off the passive assumption of records as document-like objects. Instead, they need to be seen as active entities in business transactions.
Conclusions
RQ In order to decide which elements are to be used from the RKMS, organizations need to delineate the reach of specific implementations as far as how and when records need to be bound with metadata.
