Nancy Kunde, CRM, CA
Records Officer, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Electronic records management is a major focus of many archival and records management conferences at local, national and international levels. As records professionals continue to seek out effective educational resources on electronic records, they are frequently faced with limited travel and/or professional development dollars to access these resources. Often it becomes a tough choice as to which conference or set of conferences will provide the best educational opportunities as well as the all-important chance to network with others grappling with similar issues. Sometimes it means sacrificing attendance at one's particular professional conference to attend a specialty conference. MER is one such conference and is considered by many in both professional communities as 'the one' to attend.

The 9th Annual Managing Electronic Records Conference (MER) sponsored by Cohasset Associates Inc. was held September 23-26, 2001, at the Westin Hotel in Chicago. Conference attendees, nearly 400 in number, came from a wide variety of industries and both the public and private sectors. Perhaps one of the major appeals of attending MER is the fact that you can find many, certainly not all, of the major electronic records themes and speakers at one event. In a rather compact time frame, just two and half days, one can get in-depth information on both practical and theoretical aspects of ERM, electronic records management.

One of the more interesting plenary presentations was Julie Gable's talk on ERM software. She is a consultant and has worked with organizations on implementing this type of software product. Her presentation, "A Look Into the Future: The Factors Driving Electronic Records Management Software (ERMS) Changes," provided an assessment of the experiences of some companies that have installed ERMS products. She related some lessons learned from those applications, and a look forward at what may be on the horizon in the way of new developments in this area. As someone who has looked at products such as TRIM and OpenText Livelink with hopeful anticipation, an independent look at the problems and pitfalls as well as the potential benefits of implementing these packages was welcome and revealing of the realities behind these mega systems.

Gable's assessment of the experiences of companies having implemented ERMS stressed planning as well as practical implementation issues. She noted that a pattern emerges in reviewing the installations--the necessity for better internal infrastructure before bringing in an ERMS. She stressed the need for attention and improvement in all of the following areas: policy development, understanding of the business processes, strategic planning, and understanding of how the system will support business needs of the enterprise. Attention to the last item will greatly increase the likelihood of successful implementation. She stated that all of ERMS packages need to be customized and customization is a major cost.

One of her messages was that records management is going to have to become document centered. In the analog world records managers were able to impose their concepts on records. She noted records managers have frequently been in the business of imposing order on chaos. However, in the electronic world records management records managers will not be doing the classification. Users will carry this function in compliance with a classification plan. She stressed the importance of user based classification schemes that will permit subject/topic searches across the spectrum of corporate records and across all media. She hinted that records managers may need to take some lessons from library science in that there may not be one classification scheme but several that will need to be employed. (She mentioned a forthcoming article in the Information Management Journal on automated classification systems.)

From her discussion of the practical experiences using ERMS, she moved to a discussion of software, comparing document management and enterprise content management packages and the potential role of records management in the evolving software arena. Her comments were very insightful and thought provoking. She noted that records management software will likely become embedded in other software products and that it will likely be among many middleware packages that include such things as data transformation, routing, directory services, and process management. On her list of hot topics for future ERMS functionality: archiving of web pages and the whole area of digital preservation. On the down side, she noted that ERMS developers still do not seem to understand what records management is. She pointed out the use of the Gartner definition of records management as "print stream data."

Many of the MER presenters stressed familiar electronic records management themes: early involvement in the process, assignment of responsibility, media independent retention schedules, and the importance of policy development. Some of these familiar themes were frequently presented in the context of practical working experiences however. Tim Slavin's session on "Training Traditional Records Managers to be Electronic Records Managers" was one such session. Tim discussed his experience with conducting a training program for traditional records manager positions in a State government setting and gave an honest assessment of the challenges involved in educating a broad spectrum of employees on a very complex topic. Similarly, Laurie Fischer's presentation on a "Checklist for Electronic Records Management" provided the mix of the familiar ERM concepts with practical aspects of implementation.

This particular MER conference placed a significant emphasis on legal issues. Rae Cogar, Esq. Cohasset Associates, outlined the many complexities behind the current hot button issue of privacy and the Internet. The Conference finished with a keynote presentation featuring Professor Charles Nesson, Harvard Law School, who led a role-playing exercise featuring many of the presenters from the MER event. The exercise was not only effective in demonstrating the many electronic records issues that can come quickly into focus in a court case, but also the need for close collaboration among key organizational components; i.e. legal, information technology, records management, and management; in order for ERM to be successfully carried out.

Finally, Bob Williams has been conducting an annual survey about the status of electronic records management in connection with MER since its inception. He closed the Conference with a brief overview of the most recent survey findings. From the survey results, it seems clear that there is still a great deal of work to be done in terms of organizations developing and implementing effective ERM or even RM programs. While there is increasing awareness of the importance of ERM particularly as it relates to legal issues, fully operational records management programs are still out of reach for many organizations.

The content of the MER Conference is extremely good, and it is very well managed. The size of the conference is a significant factor in its success. It is large enough to attract a broad spectrum of participants and speakers, but small enough that informal conversation can take place. MER provided solid educational and professional development sessions in a setting that permits an easy dialogue with colleagues. The MER Conference is probably not the only event to obtain up-to-date information on ERM. It is, however, a good conference to attend to get thoroughly immersed in the topic and touch base with many of the leaders in the field.

Recognizing that archivists and records managers are often lone voices for these efforts in their organizations, it would be beneficial for them to seek staff from their legal, audit, and information technology departments to accompany them to MER or whatever conference they determine is best suited to their organization's needs. Getting a group together to attend a conference is not an easy task either, but other professionals who share responsibilities for organizational record keeping can benefit from attending specialty conferences such as MER as much or more than the organization's records professional. However, an advantage to the MER conference is that two sets of CDs with all the conference presentations are included in the registration fee, as well as a substantial notebook with all the handouts. This permits those listening to the CD to follow along just as though they were sitting in the session. With these "take home assets," it is possible to share the benefits of the conference with others when you return.