[Personal_archives] Politicians vs. individual archivsts, and hybrid per...

[RICKBARRY at aol.com]

Excellent followups to Catherine's first probe. 
 
I believe that the social aspects of IT govern recordkeeping much more than 
 technology or where the archives & records communities, and more broadly 
in  the information management communities, would like to see us all  go. 
I.e., we must adapt to changing social and work patterns rather than  the other 
way around. And that, especially in the private sector, employers  are 
gathering the fruits of their seeds in this respect -- including  the bad 
fruit.Some have now succeeded in virtually eliminating the borders  between work, 
family and play time in the interest of getting more than their 8  hours of 
work from employees, especially in the US. Which in turn is  increasingly 
blurring the lines among recordmaking and recordkeeping  technologies. 
Probably the most extreme case of this is the "womb-to-tomb"  Google organization, 
where it provides free food, work socializing,  entertainment and even 
resting/sleeping accommodations for its employees 24/7 --  and, oh, did I 
mention, work too? As Susan points out, the genie may well  already be out of the 
jar forever as the PC becomes less and less the  engine of recordmaking in 
favor of hand-held devices that now have  even lite word processing 
capabilities. They can even be used for...making  phone calls!  As you may know, 
President Obama made it clear on  day-1 that he intended to continue to use his 
Blackberry for both personal  and "business" communications -- in his case, 
the business of governing the  Executive Branch of United States, and 
challenging industry to give him  a secure way of doing that, to which industry has 
already  responded. So we might postulate that we must adapt to a world in 
which  virtually all IT applications are potentially recordmaking systems. 
And while  national governments are trying to adapt to this world, e.g., with 
NARA's  Electronic Records Archives (ERA) system, we are way  behind in t
hinking through the implications of these developments for  personal IT and 
e-recs. This makes the work of Paradigm all the more important  and timely. 
 
Susan's comments about the likely decline of "family computers":  We  see 
this already happening. My son says that if I want to get in touch with my  
grandchildren in a hurry when they aren't present, the best way is texting,  
because they don't "do" email any more and don't often use PCs. The older 
among  them will soon be in the workplace and not long thereafter governing 
the kind of  recordmaking technologies used. Since 9/11, most parents have 
acquired mobile  phones for even their youngest school children. In a short 
piece in the Dec '09  issue MAXIMUMPC Mag, the editor says that of the 4 
PC-like machines he  presently uses, one of them probably is not a PC, but his 
smartphone now has all  the attributes (and apps) of a PC.
 
Despite these trends, in response to Susan's question, I think it really  
does depend. As with other policy issues, with co-mingling of records  
created on personal and employer-based systems and with different degrees of  
early adoption of IT in different venues, there is no one-size-fits  all 
response. What will be most appropriate in one country's legal system  at one time, 
may not in another.   Clearly the implications are  different among 
organizations in local governments, national security  and other national agencies, 
non-profits such as higher ed  and religious, and the great variety of 
private sector ones. One thing, in  the US at least or with other countries 
doing serious business here, is  that all such communications -- whether or not 
they are records -- are  discoverable as potential evidence in a court of 
law. Scheduling of  records, whatever technology is used to create them, in 
part has the  purpose of destroying records that are no longer needed 
(including for later,  potential litigation purposes). If records continue to be 
accessible from  places other than the "offices of record", then the effort to 
properly  schedule destroyed according to established schedules, those 
scheduling  practices become rather moot. This relates to the Rodney's good  
observations regarding multiple archive replications in different  collecting 
institutions. After the 1st terrorist attack on the World  Trade Center in 
'93, the archivist of the managing tenant of the  building, the city-like NY 
Port Authority put out a call to archivists  to scour their records to see if 
their organization might  have received or sent documents to the Authority 
and asked for copies to  help rebuild Port Authority records lost in that 
attack. This also occurred with  the city of New Orleans after the tragic 
hurricane there  destroyed records of several agencies, including the local 
courts, police,  city birth and marriage records office and social services 
agencies. But  these were cases in which the other organizations had official  
communications with the Port Authority and New Orleans agencies. With  
personal collections, unless individuals have received services from such  
organizations, this likely will not be the case.  Again making hybrid  
personal/employer records thin ice on which to skate. 
 
All of this also makes one think about another aspect -- the relevance of  
"original order" in digital collections. 
 
What it all suggests, is that it is important for organizations to have  
clearly spelled out policies so that employees know who owns what and what  is 
expected of them during and after their employment, and a means for the  
organization to be able to demonstrate that the policy is routinely read and  
understood by all new personnel and is part of the exit processing for  
terminated employees. Some organizations, especially those with special  product 
liability concerns, may require such re-reads annually by all  employees 
with signed statements to this effect, which themselves become  important 
organizational records.  
 
Regards,
 
Rick 
 
 
 
In a message dated 11/18/2009 8:29:42 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,  susan
.thomas at bodley.ox.ac.uk writes:

I think we also  need to be mindful of how communication technologies are 
changing professional  and personal lives. For example, a structured working 
week is  arguably no longer necessary in some roles: with the help of 
technology,  individuals can arrange their time/location between personal and 
professional  activities much more flexibly, potentially benefiting themselves, 
their  family and their employer. As you point out, these kinds of  changes 
could well to lead to even greater mixing  of personal/professional and 
employer materials. You  mentioned email and text services paid for by the 
employer, but it's also  common for professionals to use third-party online 
services where  the account is a personal one: the material is not hosted,  or 
controlled, by their employer but it's very likely used for work  purposes in 
'work time' and 'personal time'. Will employers ever be able  to regain 
'control'? Should they want to? Does it depend? It seems  unlikely that 
individuals will want to relinquish use of these kinds  of services, which are more 
attractive and useful than corporate  offerings (compare MS Outlook to 
Google's toolset, including Google Wave  - 
_http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html_ (http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html) ).  Moreover, 
individuals are getting used to being in 'control' themselves. Some  organisations 
may be able (and may have to) lock down in response, but the  question of 
locking down or not is more complex for those that don't  necessarily need to - 
the benefits that these third-party technologies  bring probably outweigh 
the risks they pose. 

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