Records management and Information Culture: Tackling the People Problem
| Date | 06 June 2016 |
| Published date | 06 June 2016 |
| Pages | 548-549 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-09-2015-0167 |
| Author | Isabel Schellnack-Kelly |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Book reviews
Records Management and Information Culture:
Tackling the People Problem
By Oliver Gillian and Foscarini Fiorella
Facet
London
2014
178 pp.
£54.95 soft cover
ISBN 978-1-85604-947-4
Review DOI 10.1108/EL-09-2015-0167
This book provides a qualitative analysis on the concept of information culture and
collaborative participation from all users in managing their organisation’s records. All
organisations have an information culture, which can be described as the values bestowed to
information and the attitudes displayed by the users within the context of the organisation.
By determining this culture, records managers should be able to formulate appropriate game
plans benecial to the management of information for evidence and accountability.
Complying with ISO 15489, the game plan requires involvement from all employees creating
and using records. All of these contributors need to ensure their information can be captured
and managed in the multiple information channels, systems and processes. When the
information culture of an organisation can be championed by an individual at senior
management level, incentives are provided to steer an effectively managed records
management programme.
Information culture is determined by three factors which, in turn, impact on the records
management programmes: the value bestowed by the organisation to its records;
information-related competencies; and IT governance being IT infrastructure and trust in
the organised recordkeeping systems. As an alternative methodology, the Information
Culture Framework (ICF) proposed in this book focuses on three facets: corporate
information technology, governance and architecture; employees’ and management’s trust
in the organisational systems; and dealing with techniques to work collaboratively with IT
colleagues.
The ICF is associated with the concept of the records continuum and provides an
alternative approach to methodologies, such as the Australian DIRKS (State Records New
South Wales’ Design and Implementation of Recordkeeping Systems) being the precursor to
ISO 15489. Records management solutions such as DIRKS are often viewed as overly
complicated with rigid implementation processes. Resistance to the “only way digital
records could be managed” (p. 42) are a reason EDRMS systems fail to be effectively
implemented and maintained.
In the study, it is contended that the primary responsibilities of the records managers and
archivists are the management of information as evidence for the purposes of accountability
(p. 13). The records managers and archivists should not compete with the organisation’s
Book reviews
548
TheElectronic Library
Vol.34 No. 3, 2016
pp.548-551
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
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