JISC

Cimtech Ltd and sub-contractor Emmerson Consulting were commissioned by the JISC to undertake a study to evaluate the JISC’s records management activities from 26 May – 22 July 2005.

Executive Summary

Background and project methodology

The task plan is detailed in section (3) and comprised 26 tasks. The main tasks were to set up an online survey form on the Cimtech web site to gather replies from the sector; to interview some 29 JISC staff, project managers of JISC funded project managers and sector RM contacts, to analyse the results and produce a report for Steve Bailey of JISC.

The Project Initiation Meeting took place on 9th June; the questionnaire was posted on the web site on 10th June, interviews took place from 9th June to 8th July. The last survey response was received on 13th July and this draft report was e-mailed to Steve Bailey and Anne Lloyd of the JISC on 22nd July as planned.

Summary of findings

The key findings are summarised in section four. Section (4.1) summarises the 54 questionnaire responses. Section (4.2) summarises the interviews with former JISC RM project managers; JISC Executive and service staff and questionnaire respondents.

The questionnaire responses were very positive.  All 54 were aware of JISC.  The most who were aware of an activity was 47 and the fewest was 9. 38% rated activities high; 33% good; 6% fair; 1% poor; 22% no value.

Respondents ticked and prioritised areas for JISC RM to focus on and support in the future and ticked on the preferred means of output and dissemination.

25 out of 54 felt JISC RM activities were extremely useful and 14 said very useful. 16 felt JISC’s promotion and publicity of RM was very effective and 24 said effective. There was some criticism of the main JISC web site (but not the JISC InfoNet web site) with 13 finding material quite difficult to find.

The interviews with project managers and respondents reinforced the fact that all find JISC RM activities of a high quality and very valuable. Looking to the future there is a strong desire for more advice and guidance and advocacy of RM as a discipline and profession. There is a desire for more practical guidance to build on the record lifecycle study and provide practical advice on classification and retention scheduling and FOI and other compliance issues. Looking forward there is also a strong demand for more advice on best practice for e-mail management, electronic records management and, among the HE sector EDRM, Enterprise Content Management and e-Administration.

JISC staff and survey respondents both agreed on the need for RM to have a higher profile alongside Digital Preservation and Information Environment programmes and for JISC to support ERM development projects as well as traditional EDRM advice and guidance support.

The work of Alan Cameron and JISC InfoNet as a whole was widely valued and there is a concern caused by the fact that Alan is due to retire at a time when JISC needs to be expanding its support for RM and EDRM via workshops, more toolkits and infokits and more one to one advice and consultancy support for projects.

There is an ongoing interest in FE for advice and guidance on RM and on the management of electronic records using existing tools. HE are increasingly interested in ERM. EDRM and Enterprise Content Management as a platform for moving to e administration.

Impact of JISC RM Activities

The number of hits on JISC web sites and the number of enquiries made plus the fact that Alan Cameron has spoken to 7 – 800 delegates from FE/HE at RM workshops and events mean that the RM activities supported by JISC have had an influence on the majority of HE and FE institutions. The survey and interviews reached approximately 10% of the known RM contacts in FE and HE. The detailed results are provided in section (4) and analysed in section (5) below.

The JISC’s RM activities are generally well publicised and widely used. They provide excellent support to a group of RM practitioners, many of whom work on their own and are much in need of the professional networking and advice and guidance that JISC supports. A full set of comments are reproduced in section (5.1) below. The following are typical.

While most felt the publicity and promotion was good, many would like to be on a mailing list and to be e-mailed when new JISC RM publications appear.

Most respondents felt JISC’s RM activities were good value for money and would like to see the funding increased.

Cimtech calculates that FE and HE spend at least £17 million per year on RM staff and services. Compared to this JISC spend only £150 – 200,000 per year on RM activities.

Those activities improve the productivity and effectiveness of RM staff significantly. If a figure of 10% per year is allowed which is very conservative then this indicates that the current investment of just £150 – 200,000 per year results in savings and improvements worth £1.7 million plus per year so there is a very strong return on investment.

HE contacts had a much higher level of interest in digital preservation and EDRM than FE. FE had a much higher interest in basic RM advice and guidance, the FOI model publication scheme pilot studies and the infoKit and workshops provided by Alan Cameron.

Integration of JISC RM Activities with Services

Cimtech interviewed staff in three services – JISC InfoNet, JISC Legal and one of the Regional Support Centres. The findings are summarised in section (4) below and the detailed analysis is provided in section (6) below.

There is a lot of overlap between the activities of Steve Bailey in the Development Division of Executive and Alan Cameron and the staff at JISC InfoNet. This is understandable given how RM started as part of Digital Preservation and then moved into advice and guidance and the provision of infoKits etc.

The overlap does not cause problems internally as all staff are professional and flexible and work well together. It does cause problems externally as contacts are not sure which web sites to go to for RM publications, infoKits etc. It gives the impression that JISC is organised by committee rather than by customer service. JISC as a whole needs a list of contacts interested in RM and they should be contacted by the JISC and notified of all new RM publications, events, programmes regardless of which part of JISC is responsible for them.

The interface between JISC’s RM activities conducted by JISC Executive and JISC InfoNet and related activities conducted by JISC Legal is clear and logical. JISC Legal cover the legal issues such as FOI and DPA and Copyright. The two groups work well together on joint publications, workshops and events.

The interface between JISC’s RM activities conducted by JISC Executive and JISC InfoNet and the RSCs is also clear and logical. The RSC’s are the prime point of contact with the local FE and HE community. When they receive RM enquiries they go to JISC Executive or InfoNet and they plan for, stage and publicise JISC RM workshops locally.

Prioritised list of RM Activities for JISC to Support

The 10 highest priority RM areas which survey respondents felt the JISC should focus on and support in future are as listed in the table below which shows the number of respondents who rated each area a priority. Each area is reviewed in more detail in section (7) below.

Preferred Future Means of Delivery

The survey and the interviewers asked contacts to indicate the preferred means of output and dissemination of RM activities in future. The following table presents the preferred output and dissemination options in order of popularity in a survey of 54.

There were also some useful comments provided in the questionnaires and interviews relating to dissemination and these are summarised in section (8).

RM Work & Planned Development Activity

Cimtech was asked to “establish how and where future RM development work should integrate with current and planned JISC Development Activity”.

Section (9.1) reviews current and planned JISC development activity at a high level. Core development projects are clustered in thematic programmes including:

• Information Environment Programmes
• JCALT Programme
• Learning Environment Programmes
• Middleware Programmes
• Networking Programmes
• Preservation programmes (including RM)
• Research Environment Programmes

According to the overall JISC strategy JISC’s work can be considered as a matrix or, simplifying it somewhat, as a four level hierarchy with activities operating at one or more levels.

• Level 4: Advice and guidance (training)
• Level 3: Content management and provision (content repositories)
• Level 2: Information & Communications Environment (middleware/archive)
• Level 1: JANET (the grid/ infrastructure)

The Information Environment programmes span level two and three. The RM programme activities fit into level four only to date. The Digital Preservation programme activities fit in to levels 2, 3 and 4.

Of the 10 highest priority RM areas for the future as detailed in the table above then 5 (I,A,D,B and E) represent a continuation of existing level four RM advice and guidance activities. They can be supported in future through another RM programme and via funding for JISC InfoNet.

The other 5 new areas (H,J,M,C and L) may need to be supported at levels two and three as well as four. These activities will increasingly need to interface with the Information Environment and Preservation programmes and use the same standards and technical architecture.

Hence within Development RM should increasingly be seen as a strategic area in its own right linked closely to Digital Preservation and Information Environment. This is recognised already in plans to group all three areas in a single technology team.

There is a need to explore the electronic content/document/record lifecycle from active to semi current and on to archive and look at how the specific needs of administrative records can be met within the Information Environment. .

This will include reviewing the growing requirement for electronic administration in institutions, mapping the functions, activities and processing and reviewing the scope for redesign and improvement in an electronic environment and, most significantly, looking at the facilities needed for EDRM and the facilities needed to support long term electronic archiving of selected electronic records including student records; estate records; governance records etc.

Scope of Future RM Support Needed

Given the success and value for money represented by JISC’s RM activities to date there is a need to expand the support to meet the growing future demand for support, advice, guidance, education and standards in this vital area.

Support will be needed in three areas:

• JISC’s internal RM and organisation
• JISC’s RM advocacy, advice and guidance activities
• JISC’s Information Environment activities

The internal work is already underway with the implementation of the TRIM EDRM system used to manage records and a review of the design of the web sites and the web content management system needed to support the new design. JISC also need to agree the best split of work between Development division and JISC InfoNet and where RM advice and guidance material should be sited.

The second area represents a continuation and extension of the excellent work done to date at level four of the hierarchy. 12 areas are detailed in section (10.2) including RM advocacy; generic RM support material; training; more infoKits; more guidance on ERM, EDRM and E administration.. Cimtech consider that funding should be increased to £250,000 - £300,000 per year here.

The third area is a new RM area and really an extension of existing Information Environment and Digital Preservation work at levels two, three and four to review the range of technical options for ERM, EDRM and ECM, review the requirements for e-administration; to map functions, activities and processes and support process re-design; to develop technical architecture and interoperability standards for the lifecycle management of electronic records and to specify and support electronic record archiving services for the sector. Cimtech consider that additional development funding will be needed in this area of £150,000 in 2006 and £200,000 in 2007 with some scope for joint funding initiatives with TNA, BL, HEFCE and UCISA.

Overall, therefore Cimtech consider that there is a strong case for JISC increasing RM support and funding to £400,000 per year in 2006 and £500,000 in £2007.

Conclusions & Recommendations

Conclusions

In general the JISC should regard their limited Records management support activities as having been a considerable success story over the past 3 years.

For a relatively small investment of approximately £500,000 over three years JISC has provided valuable support to existing records management contacts and has acted as a powerful advocate for records management which has led to a significant increase in the number of institutions investing in records management, appointing staff and developing policies and procedures.

The quality of the advice and guidance provided is highly regarded and many of the outputs are used and respected outside the sector as well as internally.

The services provided represent good value for money and JISC can point to a strong return on the investment made to date.

There is a continuing demand for JISC to provide basic advice and guidance in areas such as the record lifecycle, classification, retention scheduling, disaster recovery and FOI and other compliance issues.

There is a growing demand for JISC to provide more advice and guidance on all aspects of electronic records management from basic e-mail policies and procedures, e-mail archiving, electronic document management using existing tools right up to advanced EDRM and ECM solutions, Business Process Management, collaboration and e- administration.

The preferred means of dissemination are online publications and training aids via web sites and workshops and events. Here there is scope for JISC to improve the design and layout of its web sites to facilitate access to records management material. There is also a demand for e-mail notifications of new material to contact lists.

There is also a need for records management to gain a higher profile within JISC as one of the key areas of Development activity alongside Information Environment and Digital Preservation.

There is a perceived need for JISC to consult more closely across the sector prior to launching new RM activities.

Recommendations

Although budgets will be tighter, particularly in the FE area, JISC should try very hard to expand the funding allocated to Records Management to build on the success of the past three years and meet the growing demand for advice and guidance and services in traditional RM, ERM, EDRM and ECM and E administration.

JISC should support RM in three areas:

• JISC’s own records management and organisation
• JISC’s RM advocacy, advice and guidance activities
• JISC’s Information Environment activities

The detailed activities that should be supported under each area are described in section (10).

The first area would be funded by JISC Executive as part of a core support budget so would not represent new expenditure on records management.

The second area would require funding support of £250 – 300,000 per year. This would cover funding on JISC Executive and InfoNet staff; funding for third party consultancy providers; support for educational events and support for institutional projects.

The third area would require funding support of £150,000 in 2006 and £200,000 in 2007. There would be significant scope for joint funding initiatives with the British Library, The National Archives, UCISA and other bodies.

JISC should give RM a higher profile by running a dedicated RM and E administration programme alongside existing Digital preservation and Information Environment programmes. RM should then have its own programme director.

To aid consultation JISC should set up a JISC RM Working Group to oversee the work done in this area. This working group should comprise Steve Bailey, representatives from JISC InfoNet, selected colleagues from the Information Environment work within the Executive and selected representatives from the sector. This would ensure better coordination between InfoNet and the Executive and between JISC’s RM and IE activity and ensure the continued relevance of JISC’s RM activities to the sector while meeting the perceived need for greater consultation.

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