Agency Business Systemsand

Records

Andrew WaughSenior Manager, Standards and Policy

Public Record Office Victoria

Structure of this presentation

• What is a business system?

• Do business systems hold records?

• How do we make sure that business systems hold records

• Preserving records from business systems

What is a business system?

• Automated systems that create or manage data about an organisation’s activities.–CRM, Case management, Court

management, License registration, Archival Control!

• High value records – important enough to spend money on a system to manage them

Do business systems keep records?

• In Victoria we have recently asserted that digital data and digital records are so close that they are effectively the same thing

• May not be permanent records

What is the record?

• What is the record in a business system?– Transactions (data modifications and results of

queries)– Part of the data (a subset of the data that needs to

be identified and extracted)– All of the data in the system

Business systems & records

• Business systems often lack the functions necessary to create good records– Records are not put away, they cannot be

disposed of, and they cannot be archived

• ICA project to address this problem– Guidelines and functional requirements for records

in business systems– Now also an ISO standard (ISO 16175-3:2010)

Simplifying the ICA Requirements

• ICA Requirements are extremely complex and hard to understand

• PROV took the requirements and simplified them by looking at two typical implementation scenarios

• Now part of an ongoing ICA project

Scenario 1: Standalone business system

• Business system creates, manages and disposes of records itself

• Typically built using some form of relational database

• Simplification: records managed are constrained by implementation decisions

• Key functions: putting away records, documenting history, disposal, and export

Scenario 2:Create but not manage

• Business systems creates the records but then transfers them to an EDRMS for management

• Example: transactional database systems

• Simplification: only need to worry about creation, a touch of management, and export

• Key functions: putting away records, preventing modification and export

Preservingbusiness application records

• What happens when– When business system is decommissioned– When business system is replaced and records

not in operational use are ‘archived’

• Affects agencies (long term temporary) and archives (permanent records)

How are the records represented?

• Critical issue – how will future users access the records and what use will they make of it

• Options– Copy all or some of the underlying tables– Produce a single report from the application– Map to traditional file/record model and

produce reports

• Greatest good for the greatest number?

Any Questions?