Records Management Bulletin - Issue No. 110 Page 3

by Stephen Howard, Corporate Records

Manager, Westminster City Council

Anyone asked at short notice to give a

presentation on hybrid records

management would first review the paper

delivered by Peter Horsman at the Records

Management Society’s 2000 conference in

Nottingham entitled ‘The Intelligent

Management of Hybrid Record Systems’.

Horsman stressed that he was concerned

with intellectual, and not physical, control of

records in hybrid systems. He suggested “to

manage record systems, one must be

capable of controlling the system, not

becoming part of it”.1

No doubt this is true in theory, and I do not set outto contradict Horsman’s engaging and entertainingpaper, but in practice I believe that effectivehybrid records management inevitably involves acomplex interplay between the intellectual andphysical control of records, which is my centraltheme. Everything that follows is very much apersonal perspective on the issues involved in thistopic, and is based upon my recent experience ofpiloting a hybrid records management system atWestminster City Council.

Overview

I would first like to explore definitions of the term‘hybrid’ in order for us to agree on what we aretalking about: no small task before an audience ofinternational records managers and archivists fromall business sectors. Secondly, I will outline whatI see as the key issues of hybrid recordsmanagement. Thirdly, by examining the hybridimplementation at Westminster, I hope to illustratesome of these issues. Finally, I will suggest someconclusions for you to discuss, whileacknowledging that there are no easy solutions.

Does anyone know what hybrid

records management is?

I think we can all agree on the noun hybrid. TheCambridge Online Dictionary defines the noun

hybrid as “a plant or animal that has beenproduced from two different types of plant oranimal, esp. to get better characteristics, oranything that is a mixture of two very differentthings”.2 But what is hybrid records management?

Let’s look at the ISO Standard. The term ‘hybrid’is not in the index, and I have not found anyreference to it within Parts one or two. But thereon the front page is the explanation. The Standard“applies to the management of records, in allformats or media”.3 It is silent on this matter. It ismedia-neutral.

What about the ARMA Glossary of Records andInformation Management Terms? A hybrid system“contains mixed components of other systems”.4

At least it was mentioned, but I think you willagree that the definition is not very helpful here.

So I looked in the textbooks. Robeck, Brown &Stephens propose that the concept of hybridrecords management systems “refers to a sharingof technology between micrographic systems andelectronic imaging systems . . . scan-on-demandmicrographic to Electronic InformationManagement conversions, aperture card and CADapplications, COM image output, and imagetransmission systems.”5

Although it is an important area of concern, Idon’t think this is what we really mean by hybridrecords management today. It is important that werecognise that there are competing hybrids in therecords management vocabulary. Indeed in the1990s the British Computer Society waspromoting the notion of hybrid managers – peoplewith “strong technical skills and adequatebusiness knowledge or vice versa”6. This remindsme of the courtier described in Philip Jones’‘Records Manager for the Millennium’.7

What really is hybrid RM?

You are no doubt familiar with the EuropeanCommunity Model Requirements Specificationfor Electronic Records Management (MoReq).Drawing upon the UK Public Record Office’sFunctional Requirements for Electronic Records

Hybrid records management

– a local government

perspective

A paper given at the RMS Conference 2002 in Cardiff

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Management Systems (ERMS), MoReq proposes“A hybrid file is a set of related electronic andphysical records stored partly in an electronic filewithin the ERMS and partly in a related paper fileoutside the ERMS”.8

Note the word ‘outside’. I am assuming thatMoReq means that the physical file is obviouslyphysically outside the record-keeping application,but that there is a record or metadata entryrepresenting the physical file within theapplication. I acknowledge that the record-keepingsystem is more than just the application, butplease let us assume this interpretation.

Indeed, section ten of MoReq explicitly states thatan “ERMS should be able to register physical filesunder the same classification scheme as theelectronic records, and provide for themanagement of hybrid files of electronic andphysical records”. I think this is what we mean bythe term ‘hybrid records management’.

Why hybrid? Why not 100% digital?

So let us agree that hybrid records management isthe management of records systems containingpaper and electronic records, in particular theconfiguration of an ERMS to manage paper andelectronic records.

Why not 100% digital? For a start, most of us willhave legacy paper records to manage. The volumemay run into many thousands of paper filescontaining millions of documents. It is oftenuneconomic and undesirable to convert all thispaper to electronic images. It is a business decision,of course, and some of the considerations include:

♦ How large is the paper legacy? What are thecosts of conversion, or between the choice ofin-house scanning or bureau services? What isthe retrieval profile? Is it cheaper to use off-site manual storage?

♦ Have the electronic legal admissibility issuesbeen resolved, including electronic signatures?How many organisations today have electronicdeeds and contracts?

♦ How long is the retention period? This factorimpacts upon the preservation strategy and thechoice of preservation format e.g. paper,microfiche, COM, COLD etc.

Even if you could draw a line under your paperlegacy, and resolve all the issues above, you canonly stop new paper records being created if yourelectronic roll-out is corporate and comprehensive,an unusual IT extravagance while records managersremain sidelined from strategic informationdecisions. During this transition period someone,

somewhere will still be creating paper records thatwill be sent to the conventional records centre.

I guess that most of us are probably within thisphase. I am no futurologist or rainmaker, butgiven these issues it looks as though hybridrecords management is here to stay.

Why hybrid? Why not distinct

systems for manual and paper

records?

Hybrid records management systems give a singlepoint of access, and a single index, facilitatingcross-media information retrieval. This ispowerful for Data Protection and Freedom ofInformation enquiries, and it is vital forknowledge management.

There are also key records management benefits.There is a single audit trail for transactions. Itreduces the duplication of effort to ensure thatconsistent classification, security, access controls,and retention policies are applied across the board.Let us not forget that there are also somesimilarities between manual and electronicrecords. They are all records that need to beconsistently managed, and we need to look at theway that we try to organise them using foldersand files, and use a common vocabulary todescribe them.

What are the conflicts within hybrid

RM?

What are the tensions when managing electronicand manual records in the same records system?At the risk of stating the obvious, the first issue toconsider is user expectations. Electronic recordscan normally be viewed immediately at thedesktop, in contrast to the retrieval of manualrecords that need to be physically transported tothe customer. We are all familiar with thephenomenon of placing a request for manual files- and waiting. This might even be a short periodfor a physical file to be scanned on demand andplaced on a corporate intranet - but it is asignificant delay to information retrieval in an eraof broadband immediacy.

Secondly, consider the issue of usability. There isa risk of duplication if a user is uncertain anddeclares a paper record to the record-keepingsystem when an electronic original already exists– perhaps because the system doesn’t make thisclear or there is not a label on the manual fileindicating this fact. We must always help the userto prevent duplication and redundancy in thehybrid records management system. Can yourectify misfiling or poor referencing correctly?

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Thirdly, there appear to be overlapping metadatarequirements for electronic and manual records.Due to the fact that manual records are objects inthe real world, elements such as physical location,movement history, requests and bar-codes enterthe hybrid records management system. Theseelements do not easily co-exist with metadata fieldscommon to all records, for example the title orowner.

Fourthly, manual and electronic records requiredifferent methods of secure destruction. Comparethe expensive and undeveloped process ofoverwriting digital data with 0s and 1s to preventforensic recovery, with the tried-and-testedsecurity shredding of manual documents.

Parallel worlds?

When you get down to the configuration of yourERMS, you begin to inhabit parallel worlds whereelectronic and manual concepts mean differentthings. Let’s take the hybrid metadata field ofCurrent Location as an example. How do weassign a current location to electronic records?

Their physical location is fixed: the documentstore on a server. I assume that the user declaringthe records securely deletes the local original, andI am ignoring for obvious convenience the untidyepi-phenomenon of unmanaged local caching ofelectronic documents on workstations or thepresence of electronic archival back-ups of servertraffic.

We bring the intuitive techniques of manualrecords management to electronic records, storingelectronic documents within electronic folders.But electronic folders are virtual folders – merelymetadata. Documents are not really containedwithin folders. Indeed, for one TRIM user inAustralia “. . . the current location field hasevolved from simply saying where the paper fileis, to being assumed to indicate who is responsiblefor an action” 9 - consistent with the meaning ofcurrent location for electronic records. What is themeaning of this metadata field if we declare amanual document within an electronic folder?

The current location of electronic folders is not intruth an individual or his/her section, as is the casewith manual files. It is here that hybrid recordsmanagement potentially breaks down. Thetracking of manual documents in an ERMSappears to be categorically different from thetracking of electronic records.

But does the system really break down? Take forexample a hypothetical physical transfer ofelectronic records from a records centre to a state-

of-the-art archives centre (e.g. a place ofelectronic deposit). If all local electronic versionsare securely deleted from the donor organisation,then the current location of an electronic recordhas indeed changed to its new owner, and thehybrid records management system is accurate.

Other issues to consider include the migration ofelectronic documents over time. MoReq describeshow “a physical document copy can be convertedinto an electronic record copy, by scanning orother means of digitisation. Several physicaldocument copies can also be converted into asingle electronic record copy. One physicaldocument copy can be converted into severalelectronic copies . . .” 10 This can be repeated overseveral cycles. You may scratch your head and askyourself, which is the true record?

Hybrid records management at

the backend?

Before we attempt to solve this conundrum, let’salso look at the place of hybrid recordsmanagement in the records continuum. As TonyHendley has recognised, “With the move toElectronic Document Management in manyorganisations, the traditional records centre hastended to be bypassed, with paper records beingsent to the centre but electronic records being heldon the Electronic Document Management system.Some organisations are beginning to implementElectronic Records Management systems at theback end in the records centre, so that electronicrecords can also be moved to the records centreand managed alongside paper and microfilmrecords in a hybrid records management system”. 11

But for Kennedy and Schauder “the current typeof ‘catch-all’ records management systems shouldonly be seen as interim solutions while the . . .profession, along with systems developers, striveto better define how record-keeping requirementsshould be met. At issue is the question whether itis more logical to incorporate record-keepingfunctionality into business application systems, orwhether records should ‘fall-out’ of businessapplications”. 12

I think this is what Stephen Harries from the UKPublic Record Office means when he considersrecords management itself as a type of workflowthat operates on business objects (structured andunstructured records) as part of a business process.13

The record-keeping function should be more or lessinvisible to the user. However the accepted conceptof declaration, where a user must decide toregister a record within a hybrid ERMS, implies

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distinct personal and corporate workspaces andassumes a back-end, object-based approach.

Westminster’s hybrid objectives

This is a case study of a back-end, object-basedapproach. I’m not going to review the wholeproject at Westminster but you need to knowsomething about the context of ourimplementation to understand our configuration.

We had three clear objectives before we went totender.

1. To export 250,000 records held in an Accessdatabase (relating to manual files, includingownership and movement histories) to acommercial, off-the-shelf records managementapplication. We would thereby streamlinerecords centre transactions concerningapproximately 25,000 boxes, and open up thedatabase to our users via a Web browser

2. To digitise 80,000 pages of historicalCommittee documentation to facilitate accesswithin the same record-keeping application

3. To permit our users to declare their electronicrecords by the same rules as their manual files,and have the records management servicemanage these records on their behalf.

The product

The advertisement for the turn-key applicationthat we bought claimed that it “seamlesslyintegrates electronic and paper records into asecure, scaleable and manageable environment,empowering desktop users to manage and sharetheir corporate knowledge.” This might sound like ahybrid product, but like any database, when you getTRIM out of the box it doesn’t do anything, there isnothing in it. Configuration is down to you, withassistance from your Value-Added-Reseller (VAR).

Configuration – manual record

types

Record types are the building blocks of yourhybrid ERMS: your folders or boxes, yourhierarchical structure. When you create a record,you must choose a record type. Different metadatavalues and functionality can be assigned todifferent record types. Our priority was thecontinued operation of the existing manualrecords management service. Given our situation,this is the approach we took.

For our manual records, we created box records(representing the physical box), that could containitem records (representing the physical file

folder), which in turn could contain piece records(representing a single manual document or anindividual on a multiple-client file). The latterrecord type was created to cope with a legacydatabase table, and is no longer in active use.

Each box was allocated a unique nine-digitnumber, and items enclosed within this containerinherited this box number as a prefix (e.g.000090000-1).

For each box record, access controls weredeployed to restrict viewing to the owner location.Any items placed within that container inheritedthese access controls.

For many years, the customers of the Westminsterrecords service have provided the metadata formanual records (such as title, covering date,action date) within an Excel spreadsheet. It wasnot feasible to roll out TRIM to all our users inone big bang, so we had to engineer a way for thisprocess to continue (an Excel loader was built byour VAR to perform this task). Excel is also anideal tool for completing large amounts ofrepetitive data, a virtue that is difficult to replicatewithin an ERMS. One disadvantage of thismethod was that we could not use the vocabularycontrols of our record-keeping application, and wethus used free-text titling for manual item records.

We exploited the use of the space managementmodule within TRIM, with each box allocated ashelf space in our storage facility. We also bar-coded our shelves and boxes, and printed bar-codes for retrieved items to allow automatedprocessing of manual file movements.

Configuration – e-record types

For our electronic records we created top-level e-folders (representing the function), that couldcontain sub-folder records (representing theactivity), which could in turn contain documentrecords (any e-records, e-mail, Word doc. etc.representing the transaction). Note that we wereintent upon exploiting the DIRKS methodologyfor new electronic records.

Each e-folder was allocated a unique nine-digitnumber. Subfolders enclosed in this containerinherited this record number as a prefix(e.g.E00090000/3~1).

We were able to exploit the features of the recordplan, and created a functional plan for titling,automating access controls and retention for the top-level folders (e.g. Corporate Records Management- RMC Operations - Disposal - 2001/02).

Records Management Bulletin - Issue No. 110 Page 7

Documents placed within a container inheritedthese access controls and retention policies. Bycontrolling the folder titling and inheritingcontrols in this fashion, we were able to makedeclaration less onerous for the user – simplyplacing a free-text titled electronic document intoits respective folder or sub-folder with a minimumof metadata fields to complete.

How to link manual and electronic

records?

And so we are led to the Holy Grail. How to linkyour physical and manual records, make sense ofthese links, and maintain control?

Let’s consider a pertinent example of hybridrecords management, a formal Subject AccessRequest (SAR) under the Data Protection Act. Thecompleted SAR and evidence of identity andaddress have been received from the data subjectin hard copy, as perhaps are the screen-dumpresults from your departments. But your Word ore-mail correspondence with the data subjectremains in electronic form. There are, in effect, twofiles relating to this SAR – one manual and oneelectronic.

Within TRIM, there is a facility to link or relaterecords, so that once you get a list of searchresults you can click on the relevant icon andretrieve all related records. At Westminster, westill have a long way to go to ensure that allhybrid assemblies are linked in this fashion, but itis a satisfactory interim measure.

One other approach that is feasible, particularlywhen a record series is predominantly manual andyou are scanning on demand, is to attach theelectronic document to the manual item record.But if this item is placed in a physical box andmoved to the space management system, you willhave to live with the incongruous current locationfor this electronic record of, say, B74/4.

But there are many permutations to explore. Thesame TRIM user in Australia that I quoted above“. . . felt it better to have the one record entry fora topic and have all the paper and electronicdocuments somehow linked to it than have morethan one entry for a record and the possibleconfusion at that level. This was also due to thefact that you can’t make users only put a givenrecord type into another specific record type andhence if you have separate paper files andelectronic containers, stop them from putting theelectronic documents ‘into’ the paper file.” 14

I interpret this approach as nesting electronic andmanual records within a media-neutral container.

Obviously the Australians have a lot moreexperience of this than us, but it does show thatyour hybrid configuration must evolve to meetyour specific business requirements.

Conclusion

To conclude, it could be argued that themanagement of unconnected manual andelectronic records systems is the true hybridrecords management, – as it is found today inmany organisations. Indeed, Bob McLean fromthe Wellcome Trust has suggested to me thathybrid records management embraces all theinformation inputs and outputs within anorganisation, whether or not they are captured andmanaged in a formal record-keeping system.15

With my Data Protection hat on, I too see theneed to manage external disclosures of personaldata by every member of the organisation, be itdocumentary or verbal. Hybrid recordsmanagement in this sense embraces policies,procedures and staff training. But whatever itmeans, its looks as though it’s here to stay.

Despite the obvious advantages of hybrid recordsmanagement, there is a philosophical conflict atits heart that requires a complex configuration toovercome. No doubt, on a practical level at least,hybrid records management requires intellectualand physical control in the virtual and real worlds.

Finally, there are many solutions to hybrid recordsmanagement, particular to your organisationalcontext. As the contexts change and our skillsimprove, we can expect to see a Darwinianevolution in the scope and structure of hybridsystems. In the UK, I feel that we are still in theearly stages of development, and I look forward tonext year’s Conference to see how the hybridpioneers among our membership are addressingthese challenges.

Let me leave you with a provocative thought fromStephen Harries: “Working electronically andattempting to manage paper records is not a viablelong-term strategy”. 16

References

1 Horsman, P. ‘Through the looking glass: theintelligent management of hybrid record systems.’Records Management Bulletin 97 (June 2000): p16

2 Cambridge DictionariesOnline. Hp. 2002. Online.Available: <http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=hybrid*1+0>, 13 Sep 2002

3 BSI, BS ISO 15489 Information & documentation -Records Management. London: BSI, 2001.

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