Page 40 - FCW, August 2020

FCWPerspectives
The moving target
of electronic records
management
Agencies are working steadily toward the requirements of M-19-21, but new collaboration technologies come with new challenges
Under the requirements in
the Office of Management
and Budget’s M-19-21 memo, federal agencies must make
a full transition to electronic recordkeeping by the end of 2022, and the National Archives and Records Administration will stop accepting new paper records at that time. The shift is essential to making government more effective and efficient, but hitting the milestones in the memo will require agencies to fundamentally rethink how they process and manage documents and electronic content.
A little more than a year
into that process, FCW
gathered a group of records management specialists from across government to discuss what’s needed to make a true transition to electronic records management. The discussion was on the record but not for individual attribution (see page 43 for the list of participants), and the quotes have been edited for length and clarity. Here’s what the group had to say.
On track but lacking resources
Although the readiness level ranged widely from agency to agency, most participants said they were on track to meet the M-19-21 deadlines. Yet several expressed apprehension about NARA’s timing in finalizing the standards and protocols for the transfer of permanent records.
“My philosophy has been to use the available tools and resources at hand and get right up to the border of where the agency is ready to hand them off to NARA,” one official said. “And then when those standards come in, we can conform to fit...but at least we’re working toward the line rather than waiting until we get full guidance.”
But another said NARA “has been a good partner to the agencies” in developing the standards and “has given them enough feedback to now go down the right lanes of figuring out where the gaps are.”
Whether the tools and resources at hand are sufficient, however, is another matter. “There never are enough resources,” one official said. “We’ve got great resources to the extent that we have them,” referring to the staff and the record schedules that have been developed, but the work will outstrip them — and this year’s telework-driven embrace of
collaboration tools has only increased the degree of difficulty.
Dedicated funding for electronic records management has been difficult for most agencies to secure, although multiple participants said OMB is working to address that in the next budget cycle. For now, most said they are trying to weave the M-19- 21 efforts into other projects that do have funding.
“Piggybacking on other initiatives” is the name of the game, one said. “I find that if I tell them I’m here to fix their information pain, I get their attention very quickly. And then also emphasizing e-discovery and the ability to search for your records across any platform get people’s attention — maybe not leadership but certainly people who have a need and are willing to articulate it up the flagpole for me.”
Not enough staff, not the right skills
Human capital is proving to be the toughest resource to secure, multiple officials said, because employees with records expertise often lack the data and technology skills that are now required.
“I love my records management staff,” one said. “They’re fantastic. But they are not database people. They are not technologists.”
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August 2020 FCW.COM