As we go through the experiences of collaborating to allow successful compliance testing of a vendor’s product, we also gather information that is used to determine what should be included as the standard evolves. Our goal is to not make RM a stand-alone niche or to stand passively by while technology roars ahead. We want to ensure that proper documentation of our national experience is captured for future generations to use when they are trying to extricate themselves from situations we’ve (inadvertently) caused. We also want to ensure that temporary useful stuff is identified, captured, protected, exploited and at the end of its usefulness, removed from the legal (and physical) world.
When dealing with tangible objects, this is much easier. One cannot “zip” the Rosetta stone to save space. So, important things are identified and preserved and non-important things are either purposely destroyed, recycled or dumped into a midden (landfill) to rot.
With intangible objects, we still have issues of accumulation to address, but we also have a significantly faster rot cycle. So, we have to be conscious of protecting and refreshing those things we want to keep, as well as removing rotting bits from the search sphere so they don’t interfere with effective knowledge management. We also need to remove rotting bits because they take up space and processing cycles, and they clog bandwidth.
Just because we “can” archive petabytes of bits, does not mean that we “should.” We need to save enough information to allow future generations to unwind the mess, but not so much they spend lifetimes digging through it to find the one thing that will matter. We should be smart enough to know how to tell the difference.Janamg 16:28, 10 June 2009 (BST)
“We also need to remove rotting bits because they take up space and processing cycles, and they clog bandwidth” — true, but there are requirements in the Federal Records Act and comparable state records laws that need to be follow to do this legally.
Yes, indeed, there are. The CFRs and other Federal governance documents are constraints that we work within as we evolve the DoD guidance documents.
We have legal precedence concerning email about the immutability of bits as well as the idea that the “original” record must be preserved. I think we need clarification from Congress to help us better manage our non-tangible records.
Are you the one who Twitters as @DoD501502STD ?
Have you added your thoughts on what Congress needs to do to help with this issue to the GovLoop wiki on Policy that Hinders? (I’d give you a link, but I’m a work and that part of GovLoop is blocked for some reason.)
I twitter as @501502std. I will check out the wiki when I get back to work on Monday Thank You!