Co-Design of Information Systems with Digital Records Management

A Proposal for Research

Sherry L. Xie

Key Laboratory of Data Enginerring and Knowledge Engineering, Ministry of Education, Beijing, China

Center for Electronic Records Management Research, Beijing, China

School of Information Resource Management, Renmin Univeristy of China,

59 Zhonguancun Ave, Beijing, China

Keywords: Information System, Business Process Management, Records Management, Design Science.

Abstract: This position paper, via rationalizing the potentials of carrying out a carefully crafted research project,

argues that the three fields of enterprise information system, business process management, and digital

records management should join forces in serving the needs of organizations, regardless of their types. By

preliminary findings uncovered during the conceiving process of the project, it advocates that the best point

of convergence is the design phase, a basic step for all of the three fields and an increasingly critical one in

today’s digital environment.

1 INTRODUCTION

Information systems (ISs), business process

management (BPM), and digital records

management (DRM) are typically viewed as

independent fields, albeit in the context of

enterprises/organizations, they cross paths in more

than one ways. Aiming at exploring the relationships

between and among these fields, a research project

was conceived to identify the most efficient and

effective manner regarding their collaboration. This

paper introduces the conceiving process of the

project, along with the researcher’s (earlier) belief

that the best way of serving organization needs is to

consolidate the needs of business process, enterprise

information system, and digital records management

at the stage of (re-)design.

2 BACKGROUND IN KEY

CONCEPTS

This section illustrates concepts key to the conceived

project, in a way that also serves the purpose of

providing the necessary background information of

this paper.

2.1 Records

Records have been the subject of scientific study

since the 17th century and had gone through phases

of being associated with the fields of diplomatics,

jurisprudence, history, archival science (Duranti,

1996) and records management (see, for example,

Schellenberg, 1956). Each field studied records with

distinctive focuses, for instance, diplomatics focuses

on record authenticity, jurisprudence on record

evidentiary quality, history on records traceability of

historical figures and events, and archival science

including records management on record(s) creation,

maintenance, and use. As a result, the characteristics

of records were historically articulated variously.

As a common construct in our modern society,

records have been defined by a variety of societal

actors such as legislative/regulatory bodies,

professional associations, and cultural institutions.

For instance, the United States Federal law defines

records in relation to the operation of the US Federal

Government (2006 Edition), the ARMA

International (2007) defines records with

considerations for the diverse nature of its member

organizations, and the Library and Archives Canada

(2004) defines records under the guidance of the

country’s documentary heritage framework. These

definitions are typically worded differently,

reflecting the different yet legitimate purposes that

they were intended to serve. This makes the

222

Xie, S..

Co-Design of Information Systems with Digital Records Management - A Proposal for Research.

In Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2015) - Volume 3: KMIS, pages 222-228

ISBN: 978-989-758-158-8

common construct rather a complex concept in terms

of abstracting or generalizing its defining features

from practical usages for disciplinary developments.

As a result, the characteristics of records are

currently articulated variously, and research on the

concept of record has been ongoing (see, for

example, Reed, 2005; Yeo, 2007, Xie, 2013). For

the purpose of this paper, two definitions of records

are selected and analyzed as its communication

reference:

• records are documents created in the course of

conducting practical activities and set aside for

future actions or references (Duranti, 1994, 1998,

2002; Duranti and Thibodeau, 2006 ), and

• records are information created, received, and

maintained as evidence and information by an

organization or person, in pursuance of legal

obligations or in the transaction of business” (ISO

15489, 2001)

The ISO 15489 is the first international standard

on records and their management, and its definition

on records represents a comparatively high level of

consensus on the subject internationally. These two

definitions, therefore, are representative of the

concept of record, from which the most fundamental

characteristics (MFC) of records can be extracted

despite of the different wordings. Two MFCs are

identified as directly relevant to the inquiry of this

study, and they are:

MFC1. records are a special type of information

(indicated by the terms “documents” and

“information”), and

MFC2. records possess inherent and inseparable

ties with human activities (indicated by the terms

“practical activities”, “pursuance of legal

obligations”, and “ transaction of business”)

The concept of information in this context refers

to data presented in readily comprehensible form to

which meaning has been attributed within the

context of its use (Reitz, 2015), and data refers to

words or figures representing a specific concept or

object (ISO/IEC 2382-1, 1999; US, 2005, 20123;

ARMA International, 2007, 2012 ; Reitz, 2015).

Other terms in the definitions and the MFPs are used

with their commonly understood meanings (i.e., face

meanings) unless definitions are provided elsewhere

in this paper (note please, some of the terms, e.g.,

“set aside” and “evidence”, will be researched on

during the process of this project for establishing

their disciplinary relevant meanings).

2.2 Digital Records (DR)

Digital records are records in digital formats. Digital

records are previously called machine-readable

records and electronic records due to the changing

understanding of the nature of the technologies

involved in their productions and existences. In this

paper, the terms digital records and electronic

records are both used because the former presents an

accurate description and the latter, unlike machine-

readable records, are currently still existing in many

important research findings, thus difficult to be

bypassed. The term “digital formats” in the

definition are derived from digital technologies,

which, in this paper, encompass any technologies

that are relied on or related to digital computation.

Digital records were initially considered as only a

special type of records but increasingly, with the

now almost ubiquitous use of digital technologies,

have become the dominant type of records. Even

though no organizations have so far made for their

working environments completely paperless, many

organizational functions start indeed operating in an

entirely digital manner. As indicated by the manner

by which digital records are defined, the

international records community holds the consensus

that digital formats do not change the nature, i.e., the

MFCs, of records, but only give rise to issues and

challenges with respect to their management (United

Nations, 1989; International Council on Archives,

1997; ISO 15489, 2001; ARMA International, 2012;

InterPARES, 2010; ICA-InterPARES, 2012). Given

the fact that the issues and challenges associated

with digital records were firstly and predominantly

exposed in organizations and that the exposure is

identified as the backdrop framing the conceived

project – digital records thereby refers to only those

that are created in organizations.

2.3 Information Systems (ISs)

The term information systems, like records, does not

have a universally accepted definition and unlike

records, it lacks consistency in expression.

According to the Subject Headings developed by the

Library of Congress, the term information systems is

identified as a variant of the term management

information systems (MIS), which is the authorized

entry. In this paper, however, the term information

systems is chosen to be used for the purpose of

being consistent with the name of the Association

for Information Systems (AIS), a highly regarded

organization which publishes the prestigious

Management Information Systems Quarterly

(MISQ), MIS Quarterly Executive, and the Journal

of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS).

The Association, however, does not provide a

Co-Design of Information Systems with Digital Records Management - A Proposal for Research

223

definition for IS or ISs, and definitions for IS, as a

search for an authoritative IS definition revealed,

abound. In one of the recent PhD dissertations on IS,

at least 36 IS definitions were identified, all with a

certain type of authority, and they collectively cover

a group of five views of technology, society,

technology-society, modeling, and process (Boell,

2013). For the purpose of this paper, the definition

for MIS provided by Gordon Davis in his 1974 book

is chosen to be the definition for IS:

[An IS] is an integrated, man/machine system for

providing information to support the operation,

management, and decision-making functions in an

organization. The system utilizes computer hardware

and software, manual procedures, management and

decision models, and a data base (p. 3).

This book, entitled Management Information

Systems: Conceptual foundations, Structure, and

Development, is recognized by the AIS as the

“bible” for the ISs field, and a preliminary analysis

on this definition and the 36 definitions for

information systems suggests, in a rather clear

manner, its currency despite of the seemingly

obsolete usages of the terms of “man/machine” and

“data base”. This definition covers indeed all of the

five views. More importantly, the ideas conveyed by

the definition shows solid relevance to the focus of

the conceived research, i.e., digital records in

organizations.

Closely related to information systems is the

discipline of business process management (BPM),

considered a field with roots in both the

management science and computer science and one

that has matured. At the center of BPM is the notion

of a process model, which aims to capture the

different ways in which a case (i.e., an instance of a

process) can be dealt with. Modeling typically relies

on notations, which are used to describe ordered

activities. The modeling of business processes not

only sets up the stage for business analysis,

refinement, what-if stimulation, etc., but also serves

the purpose of configuring information systems.

Information systems need to be configured and

driven by precise instructions in order to achieve

expected higher productivity. In the context of the

conceived project, both the control flow perspective

(i.e., modeling the order of activities) and the data

perspective (i.e., modeling decisions, data creation,

forms, etc.) of BPM are relevant and will be

instructive for data interpretation. The relationships

among the key concepts and ideas can be illustrated

as follows:

Figure 1: High Level Relationship between DR & ISs.

3 THE CEIVING LOGIC

3.1 Relevant Research

Research on digital records has been going on for

over forty years since the time when the National

Archives and Records Administration of the United

States of America (NARA) first started its inquiry.

In brief, the term “digital formats” in the definition

of digital records accounts solely for the

international interest in digital records research,

which has created not only unprecedented intensity

in the history of records but also continued

momentum. The characteristics of digital

technologies, as even life experiences can tell, are

penetrating, i.e., they impact almost all aspects of

human activities, complex, i.e., they entail

specializations in both academic development and

practical application, and volatile, i.e., they evolve

rapidly. The intricacy of digital technologies,

therefore, gives intricacy to digital records in a direct

manner. Within the framework of organizational

operation, digital technologies manifest themselves

typically in the form of ISs, which was encountered

as challenges by researchers on digital records from

the very beginning. From the early 1980s till now,

the challenges with ISs were researched on by the

United Nations’ task force on electronic records

management, the UBC-MAS project (Canada), the

Pittsburgh Electronic Records Requirement project

(US), the AC+erm (UK), the Electronic Health

Records project (Australia), the InterPARES project,

etc. In particular, research has focused on functional

requirements for electronic/digital records

management system design, which were led by the

US Department of Defence (subsequently joined

force with NARA), the InterPARES project, the

National Archives of Australia, the National

KMIS 2015 - 7th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing

224

Archives of the United Kingdom, the European

Union, and the International Council on Archives

(ICA). A sizable body of knowledge has been

generated including conceptual frameworks (e.g.,

the InterPARES Terminology Database with key

concepts ontologies), models (e.g., the OAIS

Model), specifications (e.g., the EU MoReq

specification), and standards (e.g., DoD5015.2 and

ISO 16175 1-3).

A preliminary analysis of all these findings and

products indicates that the existing research needs to

be much strengthened in the area of in-depth

collaboration with ISs

professionals charged with

ISs design. The idea of working with ISs

professionals is not an entirely new one as the

existing research has long been advocating

organizational Digital Records Management (DRM)

personnel’s communications with IT personnel.

However, this call is largely limited to the design

and implementation of digital records management

system (DRMS), a special type of ISs, and not all of

the ISs implemented in organizations for operational

purposes. The noticeable exceptions are the

InterPARES project, ISO 16175-3, and EU DLM

Forum. By its second phase (2002-2007), the

InterPARES

project had produced a comprehensive

model on digital records management (called the

COP Model), in which the ties between

recordkeeping systems (synonyms with ERMS) and

recordmaking systems, i.e., all the other ISs in

organizations, were logically established, and

mechanisms (i.e., policies and guidelines) for

implementing the COP Model were produced.

However, it is found, including by the third phase of

the InterPARES project (2008-2012), that the

application of this model was very challenging, due

mainly to the complexities of the various

organizational ISs. The ISO 16175-3 is a step further

from typical ERMS standards, which embraces the

idea of implementing DRM requirements within an

IS as opposed to exacting records from

recordmaking systems to recordkeeping systems. It,

however, only conceptualizes ISs (as in its term

“business systems”) and does not provide any

specifics on how to gain deep understandings of ISs,

let alone on how to collaborating with ISs

professionals at the stage of system design. The need

to gain deep understandings of ISs was made more

explicit by the EU DLM Forum, which, through its

MoReq 2010 Specification, stated that the next steps

of its efforts toward DRM are to

develop system

design requirements that are industry-specific. By

this view, ERMS will be designed with direct

relevance with ISs designed for the various business

functions, for instance, finance management, sales

management, marketing, education, healthcare, etc.

It is this researcher’s belief that this is the only

approach owning the potential of solving issues of

unreliable, inaccurate, inauthentic, untrustworthy,

inaccessible, and/or unusable digital records in the

increasing complex ISs environment, and one that

can bring success to all relevant fields.

3.2 Research Areas & Sample

Research Questions

A series of research areas and research questions can

be devised through analysing existing research

findings, which are listed in the following table:

Table 1: Research Areas and Research Questions.

Research Area Sample Research Question

C1. Organizational &

Managerial Theories

in today’s

environment

How are the established

organizational behavioural &

managerial theories impacting the

fields of ISs and DRM? For the

notion of ISs-DRM co-design, what

are the constructive factors and what

are the adverse ones?

C2. ISs design:

relationships with

organizational

operation;

methodologies;

current issues

How are ISs developed in

organizations and what role the

Design Science has played in the

development process? How can the

design of ISs take into considerations

of operational needs and records

quality requirements efficiently and

effectively?

C3. DRM:

relationships with

organizational

operation;

mechanisms; tools;

current issues

What knowledge of ISs is needed for

the DRM professionals to collaborate

with ISs professionals? To what

degree should they be equipped with

knowledge of ISs, of the Design

Science as it is applied in ISs

development?

C4. Relationships

between information

and DR (and other

tightly related

concepts such as data,

information resource,

authenticity, integrity,

evidence,

organizational

memory,

accountability,

responsibility, etc.)

Is there a need to rigorously defining

these concepts? What are the benefits

if defined and what are the

consequences if not?

How can they be defined, if the

benefits of defining prevail, with

maximum usage/application

friendliness?

C5. Relationships

between ISs and

DRM

What role can organizational

dynamics play with ISs-DRM co-

design?

C6. Role of Design

Science (DS) in ISs

development

Can ISs developments be balanced

with operational productivity and

legal compliance as represented by

quality records?

Co-Design of Information Systems with Digital Records Management - A Proposal for Research

225

Table 1: Research Areas and Research Questions(Cont.).

C7. Impact of DS on

ISs-DRM co-design

How the relevance of DR and DRM

developments is manifested in the

field of ISs and ISs design? Can types

of digital records be established by

the ISs-DRM co-design effort? Can

digital records be pre-determined

individually at the co-design stage?

C8. ISs-DRM co-

design theoretical

underpinnings

To what degree the theoretical

constructions in each field can be

integrated as a coherent whole in this

context of ISs-DRM co-design? What

are the user friendly manners by

which the integrated theories should

be articulated and presented?

C9. ISs-DRM

co-design

implementing

mechanisms

To what degree (or at which level of

the design process), can concrete

joints for ISs and DRM be identified

(when existing) or established (when

non-existing)?

The following figure demonstrates the high-level

logic that guided the conceiving of this project, with

the red Xs indicating the areas of issues requiring

research attention:

Figure 2: Research Conceiving Logic.

4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The methodological framework devised for this

project consists of the methods of systematic

literature review (SLR, also called evidence-based

literature review), case study (CS), business process

analysis (BPA), diplomatic analysis (DA), and

design principles for ISs analysis (DP-ISsA). Each

of the method serves a specific research need, and

for that need, it guides data collection and analysis.

SLR is needed to accommodate the interdisciplinary

nature of this project, which requires knowledge

from the 5 fields of organization behaviour,

management science, ISs, archival science, and

records management. By requiring a priori

identification of questions, SLR helps to narrow

down the scope of literature for examination and by

requiring being systematic, it ensures both relevance

and credibility of the knowledge extracted from the

analysis (hence the term evidence-based). This

method is expected to lay a solid foundation for the

next steps of the research.

The method of CS is needed because ISs is

commonly deployed in organizations and as

introduced above, ISs can be industry or function

specific. To select cases for in-depth analysis is the

only way to make a project like this manageable and

more importantly, to solve the problems that the

existent DRM research projects have failed to solve.

The selected cases provide boundaries for the

analyses that follow.

BPA, DA, and DP-ISsA are needed for boiling

down organizational missions and strategic goals to

concrete, executable requirements, for both the ISs

development and DR determination. These

requirements are the raw findings on which the final

research products, through integration and

abstraction, can be further developed. The following

diagram illustrates the relationships between the

components of the framework, in a simplified order

of execution (it’s simplified because many analytical

steps will overlap with each other and new types of

analyses may be needed with phase findings being

generated). The following figures illustrate the

chosen analytic frameworks and the overall

methodological framework for all the analyses

(omitting the one for SLR):

Figure 3: Business Entity Lifecycle Analysis (BELA)

(source: IBM).

KMIS 2015 - 7th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing

226

Figure 4: Ontology of Record for Diplomatic Analysis

(source: InterPARES).

Figure 5: Design Science Research Cycles for DP-ISA

(source: Hevner).

Figure 6: Methodological Framework.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Research on DRM in ISs environment has a

profound impact on the advancement of an

organization that relies on digital technologies.

Specifically, this project can contribute to advancing

both the fields of DRM and ISs, and to optimizing

operations of organizations. The field of ISs has long

been encountering the issues of satisfactorily

fulfilling the operational requirements of

organizations and the failures of ISs projects have

been widely noticed. ISs projects are typically

resources demanding and as such, are expected to

greatly enhanced productivity and to yield high ROI.

On an isolated view, ISs seems to be separable from

DRM, yet, from the viewpoint of the organization,

the collaborations between ISs and DRM is logically

the most effective way for organizations to achieve

the objectives of improving resources allocation,

streamlining business processes, detecting risks,

protecting rights and interest, being legally

compliant, and ultimately being competitively

advantaged, both locally and globally.

REFERENCES

ACerm Project Team. (2011). Accelerating positive

change in electronic records management. Retrieved

from http://acerm.blogspot.ca.

ARMA International. (2012). Glossary of records and

information management terms. http://www.arma.

org/standards/glossary/index.cfm?id_term=369.

Association for Information Systems. (2015). The AIS

eLibrary. http://aisnet.org/?AISeLibrary.

Boell, S. (2013). Theorizing information and information

systems (Doctoral dissertation). http://skb.unifind.

de/publications/2012_PHD-Boell-Theorizing_Informa

tion_and_Information_Systems.pdf.

Centre for Health Communication and Participation La

Trobe University, Australasian Cochrane Centre.

(2012). Systematic reviews. http://navigatingeffective

treatments.org.au/exploring_systematic_reviews_what

_authors_do.html.

Davis, G. B. (1974). Management information systems:

conceptual foundations, structure, and development.

McGraw-Hill, New York.

DLM Forum Foundation. (2015). About. http://

www.dlmforum.eu.

European Union. MoReq. Retrieved from http://

moreq2.eu.

Duranti, L. (1996). Archival Science. In A. Kent (Ed.),

Encyclopaedia of library and information science

(pp.1-19). New York: Marcel Dekker, INC.

Duranti, L. (2002). The Concept of electronic records. In

L. Duranti, T. Eastwood & H. MacNeil Preservation

of the integrity of electronic records (pp.9-20).

Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Duranti, L., & Thibodeau, K. (2006). The Concept of

record in interactive, experiential and dynamic

Co-Design of Information Systems with Digital Records Management - A Proposal for Research

227

environments: The view of InterPARES. Archival

Science, 6(1), 13-68.

Yeo, G. (2007). Concepts of Record (1): Evidence,

information, and persistent representations. American

Archivist, 70 (2), 315-43.

Hevner, A., & Chatterjee, S. (2010) . Design research in

information systems, theory and practice. New York:

Springer.

Hevner, A. (2007). A Three-cycle view of design science

research. Scandinavian Journal of Information

Systems, 19 (2), 87–92.

Prom, C. (2011). ICA guidelines and functional

requirements for electronic records management

systems. Retrieved from http://e-records.chris

prom.com/ica-guidelines-and-functional-requirements-

for-electronic-records-management-systems.

IBM. (2011). Match processes to business needs: Apply

BELA to case management How Business Entity

Lifecycle Analysis (BELA) enriches case management

solutions. www-01.ibm.com/software/solutions/soa/

newsletter/october11/images/BELA-fig_3.gif.

InterPARES Project. (2012). Terminology database.

interpares.org/ip2/ip2_terminology_db.cfm.

InterPARES Project. Diplomatic Analysis.

www.interpares.org/display_file.cfm?doc=ip3_templat

e_for_diplomatic_analysis.pdf.

InterPARES Project. (2015). InterPARES Trust. Retrieved

from http://interparestrust.org.

ISO 15489-1. (2001). Information and documentation –

Records management. Part 1: General.

ISO/IEC 2382 -1. (1999). Information technology –

Vocabulary.

Langer, A. M. (2007). Analysis and design of information

systems. New York: Springer.

Marco, M.D. (2012). Organizational systems: An

Interdisciplinary discourse. Berlin: Springer.

Object Management Group (2011). Business Process

Model and Notation (BPMN). OMG, Needham, Mass,

USA.

Reed, B. (2005). Records. In McKemmish, S (Ed.),

Archives: Recordkeeping in society (pp. 101-130).

Wagga Wagga NSW: Centre for Information Studies,

Charles Sturt University.

Reitz, J. M. (2014). ODLIS. www.abc-

clio.com/ODLIS/odlis_d.aspx#data.

Schellenberg, T. R. (1956; 1996). Modern archives:

Principles and techniques. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.

United Nations. (1989). The Role of archives and records

management in national information systems: A

RAMP study. United Nations: Paris.

USA. (2006). 44 U.S.C. Chapter 33. www.archives.

gov/about/laws/disposal-of-records.html.

USA. Federal Enterprise Architecture Program.(2013).

www.whitehouse.gov/omb/e-gov/fea.

Weske, M. (2007). Business process management:

concepts, languages, architectures, Springer-Verlag,

Berlin, Germany.

Wieringa, R.J. (2014). Design science methodologyfor

information systems and software engineering. Berlin:

Springer.

Winter, R. (2010). Global perspectives on design science

research Springer. St. Gallen, Switzerland.

Xie, L. (2013). The Nature of record and the IM crisis in

the Government of Canada University of British

Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

KMIS 2015 - 7th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing

228