What will be the next records management orthodoxy?

Abstract

Purpose The electronic document and records management system model (EDRMS) served for most of the noughties (the decade from the year 2000) as an orthodoxy that united the records management profession. The purpose of this paper is to address two questions: “Does the stagnation and retreat of the EDRMS model towards the end of the noughties call into doubt the theory that lay behind that model, namely DIRKS and the records continuum?”, and “Is a new records management orthodoxy likely to emerge over the course of the next five years, and if so what form might it take?”. Design/methodology/approach The paper looks back at the author's readings of DIRKS and the records management continuum at different times over the period 1993‐2010, and links those readings with the prevailing fortunes of the EDRMS model that was build on top of that theory. It gives a personal perspective of a consultant/practitioner on the chances of a new records management orthodoxy arising in the course of the next five years. Findings The loss of momentum of the EDRMS model does not invalidate the insights of DIRKS and the records continuum. Both frameworks support alternative readings from those that underpinned the EDRMS model. But any future orthodoxy is likely to be less directly derived from theory. One possible future orthodoxy is the “records repository model” – where a business classification scheme is held in a back end system, and applied to content held in the various applications used by colleagues. However this model has not yet received sufficient practitioner attention, and there are unanswered questions as to how it would work in practice. Originality/value The paper looks at the ways in which the records management community has used orthodoxies in both theory and implementation models to keep itself united during an extended period of upheaval and change since the commencement of the networked digital age. It outlines the challenge of finding a records management orthodoxy that is both consistent with record keeping theory and also workable and sustainable in the rapidly changing world of enterprise computing.

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