A Framework for EDMS/ERMS Integration

Information Management Journal, Nov/Dec 2004 by Sprehe, J Timothy

Integrating electronic document management systems (EDMS) and electronic records management systems (ERMS) ensures records are designated as such and receive the special treatment and protection they deserve

Assume that an organization has decided it must have electronic records management systems (ERMS) capability. Records managers, information technology (IT) managers, attorneys, and executives have examined the costs and benefits of continuing to keep records in physical format in the face of an exponential increase in electronic documents within the organization. They have experienced the staggering costs of discovery when faced with litigation. An emergency or disaster has impressed upon them the difficulty of recovering normal business operations when they depend on paper records alone.

With the decision made to acquire an ERMS, records managers, and IT managers confer and discover these basic realities:

1. Integration: An ERMS docs not generate records, for the most part. Records come from other applications in the organization. Assuming it has examined the marketplace and selected a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) ERMS, a key task will be to integrate it with systeins in which the organization's records are created and declared.

2. ERMS Standards: In the United States, the de facto ERMS standard is DoD 5015.2-STD, version 2, Design Criteria Standard for Electronic Records Management Applications. The Department of Defense (DoD) operates a testing and certification program for 5015.2 so that COTS vendors of ERMS can receive a multi-year certification attesting that their product meets the requirements of 5015.2. All federal agencies require 5015.2 in ERMS, as do many state agencies. Commer-cial enterprises have also widely adopted 5015.2. Other excellent ERMS standards exist, hut 5015.2 is currently predominant in the United States. In most contexts, 5015.2 ensures that purchasers acquire a product that contains certain basic records management functionality.

3. EDMS Standards: Standards for electronic document management systems (EDMS) are less formalized than ERMS standards. For example, ODMA - the Open Document Management API (applications program interface) - is an open, voluntary industry de facto standard. In practice, purchasers of EDMS/ERMS know what functionality they are getting with respect to ERMS but must look carefully at what a particular product means by EDMS. One EDMS product may have "thin" EDMS functionality and another may have "robust" EDMS functionality. Purchasers of EDMS products find themselves in much more of a "buyer beware" situation than do purchasers of 5015.2-certified ERMS products.

In the face of these realities, a group of interested individuals and organizations worked with AIIM International to form the C30 Standards Committee on Integrated EDMS/ERMS. The committee is comprised of representatives from ARMA International, federal agencies including the National Archives and Records Administration, representatives from software vendors and systems integration companies, and other interested parties.

From the beginning, the committee's larger ambition was to create functional requirements for the integration of ERMS with the full range of applications that make up enterprise content management (ECM). That is, the committee recognized that, within an enterprise, ERMS must be integrated with the full range of all IT applications that generate records, not just EDMS. In addition to EDMS and ERMS, a given enterprise's content management applications could include workflow, imaging, Web publishing, digital asset management, electronic forms management, and many other IT applications. Each of these IT applications may generate records that are destined for the organization's ERMS and so integration must occur between the applications and the ERMS.

Not wishing to spread its wings so far as to preclude a first flight, the C30 Committee restricted its work to EDMS/ERMS integration. On one hand, the committee believed that EDMS was the most common IT application to be integrated with ERMS. On the other hand, the committee hoped that, if it could arrive at functional requirements for EDMS/ERMS integration, those requirements could quite possibly be applied with some ease to other IT applications.

The committee began its work in pursuit of functional requirements that might constitute a formal standard. As work progressed, this goal appeared beyond the committee's immediate reach in large part because the applications technology is relatively new and has not achieved a satisfactory level of maturity. By the same reasoning, the committee abandoned for the time being the search for a comprehensive set of "best practices" in EDMS/ERMS integration.

In 2004, the committee completed its first technical report, Framework for Integration of Electronic Document Management Systems and Electronic Records Management Systems (ANS/AIIM/ARMA TR48-2004). For its first technical report, the committee settled on a framework that would set forth the basic conditions for EDMS/ERMS integration. The framework is by no means definitive or exhaustive. In disseminating its first technical report, the C30 committee is soliciting comments from interested parties that will assist it in extending its work.