Editorial

Citation

McLeod, J. (2013), "Editorial", Records Management Journal, Vol. 23 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/rmj.2013.28123aaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Records Management Journal, Volume 23, Issue 1

On 29 November 2012 the Leveson inquiry published its long awaited report after a year-long investigation into the role of the press and the police in the context of phone-hacking[1]. The British prime minister commissioned the inquiry in July 2011 in response to public outcry following reports that the mobile phone of a teenager, murdered almost a decade earlier, had been hacked by someone from News International’s newspaper the News of the World. Chaired by Lord Justice Leveson, the Inquiry’s purpose was twofold: to investigate precisely what had been happening, and to make recommendations for change. The report addresses the first part of the Inquiry which “examined the culture, practices and ethics of the press and, in particular, the relationship of the press with the public, police and politicians”[1]. The second part will not begin until police investigations and any related criminal proceedings are complete. One person has already been prosecuted and been given a prison sentence[2].

Apparently this is the seventh time in less than 70 years that the British government has commissioned an inquiry into with concerns about the press[3]. Will it be the last? Perhaps it is idealistic to think it will be and that the lessons learned will effect lasting positive change. It would be good for democracy, for those directly affected and for tax payers, who ultimately pay the price of such expensive, long running investigations.

Speaking at the opening of the inquiry’s hearings, Lord Justice Leveson said: “The press provides an essential check on all aspects of public life. That is why any failure within the media affects all of us. At the heart of this Inquiry, therefore, may be one simple question: who guards the guardians?”[4]. Over a year later, speaking when its report was published, he said: “I know how vital the press is – all of it – as guardian of the interests of the public, as a critical witness to events, as the standard bearer for those who have no-one else to speak up for them. Nothing in the evidence I have heard or read has changed that view. The press, operating freely and in the public interest, is one of the true safeguards of our democracy. As a result, it holds a privileged and powerful place in our society. But this power and influence carries with it responsibilities to the public interest in whose name it exercises these privileges”[5]. Whilst the Inquiry identified that those responsibilities had been ignored many times, and the Press Complaints Commission had failed to keep the press to their responsibilities, nevertheless the recommendation was that what is needed “is a genuinely independent and effective system of self-regulation of standards, with obligations to the public interest”[5]. Lord Justice Leveson makes it very clear that such a system must be independent of the industry (i.e. the press), of government and of politicians and thereby answers the question at the heart of the Inquiry about who guards the guardians.

This inquiry was not about information or records management, it was about the press, the police and politicians, their relationships and their conduct. So why feature it in this editorial? Two reasons. First it was about how those people gathered, shared and used information, and second, it gathered a vast amount of evidence from a wide range of people (over 300 witnesses provided evidence in person and a similar number gave statements) and from many documents, records and emails. Much of this is available via the inquiry website.

Curious to know what had been said about records, I read the executive summary though not the entire report – it runs to nearly 2000 pages. The summary contains the words “record” or “records” 19 times altogether including twice in the phrase “record keeping” and four times in the phrase “off-the-record”. On one occasion the report refers to the use of the records of a private detective as being “entirely fortuitous” and that had that person “been less assiduous with record keeping, what has now been uncovered would have remained unknown”[6]. The term “off-the-record” is always used in the context of briefings between the press and the police. Whilst the Inquiry found that “such briefings can operate in the public interest, particularly in the context of a relationship of trust between individual journalists and police officers” the “perception that certain journalists were favoured with information in exchange for hospitality or other tangible benefits” contributed to the conclusion that this term “should be discontinued”[6] and replaced by other clearly defined briefing types that would cast no doubt as to their nature. In the full report there are over 500 occurrences of either the word “record” or “record(s)” – some relating to types of records (criminal, medical, financial, personal and business) and others referring to telephone records or other electronic records.

As with other major Government inquiries in the UK (e.g. the Hutton inquiry[7], the Hillsborough inquiry[8]) and elsewhere, records have been used to expose and/or provide evidence of inappropriate practice and/or decisions by both individuals and organisations. One of the questions all of this raises, that is relevant for our profession, is the issue of information behaviour. Information behaviour goes beyond the scope of information seeking, i.e. identifying information needs, finding information to satisfy those needs and then using that information, which has a long history of research in the library science context. It also encompasses communication and information sharing. It is related to human behaviour and communication behaviour and I believe is an area our profession needs to explore further and understand in greater depth. What is it that causes people to continue to obtain information by “devious” or inappropriate means? What is it that causes people to continue to send inappropriate emails that evidence inappropriate behaviour? How can we educate the creators and users of information in the digital domain, where “delete” is not always easy to achieve, about their rights, responsibilities and the implications of their actions? All of these questions and no doubt many more relate to information culture and organisational culture. It is therefore either timely or similarly entirely fortuitous that one of the articles in this issue concerns information and organisational culture.

Trudy Wright from McGill University examines information culture in a regulated public sector environment and specifically explores the relationship between records management training and self-perceptions of competency and compliance with records management. She used Curry and Moore’s information culture model to assess information culture in one Canadian government ministry and concluded that whilst there was a potentially positive relationship between formal training and compliance with its records management programme, it was difficult to identify any holistic influence of the training on the organisation’s information culture. What would be interesting is a future follow-up to see if recommendations made around training and participative leadership were adopted and influenced the attitudes and behaviours of staff in the ministry, how and why.

Two of the other articles in this issue have links to information culture though that is not their primary focus. Both are viewpoints on approaches to managing records and offer suggestions for moving forward.

Dr Gillian Oliver, Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Information Management, and colleagues Frank Upward, Joanne Evans and Barbara Reed based in Melbourne and Sydney respectively, present “recordkeeping informatics” as a way forward for the archives and records management professions which they unequivocally say is a discipline in crisis. In crisis because of the chaos that has developed due to the breakdown of recordkeeping processes in the complex digital context. They have observed “a growing disconnection between the needs of employers at business, government and communal levels and what records managers and archivists have been delivering.” Embracing complexity they see as an absolute requirement – something I find particularly interesting as I have been working with a colleague looking at records management from a complexity science perspective. The recordkeeping informatics approach they offer is one based on the records continuum concept and recordkeeping metadata alongside understanding organisational culture (the culture link), business process analysis and archival access. (Depending on your interpretation of archival access, for those organisations that feel it is not a major issue the latter may not be a major consideration) it is essentially focused on processes, systems, actions rather than the records per se. They make some very interesting observations about organisational culture, referring back to what, in its time, was one of the management books every middle/senior executive was reading – Peters and Waterman’s “In search of excellence: lessons from America’s best-run companies” – at least in the company I worked for at the time, but then it was one of the companies featured in the book! One observation from the book is that excellent companies do not have strong information, or documentation, cultures! Despite this, and for good reason, they believe that “respect for recordkeeping”, is important and familiar but they highlight that a less familiar issue is understanding people’s preferences which manifest themselves in information behaviours – a nice link to the issues I raised earlier. Gillian and colleagues raise many other interesting points and provide much food for thought. I hope they inspire some of our readers to respond with their own reflections on what our profession needs to do to remain relevant in the complex digital arena.

Staying with viewpoints and the theme of moving forward, Catherine Hare, former joint editor and now a valuable member of the journal’s Editorial Advisory Board, offers another approach. This is based on the memo signed by US President Obama in 2011 called “Managing government records” which states that “proper records management is the backbone of open government” – can there be a clearer statement and higher level endorsement for records management? Catherine briefly traces the development of this programme against the backdrop of the financial crisis and spending cuts and then considers the actions it demands. These include a Records Management Directive that requires government agency heads “to take specific steps to reform and improve records management policies within their agency”. She analyses this approach, noting there is nothing very new in it, and reflects on its potential wider application beyond the US government and even the public sector, to direct and measure records management activities and act as a benchmark. A short document she believes that lessons can be learned from reading it.

Our final contribution comes from James Lowry who works for the International Records Management Trust (IRMT). He reports on some of the results of a research project he and colleagues conducted about the integration of records management in relation to new information and communication technology, e-government and freedom of information initiatives in East Africa. James provides a high level analysis of the data collected from three countries – Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania – which contrasts with the US example in Catherine Hare’s article as it reveals the lack of awareness of records management among senior staff. James’ article is a start reminder of the different stages of development in parts of the globe and the active development in East Africa to develop their digital infrastructures and the opportunities this provides in terms of building in recordkeeping processes from the beginning. The data from this project is original and it’s is good to see the willingness to share it through publication.

This issue also includes a book review contributed by a new author for the journal. Base in Leicestershire County Council’s Strategic Information and Technology group Stephen Curtis is in an ideal position to review Stephen Harries’ book Records Management and Knowledge Mobilization which explores the role of records management in today’s public sector organisations. The book explores themes that run through some of the articles in this issue – the relevance of records management and the approach taken, the tension between rules based approaches and the innovative, agile nature of the modern workplace. A n excellent review of a fascinating book.

I would like to encourage others to contact us if they are interested in reviewing new publications and what topics are of interest. It is a very good way to start to publish. I hope that this issue contains something for everyone and that it promotes reflection, discussion and debate which could form the basis of future articles from some of our readers.

Julie McLeod

Notes

1. 1.

   “The Leveson inquiry: culture, practice and ethics of the press”, available at: www.levesoninquiry.org.uk

2. 2.

   BBC News. “April Casburn jailed for News of the World leak offer”, 1 February 2013, available at: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21292338

3. 3.

   Remarks by Lord Justice Leveson, 29 November 2012, available at: www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Remarks-by-Lord-Justice-Leveson-29-November-2012.pdf

4. 4.

   “The Leveson inquiry. Background”, available at: www.levesoninquiry.org.uk

5. 5.

   Remarks by Lord Justice Leveson, 29 November 2012, available at: www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Remarks-by-Lord-Justice-Leveson-29-November-2012.pdf

6. 6.

   “Leveson Report: Executive Summary”, p. 13, available at: www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/hc1213/hc07/0779/0779.pdf

7. 7.

   “The Hutton inquiry: investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly”, 2003, available at: http://hutton.dracos.co.uk/

8. 8.

   The original Hillsborough Inquiry chaired by Lord Justice Taylor and the more recent findings of the later independent panel Hillsborough The Report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, September 2012, availabel at: http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/