The 2002 update

by Michael Steemson

The international records management standard, ISO15489, has taken the recordkeeping world by storm.  In mid-2002, a Mandarin Chinese translation joined the world versions of the document, making the guide one of the ISO’s most successful since publication of its 9000 series of quality codes in the 1990’s

Concurrently, ISO15489 was accepted as the new Australian Records Management standard, called AS ISO15489, replacing the nation’s original 1996 ground-breaking guide, AS4390, on which the international code was itself based.  Then, the National Archives of Australia adopted the standard as its recordkeeping benchmark.

The ISO work has also been issued as a British Standard, BSI ISO15489, and translated into Dutch, German and French.  In North America, commentators have given the code a rousing reception. A Canadian consultant called it a “milestone in records management history” and ARMA International’s Standards Committee has adopted a project for the “implementation of ISO15489 in the United States”.  

The new standard was published in October 2001 in two parts:

ISO 15489-1:2001 Information and documentation — Records management — Part 1: General, of 20 pages, and

• ISO/TR 15489-2:2001Information and documentation — Records management — Part 2: Guidelines, of 40 pages.

The second part, the “Guidelines”, is commonly referred to as the “Technical Report”, the meaning of the “TR” in its catalogue number.

Canadian launch

 The standard was launched with colourful ceremony at the ARMA International conference in the Palais des Congrès de Montréal (the Montreal Convention Centre), Canada, on October 3, 2001, before an impressive group of august world archives and records officials including U.S. Deputy Archivist Lew Bellardo, Marilyn Osborne, the Director-General of the Government Records Branch at the National Archives of Canada, ARMA International President, Terry Coan, and Australian consultant David Moldrich, the ISO authoring committee chairman.

British Keeper of Public Records, Sarah Tyacke, joined the ceremony in a live video link from a U.K. government recordkeeping conference in Stratford-on-Avon, England, and welcomed the new standard.  She praised it as providing a “strategic and holistic approach to the management of records that senior managers can understand”.

Within weeks, the English-language standard and guidelines were available for delivery as hard copy or on-line as Abode Acrobat .PDF files from the ISO webstore in Geneva[1] and from Standards Australia’s Sydney headquarters[2].   Other standards authorities followed with the English version and translations. 

Three years’ hard labour

The standard had taken three years hard work by an ISO sub committee, designated TC46 SC11[3], with members from a world wide community including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United States and other nations.

Details of the work’s early stages are described in my 1999 paper ISO15489: It’s a vital number: Better remember it!  The standard’s completion is detailed in ISO15489: Set it to music. You’re gonna need it, and the Technical Report development outlined in World taken by surprise: Nations agree on “how to’s”.

In addition to the founding AS4390 Australian Standard, a total 317 international documents were reviewed by SC11 at intense, three-day conferences held in Athens, Berlin, Paris, Melbourne and Stockholm.  Chairman David Moldrich told the launch audience the writing job could probably have been done in six months but acceptance of the document by the world-wide community required “long discussion, much compromise, many journeys and many, many cups of coffee”.

And it worked!  Conference delegate Lynne Bower, an information management worker with the Sussex Rural Community Council, in the south of England, overheard a German visitor at the launch saying that ISO15489 “will have considerable impact  …  it will provide a solid base on which to build”.  And a Swede thought it would “give those fumbling in the dark something to hang onto and follow”.[4]

New Australian standard

Nations are adopting the standard and turning it into their own, but Australia has taken it further to heart than many other communities.   A week after the Montreal launch, Australian recordkeepers held their own introduction conference in Melbourne.  Then, in April 2002, just six years after publication of its original, world-beating AS4390 standard, Standards Australia released its new code, designated AS ISO15489. 

Costing more than twice its predecessor, it nonetheless under-cut the International Standards Organisation’s version by almost two-thirds. It differed from the ISO guide only by the addition of a preface explaining Australian terminological variations like “recordkeeping systems” for “records systems” and  ”disposal” for “disposition”.

Three months later, the National Archives of Australia (NAA) gave the standard  “formal endorsement”, describing it as “a high-level statement of principles and policy”.  The NAA Director for Recordkeeping Standards and Policy, Adrian Cunningham, announced: “In conjunction with the formal endorsement, the Archives is progressively updating its standards, guidelines, training courses and other recordkeeping products to acknowledge the new Standard. As with AS 4390 before it, AS ISO 15489 provides the essential conceptual foundation for the Archives’ e-permanence suite of best practice recordkeeping standards, policies and guidelines.”[5]

Standards Australia had withdrawn the original standard, with its useful policy and procedure models, to the annoyance of some Australian users aware of those guides and mindful of AS4390’s place in the history of recordkeeping history as the world’s first modern records management standard.

The missing guides include the Storage Requirements Assessment Checklist, an example of a Storage Requirements Assessment Worksheet, Contents of a Model Disaster Response Plan, and Environmental Conditions and Safety Standards for the Storage of Records in the Australian Government, all from AS 4390 Part 6: Storage.  AS ISO 15489 covers storage requirements, but in less detail than AS 4390.

Standards Australia’s Committee on Records Management, IT-021, is currently examining these to determine whether they should be retained in some other form. Standards Australia has set up a Technical Committee on Records Management Compliance, IT-021-5, to develop a companion document to the new standard to provide practical measures for monitoring and auditing compliance. The “compliance standard” should be available in 2003.

Chinese Initiatives

The Mandarin Chinese translation was written by a member of the teaching staff at the Archives College of Beijing’s Renmin University of China, Associate Professor Dr An Xiaomi[6], and one of her Masters degree students, Ms Hourian Jiao.

Dr An said later: “We began the work after we bought it from our Standards Bureau, it took us about three months to finish the translations. It is now nationally promoted through a national magazine.  I have used the standard for teaching the course, Scientific and Technical Records and their Management, and for guiding my MA students, five of whose theses will deal with issues concerning the implications and implementations of ISO 15489 and the quality accreditation of records and records management in the environment of business, construction, foreign companies, etc.”

Dr An, who gained a PhD in archival studies at the Liverpool University Centre for Archival Studies (LUCAS), England, last year, plans a book, Best Practice Standards for Managing Urban Development Records and Quality Accreditation, based on ISO15489.

The British way

The British have done much the same as Australia. The British Standards Institution (BSI) has published the standard as BSI ISO15489.  It has been selling well.   It has already prepared a three-part “public document” (PD) guide to the standard, PD 0025 Effective records management. [7]  The three parts, the last of which was due for publication during the Northern Summer, are: 

• Part 1: A management guide to the value of BS ISO 14589-1;
• Part 2: Practical implementation of BS ISO 15489-1;
• Part 3: Measuring performance in records management programmes

United States of America

North American commentators have given the code a rousing reception.  In a 2001 edition of the ARMA International’s Information Management Journal, Canadian consultant, James C. Connelly, director of Connelly Consulting in St Albert, Alberta, called it “truly a milestone in records management history”.[8]

And U.S. Zasio Enterprises vice-president, David O. Stephens, wrote: “Those who have labored mightily for so long to make it a reality deserve undying admiration and gratitude.”[9]

ARMA International and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) lead the U.S. delegation of the SC11 committee.  In mid-2002, ARMA’s Standards Committee launched a project for the “implementation of ISO15489 in the United States”, part of a new drive for greater awareness of RM standards and guidelines in the republic.  

German project

The German standards authority, DIN (Deutsches Institut für Normung)[10], was due to publish a German language edition, DIN ISO15489-1. Information und Dokumentation – Schriftgutverwaltung (Records Management) – Teil 1: Allgemeines in July 2002. The translators lead by Dr Michael Wettengel, head of electronic archives, Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archives), and Dr Nils Brübach, Senior Lecturer, Archivschule, Marburg University, were working on the Guidelines ISO/TR 15489-2. Information und Dokumentation – Schriftgutverwaltung – Teil 2: Richtlinien (Guidelines).

French version

The French AFNOR[11] (Association Française de Normalisation), has published it in French. The standard is described as NF ISO 15489-1. Information et documentation – “Records management” – Partie 1: principes directeurs and the Technical Report becomes FD ISO/TR 15489-2. Information et documentation – “Records management” – Partie 2: guide pratique.  Both French and English versions are available on-line from AFNOR in hard copy or electronic formats.

Netherlands translation

The Netherlands institute, NEN (Nederlands Normalisatie-instituut)[12], has produced a Dutch translation called NEN-ISO 15489-1:2001 nl — Informatie en documentatie; Informatie- en archiefmanagement; Deel 1: Algemeen.  Dutch Government archivist and records manager Hans Hofman translated the work.

_____________

 Details of the work’s early stages are described in my 1999 paper ISO15489: It’s a vital number: Better remember it!  The standard’s completion is detailed in ISO15489: Set it to music. You’re gonna need it and the Technical Report development outlined in World taken by surprise: Nations agree on “how to’s”.

_____________

Footnotes 

ISO Webstore, Geneva: http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/ISOstore/store.html.

Standards Australia: http://www.standards.com.au.

ISO TC46 SC11:  ISO’s Technical Committee number 46 (Information and documentation), Sub-Committee number 11 (records management).

Bower, Lynne. “ARMA 2001: An information odyssey”, Records Management Bulletin. Issue 105, pp 19-23, 40. (Records Management Society, London, December 2001). Email: lynne.bower@srcc.org.uk .

National Archives of Australia endorsement details, see Archives Advice 58

Dr An Xiaomi, Associate professor, Archives College, University of Renmin, Beijing, China.

British Standards Institution standard and PD details: http://www.bsi-global.com/DISC/Working+Withyou/busprocs.xalter

Connelly, James C., “The New International Records Management Standard: its content and how it can be used”, Information Management Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3, pp 26-36. (ARMA International, Kansas, July 2001). Email: jim@cccrecords.com.

Stephens, David O., “The World’s First International Records Management Standard”, Information Management Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3, pp 68-70. (ARMA International, Kansas, July 2001).

Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN).  German federal standards authority. URL: http://www2.din.de/.

Association Française de Normalisation (AFNOR ).  French national standards authority. URL: http://www.afnor.fr/Portail/portail.asp.

Nederlands Normalisatie-instituut (NEN).  The Dutch national standards authority.  URL: http://www.nni.nl/. 

Tags: development, ISO15489, RM, standards