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Brute Force vs. Organizational Approach: Records, Classification, and Search
While search technology has a role to play in the retrieval of records, organizations shouldn’t rely exclusively on those tools to do so.

Article Taken From September/October 2006 Edition of AIIM E-DOC Magazine

Emails, reports, case notes, invoices, Web pages, faxes, contracts, forms, customer records… they all spin around your organization. Some may be under control, others you may struggle to keep up with. Chances are that your document systems are not all connected. You probably have separate filing systems for paper and electronic documents, your emails are uncontrolled and growing alarmingly, and you have multiple “master copies” all over the place.

When you need to find important records from the past, they could be in any one of 10 different repositories. Your document centered processes are probably bogged down with paper and can’t be streamlined or outsourced.

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There are two approaches to address this issue—classifying all of the content or using search technology for retrieval.

What classification does is to organize knowledge—records for the purpose of this article—so that a piece of information is stored and managed alongside other closely related pieces of information. It organizes information by storing it, logically speaking, in “containers” or “aggregations.” Classification can be summed-up as “aggregate and organize.”

By contrast, the second approach uses the power of search engines to find information, and does not recognize or have any need for aggregation. As computing power increases, there will be more and more pressure to resist aggregating information, on the grounds that you can index individual items of information and retrieve them quickly and at will. One way of looking at this second way is as the 'brute force approach.'

Complementary Roles
The first approach is at the heart of records management. The second is clearly very different. There can be no question that the second approach will become steadily more attractive as IT advances. The potential for a tug of war between these two approaches exists. But, clearly classification and search engine approaches can and should complement, rather than conflict with, each other. In fact, all electronic records management (ERM) systems include a search engine to supplement other forms of retrieval.

In records management, the meaning of ‘classification’ is very similar to day-to-day usage. Here is the definition of classification from ISO 15489, the international standard that defines records management. Classification is “the systematic identification and arrangement of business activities and/or records into categories according to logically structured conventions, methods, and procedural rules represented in a classification system.” So it is about collecting and storing related records together.

Classification Benefits
ISO 15489 lists no fewer than eight benefits that classifying records brings and we will look at some of the key ones mentioned in this standard.
  • Linking individual records. Linkages between individual records can be provided easily and that these can be accumulated to provide a continuous record of an activity. When records about an activity are stored together (that is they are classified together), you are guaranteed a good and continuous record of what happened in that activity. This cannot be achieved reliably using search engines.
  • Consistent naming of records over time. As long as the classification scheme—that is, the set of rules for classification—is well–maintained, by a limited group of qualified personnel, it will be fairly stable over time, and will therefore minimize the difficulties of finding information as fashions and terminology shift. By contrast, with only a search engine, there will be a continual, and continually growing, problem as these shifts occur. An example might be records concerning decisions on data storage: the words involved change rapidly (tape, floppy, disk pack, Winchester drive, SAN, NAS, and so on) which would make it difficult to retrieve information over a period of years, whereas classifying them together would make it easy.
  • Retrieval. Classification will assist in the retrieval of all records relating to a particular function, topic, or activity.
  • Security and access. As soon as we think of records being stored in a ‘container’ such as a file – that is, as soon as they are classified – we can apply access controls to the container, and thus protect all the records within that file in one go. The use of search engines requires every record to be protected individually.
  • User permissions. Classification allows easier management of user permissions for access to, or action on, particular groups of records.
  • Distributed management responsibility. Just as the process of aggregating records allow us to control access, so that process allows us to manage those records in particular ways. Management in this context could mean several things, such as managing disclosures. Distributing records for action. One of the things we can do with an aggregation of records is to distribute, or send, a whole file (a group of related records) to someone. This is often a valuable feature for remote or mobile workers who will benefit from seeing a complete file, rather than individual records. Again, search technologies do not readily match this function.
  • Easier retention scheduling. A final benefit of classifying records listed in ISO 15489 is that, by so doing, you can determine appropriate retention periods and disposition actions for records more easily. One of the ways in which we need to manage records and other content is to control how long the content is retained, and how it is disposed of. As with the other benefits above, classification allows us to do this to logical groups of records.
  • Business Classification Scheme (BCS) We now turn to BCSs. A BCS is nothing more than a classification scheme, which is based on an organization’s business functions and activities. ISO 15489 describes a BCS as “one of the ‘principal instruments’ of a recordkeeping system and, together with the files & records it contains, comprises what in the paper environment was called a ‘Fileplan’. A ‘BCS’ is thus a full representation of the business of an organization.”
    A BCS is only one method of classifying business information. Your organization may need more than one method for classifying business information. The BCS is important, however, because it is:

    • The principal classification used for the management of disposal of records; and
    • An essential part of the interface for the end user.
The key purposes and benefits of a classification scheme (specifically of a BCS) overlap with those of classification in general. They are hard to separate. The key purposes of classification, classification schemes, and, in particular, BCSs are:
  • By classifying together the information relating to a specific event or activity, individual documents are grouped together to provide a continuous record of that activity or event. The reader can then get the full story, quickly and simply.
  • Classifying information helps you retrieve the information that you need quicker. Would you rather go into a well-organized public library to find information? Or would you prefer to go to a building with exactly the same resources, but just dumped in a pile on the floor?
  • If information is grouped in a commonly accepted manner then the users will be influenced by the classification and that should help them name records in a more consistent manner.
  • Classifying information into particular categories enables us to apply relevant security protection or access controls relevant to that category of information. It also allows you to allocate user-permissions for access to, or action on, particular categories of information.
  • If your information is grouped, for example, relating to a particular event or activity, then the chances are that you will want to keep that set of information for the same length of time. Hence, classification can help you determine appropriate retention periods and disposition actions for records.

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