Continuing the exploration of taxonomy in the context of records management, I’m going to focus on the second challenge listed in my earlier post on the subject:  taxonomies and record retention schedules exist but are not being used effectively.

I worked on a records management project in which we were to create the retention schedule for one business unit as a baseline for building out the schedule as the records management initiative was rolled out to subsequent divisions. In this case, it was not that they didn’t already have a retention schedule. In fact, they had an extremely robust, thorough, and complicated schedule created by another consulting firm specializing in records management. It was so robust, thorough, and complicated that no one could figure out how to apply it, and, so, didn’t. While the retention schedule covered everything needed from a records management perspective, it was not applicable from a user’s perspective. What made sense to a records manager and to legal was not useful to the people who needed to apply it. In addition, the schedule was not enforced. No one knew what, if any, retention policies were being applied to records, leaving the organization in a similar state as prior to the creation of the records retention schedule. The solution, in this instance, was to rebuild a simplified retention schedule based on the prior work and new categorization principles to align with a corporate taxonomy.

As with the above example, organizations may not have a taxonomy in place, or, if they do, it is not being used to its full potential. A taxonomy used to organize, tag, and retrieve content enhances information organization and findability. If it is not being used in conjunction with a records management policy, however, documents declared as records and vital for compliance to such regulations as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA are at risk of not being found during the discovery process. While a records management system (RMS) provides functionality for applying retention policies, from where do the values for tagging come? Are these terms in the taxonomy or do they only live in the RMS? Taxonomy terminology applied only to content and not records creates findability and retrieval issues as well as a disconnect between the way content and records are categorized in the organization.

Aligning the terminology in a records retention schedule—whether kept in a static form such as a Word or Excel document or applied to content in an RMS—with taxonomy values used for the tagging of other content creates a standard for all content throughout the organization. Whether content is in process with multiple versions and frequent changes or if it has been declared a record and is no longer subject to versioning and editing, a single taxonomy provides consistent terminology use for description and retrieval. Further, using consistent values in the taxonomy and records retention schedule is one way to enforce the application of terms used for retrieval as well as the terms used to apply retention schedule policies to records. While some taxonomy values may be “reserved” for records, they still live within the context of the greater taxonomy, which may include business units, processes, and other values providing context in which records are created, declared, stored, shared, and disposed.

From a user perspective, consistent vocabulary for tagging content and records fills several needs:

• Consistent vocabulary fosters familiarity with the organization’s methods and processes.
• An enterprise taxonomy is a training tool for employees to become familiar with their content and processes and those of other business units.
• A single view of content based on keywords, whether that content is a record or not.

Thus, having a taxonomy and records retention schedule is one step toward information organization, but using the two in conjunction for consistency and enforcement brings an organization closer to effectively managing content in all its forms.

Taxonomies, as hierarchical vocabulary structures, clearly define relationships between words and concepts. If a taxonomy is implemented and governed properly, there is a high degree of control over how terms are added, modified, and deleted. Terms used for content tagging can also be controlled in how they are selected and applied. Similarly, records management is a discipline requiring high control over documents meeting legal compliance. An ARMA fact sheet defines records management as “the systematic control of records throughout their life cycle.”

Strangely enough, taxonomies and records management remind me of the Panopticon, a prison imagined by the English social theorist, Jeremy Bentham. Let me explain. The Panopticon is a circular architectural structure with an observer in the middle able to keep surveillance over many prisoners at one time without the prisoners knowing who was being watched at any given moment. This allowed for great control at great economy.

As a liberal with world views shaped by films of the 1980s riddled with paranoia about governmental control and espousing an anti-Orwellian future as imagined in 1984, the concept of control of any kind stirs my blood. The Panopticon could very well be the source of Tolkien’s Eye of Sauron, presented in film as aloft in a tower—a kind of all-seeing eye with a 360 degree view. However, and here’s the connection, the control of records in an organization supported by a taxonomy structure can mean the difference between being fined millions of dollars and providing information during a legal discovery process. This by simply managing which information should be retained, retrieved, and/or disposed of properly and in a timely fashion. There is the bridge between the Panopticon and taxonomy and records management; now to build the bridge between taxonomy and records management.

Taxonomy typically is associated with information architecture, so it’s not too much of a stretch to see the connection between structured disciplines and architectural structures. A very good article I read online summed it up as follows: “As the foundation architecture for managing documents within an enterprise, a taxonomy is the foundation architecture for records management” (Chosky, Carol E. B. Information Management Journal. Nov./Dec. 2006. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3937/is_200611/ai_n16871474). This article is a thorough overview of establishing a taxonomy in light of records management.

Taxonomy can touch all aspects of content management, including the specific task of managing records. For example, the creation of a records management retention schedule is similar to the creation of a taxonomy. Records are categorized into “buckets” based on organizing principles such as document type, business unit, or, less often, retention period. The terms used in records management are also terms in the taxonomy structure, applied to documents at the time of creation based on the tagging needs of the organization and the technology employed to manage records. Although there is blanket regulation affecting the documents held by organizations in industries such as finance and insurance, the specific business processes and company goals will influence the way the taxonomy is organized and implemented and how records are managed.

Another example, and oft overlooked (as information architecture is mainly electronic), is the use of taxonomy in conjunction with the records management retention schedule to track physical documents. Whether it is because documents have not been converted to electronic format or because it was required to keep them in physical form, boxes of documents must also be accounted for in records management and can possibly use a format or location type term to be found in the taxonomy, such as “print,” “box,” or “storage.”

Challenges that organizations typically face for both taxonomy and records management are

• the lack of a taxonomy or record retention schedule
• existing taxonomies or record retention schedules not used effectively
• taxonomies and record retention schedules which have not been aligned

This is a brief introduction to taxonomy in the context of records management. In future blogs, I will discuss the above challenges and other considerations when implementing taxonomy to support records management.