Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

Karen Anderson, Göran Samuelsson and Marie Morner Jansson
clearly defined from an environmental point of view yet but a lot of organizations are thinking and
acting towards greener IT and considering how to decrease their negative impact by a more
sustainable business.
Many organizations have someone in charge of sustainable development and environmental topics,
often allied with the quality manager or a similar position. This means that they are especially familiar
with both documentation standards (for example the ISO 9000 Quality Management Systems, ISO
14000 Environmental Management and ISO 26000 Guidance on Social Responsibility series of
standards) and management systems. Nevertheless, the survey found there was little action or
awareness of sustainability issues in the field of IM. In many organizations there are only two groups
of officers with a long-term view of the business from a social perspective: those who work with
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and archivists, but the survey found that they do not cooperate
at all. We found that the concept “Sustainable Information Management” is neither currently
consciously considered nor adopted.
3.1.6 The challenges faced by information managers
Respondents were presented with a list of 10 challenges to sound IM and governance and asked to
select those they saw as the greatest challenges. They could select more than one. The list included:
legacy systems; improving service levels; compliance with regulations; compliance with international
standards; development of user-friendly tools; information security when collaborating with other
organizations; personal data protection; silo-organized systems; secure long-term preservation;
economy; technology; competence; and resources. 54% chose long-term preservation as the greatest
challenge. 47% selected lack of resources; 44% selected information security and 41% saw personal
data protection as being among the greatest challenges.
3.2 Interviews
32 deep interviews were conducted across Sweden in different types of organizations. Those who
consented to be interviewed presented as strongly committed to their professional concern with IM.
They have admirably clear views of purposes and methods and take pride in their professions. A
significant proportion belong to a community of practice that shares the same values and learns from
each other’s experiences of methods and models. This kind of dedication seemed to hold true
amongst all information oriented professions. The interviews embraced archivists of different
categories, information and IT architects, IT-strategists and also environmental and quality oriented
positions.
3.2.1 Professional specialization of archivists
Two professional groups of archivists are emerging: those for whom the focus is the archive and
securing cultural heritage over the long term; and archivists who are IT-oriented, focusing on systems
for current recordkeeping, sometimes uninterested in cultural heritage. However there are still many
working across both these aspects of the profession. Unfortunately, some find it easier to focus on
known operational tasks since often there is a backlog in physical management of paper records, at
the expense of working in a more IT-oriented manner. Although this signals a lack of resources,
claiming the need to comply with archival law and regulations is not sufficient motivation for
management to commit resources if the organization can’t see any value for its own IM benefit.
3.2.2 Collaboration between information architects and archivists
There are two main areas in which archivists are involved in IT-oriented issues and cooperating with
IT professionals: one is in planning and developing an e-archive and the other is where business
processes are being closed down. Archivists contribute with professional expertise in appraisal, or
deciding what to keep. They don’t seem to engage in issues such as reconstruction of information
structures, business rules and ownership of business processes, or what information architects call
“information archeology”, yet these are fundamental to capturing and maintaining the context of the
information, which is the principal focus of records and archives management. There is a lack of
competence in planning for migration from legacy systems and consequently huge costs for
maintenance of old information systems. Archivists often have a more extensive view of information
use over time than other professions and also have the professional competence to significantly
contribute to planning for prevention of future unmanageable legacy systems from which migration or
extraction of essential records and information is very costly or impossible. Many archivists
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