Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

Karen Anderson, Göran Samuelsson and Marie Morner Jansson
of the Swedish eGovernment Delegation’s aims is to motivate public agencies to reach level four on
Layne and Lee’s (2001) e-government maturity model, that is, full integration of interaction between
agencies and citizens, although the model does not incorporate any recordkeeping requirements in its
maturity benchmarks (Anderson, Borglund & Samuelsson, 2011 forthcoming). It is clear these kinds of
e-services are so complex that late intervention by archivists will not be adequate for needed
recordkeeping support and long-term preservation. Guidance on archival preservation of integrated eservices
is essential. The Preliminary Study proposes that the National Archives’ role in government
IM be reviewed and its mandate extended, thus widening its focus beyond preservation of documents
alone. (Riksarkivet, 2011b).
The AC+erm Project found that “people issues are predominant, fundamental and challenging as they
concern culture, philosophical attitudes, awareness of RM and ERM issues, preferences, knowledge
and skills”. They also noted that ”records professionals may be part of the problem as well as part of
the solution, e.g. they take the holistic view and have the principles and tools to manage records but
their demands may be unrealistic or too constraining” (McLeod, Childs & Hardiman, 2010, p.ii). There
are similarities in our findings. One interviewee commented that archivists need to be more outgoing
within the organization, yet the small focus group of archivists were of the opinion that it was not their
place to work outside the archive. Others in individual interviews were keen to collaborate better with
their IT colleagues. Alternately, the information architects’ focus group questioned whether it was the
archivists’ place to develop a business process based description of the organization, as now required
for archival description by the Swedish National Archives. Standards, regulations, legal frameworks,
business process development and systems development headed the list of needed professional
development,
5. Conclusions and recommendations for further research
In this research project we aimed to gain:
A snapshot of the current state of IM in Swedish organizations;
Insights into the future need for IM skills in Swedish organizations;
An understanding of the use of archivists’ expertise.
These aims were achieved, revealing the following key findings.
5.1 The current state of IM in Swedish organizations
The project found that:
90% of the organizations surveyed had updated or are working with their IM frameworks, so there
is a lot of activity, despite a lack of assigned responsibility or clear ‘ownership’ of IM;
There is a lot of interest in developing organizational e-archive repositories and growing activity in
this area, although many organizations lack the IM maturity or resources to take on this urgent
challenge;
A very low number of organizations were using available records and IM standards. This failure
means they lack an internationally accepted norm for evaluating their performance.
The following were seen as the greatest challenges:
Long-term preservation (54%)
Lack of resources (47%)
Information security (41%)
Personal data protection (41%).
The PSI directive does not so far appear to have changed user groups seeking. Nor do public
organizations and municipalities appear to be actively preparing their information for re-use or repurposing,
either for internal business benefit or external users. The regulation-driven focus on
providing access to ‘documents’ rather than information that is gathered and presented in other
formats, such as in databases, data sets and so on, must be overcome and extended if Swedish
organizations are to function and progress effectively. The Swedish National Archives’ bid for an
extended mandate (Riksarkivet, 2011b) would provide leadership in IM and apply the professional
competence of archivists to the challenges of long-term IM.
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