Records Management Services

Community of Practice


Overview:

The Records Management Services undertaking has enjoyed a robust Community of Practice (CoP) since January 2005. The RMS-CoP centered on an Interagency Project Team comprised of 19 Federal Agencies which authored a thorough set of consensus requirements for the essentials of a Records Management Service. The community brought its requirements document to the Object Management Group (OMG) to use its community consensus process to develop a standard industry specification based on the requirements, expanding community participants from the government sector into industry and academia (through the broad membership of the OMG). The specification will be developed using the OMG's Model Driven Architecture.

The community has registered the Records Management Service Component with the Emerging Technology Subcommittee (et.gov) of the Architecture & Infrastructure Committee (AIC) of the CIO Council (CIOC).


News Notes:

[20070720] – RMS-CoP Kickoff Meeting held 17-18 July 2007

Hosted by the Collaboration Expedition Workshop #63 and held at the National Science Foundation. Thanks to all who participated in the Records Collaborative Expedition Workshop #63, July 17-18.

The point of Collaboration Expedition Workshops is to acquaint Communities of Practice with one another providing opportunities for communities to identify commonalities, synergies, and possibilities. To this extent the workshop was a resounding success. Among the accomplishments in this regard are:

  • We socialized the "community of communities" approach being taken by the RMS-CoP in the use of et.gov and core.gov process. In this context two additional agencies expressed interest in participating in a demonstration of prototypes of the Object Management Group's (OMG's) emerging Records Management Services standard, based on work done by the RMS Component Interagency Project Team.
  • We developed communication among the RMS-CoP with the Ontology community. Of particular interest was the work being done in the World Bank in the development of a Records Management ontology.
  • We established a collaborative dialog with NARA's e-Discovery leadership.

Lessons learned for going forward.

  • The Collaboration Expedition Workshop series is a valuable adjunct to our community's activities. We are in preliminary talks with the leadership of the Service Oriented Architecture Community of Practice (SOA-CoP) for a possible  joint meeting in October 2007. We intend our RMS Services to be services offered in an SOA. This should be an illuminating joint meeting.
  • For RMS-CoP tasks, we need to use venues that are focused on those tasks.
    • We are going to use our threaded discussion list to further the development and vetting of the use cases we need to identify ancillary services needed for a practical RMS standard. (The RMS Interagency Project Team identified the consensus core services.)
    • We will use "screen-share" teleconferencing as necessary to provide interaction that is more interactive than a discussion list (though we must note that such lists can be *very* interactive.
    • We will have face-to-face meetings as the community deems necessary for maximal interaction of members of our community.
       

[20070315]The RMS Component has been elevated to Stage 3, "Stewardship" by the Emerging Technology subcommittee of the AIC. See http://et.gov/stage3.htm

We are on our way to Stage 4, "Graduation" which is mission accomplished for the Community of Practice. Stages 5-6 involve budgeting and acquistion. At Stage 7, the RMS-CoP will be involved in the maintenance of the component. (See http://et.gov/)

[20070118]  – The RMS Component has been registered and immediately elevated to Stage 2, "Subscription"

We have successfully registered the RMS Component with ET.GOV and, thanks to the comprehensive and ongoing efforts leading up to this by the RMSC Interagency Project team, we were immediately promoted to the Stage 2. Given the maturity of our effort we are immediately under consideration for Stage 3, "Stewardship"

 

RMS-CoP Meetings:

Additional Meetings are being planned for a number of venues, among them:

  • Screen-share Teleconferences
  • Collaboration Expedition Workshop Series – sponsored by the GSA Intergovernmental Solutions Division, the Architecture and Infrastructure Committee of the Federal CIO Council and National Coordination Office of the Interagency Committee on IT R&D (Social, Economic and Workforce Implications of IT and IT Workforce Development (SEW) Coordinating Group)
  • Object Management Group (OMG) – The OMG has issued a Request for Proposal for a standard specification based on the Records Management Services Component requirements document authored by an Inter-agency Project Team (IPT)... details are below. RMS-CoP members are welcome to join the OMG and participate in its Government Domain Task Force (GovDTF) meetings where RMS and other governmental specifications are being developed.
    • OMG Technical Committee Meetings are held four times a year. The Government Domain Task Force meets at each of these meetings. Go to http://www.omg.org/ for the schedule of these meetings. The agenda for upcoming GovDTF meetings can be found at http://gov.omg.org/.