Records Management Services

Community of Practice

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is a "Community of Practice?"
• Who is the RMS Community of Practice?
• How can I Join?
• What are RMS-CoP Responsibilities?
• What has the RMS-CoP accomplished?

What is a "Community of Practice?"

The concept of a community of practice (CoP) is sometime referred to as "community of interest". It refers to the process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common interest in some subject or problem collaborate over an extended period to share ideas, find solutions, and build innovations. CoPs are usually formed within a single discipline in order to focus efforts in sharing knowledge, solving problems, or innovative ventures.

Who is the RMS Community of Practice?

The RMS CoP is a "Community of Communities" comprised of government, industry and academia.

RMSC IPT: The Records Management Service Components Program Requirements Development Interagency Project Team (RMSC IPT) represents 18 agencies across the Federal government. The agency participants were named by their Chief Information Officers and E-Government program managers as qualified to speak for their agencies on session objectives.

The team produced a consensus document: "Functional Requirements, Attributes, and Unified Modeling Language Class Diagrams for Records, Management Services, September 7, 2006." This document constitutes the foundation document for the RMS-CoP

The RMS CoP was originally formed by the participants in the RMSC IPT.

OMG: The Object Management Group is an open-membership consortium enjoying broad membership across Government, Industry, Acadamia and other Consortia. The OMG's Government Domain Task Force (GovDTF) issued a Request for Proposal of a standard specification for web services based on the RMSC IPT's requirements document (above).

An RMS Joint Submission Team formed (JRMS) to author the specification in response to the RFP. The JRMS consists of CA, CSC, 88 Solutions, and Model Driven Solutions. Supporters of the effort are ARMA International, government representatives (Archives and Treasury), and industry representatives (such as Lockheed Martin Corporation, Everware-CBDI and TethersEnd Consulting.)

A requirement of the OMG Process is that submissions must be implemented before they are approved as an OMG Standard, assuring commercial support for government application.

The NARA sponsored Records Management Services specification was approved by the Government Domain Task Force, the OMG Architecture Board, and has entered an eMail vote of the Domain Technology Committee (nominally a 10-week process). Assuming a successful vote the specification will be considered for final approval as an Alpha Standard by the OMG Board of Directors.

The specification is based on the RMSC IPT Functional Requirements.

The GovDTF is hosting the home page for the RMS-CoP. It is at http://gov.omg.org/rms. This page provides instructions for subscribing to the RMS-CoP Threaded Discussion List (to which only subscribers can post), and will have meeting announcements, minutes and schedules.

Other Participants: Any members of government, industry, or academia are welcome to join the RMS Community of Practice by joining the threaded discussion list (list-serve).

How can I join?

Membership in the Community of Practice is reflected by participation in its threaded eMail discussion list (list-serve). Instructions for registering can be found here.

What are RMS-CoP Responsibilities?

The collaboration and support by the CoP of the OMG RMS Specification sponsors by NARA on behalf of the RMSC IPT has been the driver behind the registration, subscription and stewardship of the OMG RMSC by the Emerging Technologies (ET.GOV) and Component Organization and Registration Environment (CORE.GOV) component registry and repository. This community of practice is registered with the Emerging Technology Subcommittee (http://et.gov/) of the Architecture & Infrastructure Committee (AIC) of the CIO Council (CIOC)..

The RMSC CoP has three primary responsibilities:

1. Provide records management functional requirements document
2. Collaborate and support RMSC development and registration
• Development of user scenarios and use case
• Participation in cross government / industry Collaboration Expedition Workshops
3. Demonstration by a federal agency of the technical viability and practical utility of RMSC by implementation and adoption

What has the RMS-CoP accomplished?

• The RMSC IPT provided the essential beginning of and support for the RMS-CoP effort.
  
  They have conducted six collaborative sessions focused on records management and enterprise information architecture. This team finalized a total of eight RMSC activities along with 21 supporting functional requirements in their deliverable “Records Management Service Components Requirements Document”.
  
  Additionally, the working group defined 33 attributes related to the functional requirements. The activities and the functional requirements documented by this team are the consensus of the participants and provide the baseline requirements for the development of the OMG Specification of Records Management Web Services.
   
• The RMSC IPT produced a consensus document: "Functional Requirements, Attributes, and Unified Modeling Language Class Diagrams for Records, Management Services, September 7, 2006." This document constitutes the foundation document for the RMS-CoP.
   
• International standard in electronic Records Management Services
  
  The National Archives and Records Administration brought the above "Functional Requirements..." document to the Object Management Group to produce a specification of standard web services that implement the functional requirements. The project further defined and refined the concepts and their semantics in a Platform  Independent Model (PIM), which is independent of implementation, constituting a formal model of the material in the "Functional Requirements...". and a Platform Specific Model (which is a translation of the PIM) to a Web Services model. (Other platforms may be addressed in the future.)
  
  A team of government, industry, and academic representatives authored the specification. It has been approved by the OMG's Government Domain Task Force, its Architecture Board, its Domain Technology Committee, and is now pending approval by the OMG's Board of Directors.