Managing Records in the Modern Office: Taming the Wild Frontier

From a record-keeping perspective, the modem office is like the wild frontier. Office workers can create and send electronic messages and documents to whomever they wish. They can store them according to their own individual needs and then delete them without turning to anyone else for approval. There are no rules of the road. The autonomy of the individual reigns supreme! In developing record-keeping solutions, however, we need to understand the evolution that is taking place in the use of office systems technologies. In recent years there has been a gradual shift from the wild frontier, where distinct softMANAGING RECORDS IN THE MODERN OFFICE. TAMING THE WILD FRONTIER 7 1 ware tools such as word processing, spreadsheets, and e-mail (designed to enhance individual productivity) are the norm, to a more settled landscape characterized by integrated software supporting directly the automation of work processes (designed to enhance organizational effectiveness). This article traces this evolution and argues that as law and order come to the wild frontier, they will present archivists and records managers with exciting opportunities to influence the way that records are managed. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, land was settled in a variety of ways in different parts of North America. For some settlers the process was quite orderly. The government of the day developed rules and regulations, managed the movement of people, administered land grants, and established cities, towns, and transportation networks. For new-comers in other areas, the experience was much more chaotic. The land was there for the taking and people simply moved in and staked their claims. In the absence of laws, people made up their own rules, but only when absolutely necessary and only for self-serving purposes. Individual freedom and autonomy reigned supreme. In many ways the modem office environment is not unlike the wild frontier of the last century. Instead of horses and wagons, our organizations have provided us with computers and software, telling us to charge off into the great unexplored plains of cyberspace where supposedly we can work more effectively. With a few mouse-clicks, we can easily send e-mail messages to people at all levels of the organization. We make no distinction between the substantive message and the informal "let's do lunch" type-they all go through the same electronic channel. We use our own sometimes unorthodox approaches to describe and classify our documents. And when our directories are too full, we simply get rid of the old stuff that we do not need anymore. If we could just remember what that old stuff was. Often we do all of this while forgetting that in the hardcopy world we would have thought twice about having a memo prepared and forwarded without following some procedures about who should review it, approve it, and so on. We would have added a file number, the "yellow" copy would have been sent to file, another copy sent to the originator and still another copy to the chron file. In some cases a manual or perhaps an automated logging and tracking system would have been used to ensure that the document was routed to and actioned by the appropriate officials. Corporate rules of the road and other mechanisms have yet to be established in the electronic world. The wild frontier is unfortunately more the norm than the exception. In the modern office, it is the office worker, not the technical specialist, who works with technology applications on a daily basis. It is the office worker, not the organization, who decides what information will be created, transmitted, and stored. And it is more often than not the office worker, not the organization, who makes up the rules, if any. In recent years, however, the familiarity with which office workers are using information technology and growing concerns about what to do with the "stuff' generated and received in the office environment have together spawned a number of questions. Is e-mail a record? If it is a record, what should be done with it? Does