Understanding electronic records

Dear all...

Electronic records are records that are in machine-readable form. It can be in any combination: text, data, graphics, images, video or audio information that is created, maintained, modified or transmitted in digital form by a computer or related system. Electronic records are part of complicated record keeping systems. 

Electronically-produced records deserve special attention because:

• they are relatively new, easily altered and erased, 
• their status as valuable parts of the public record is still unclear to many people. 

Electronic record is a record created, generated, sent, communicated, received, or stored by electronic means. Like paper records, electronic records require a long-term records management strategy. This is because data become records when the content, context, and structure are tied together to provide both meaning and functionality. 

A further distinction is the particular medium (magnetic tape, optical disk, paper) in which information may be carried or embodied. The information carried on that medium is the record. Thus, within the organizational context, electronic records support three broad types of needs for example as accessible records providing timely information for current operational needs, as secure and legally admissible records that provide accountability, and also as historical records of past activity which provide a corporate memory.

The implementation of record management practices for electronic records can result in a number of benefits for organization. One of the most important benefits is to ensure the creation and management of accurate and reliable electronic records. This allows organization to fulfill legal mandates regarding the protection of their records. 

Other organization benefits include: ensuring the legal acceptability of organization electronic records, reducing costs for the retrieval of records no longer needed to be maintained on the system, reducing the burden of paper record keeping, identifying appropriate means for the movement of records to successive generations of technology and systems and improves staffs access to organization information. 

Collaborative ERMS

Dear all,

This is an old update......

All alumnus, ex-students and records professionals from Faculty of Information Management, UiTM Shah Alam.

Please mark the day - 6th of October 2016. The MoU Signing Ceremony between Faculty of Information Management (UiTM) and D.G. KOM Sdn Bhd.

It has been 2 years since then when D.G.KOM Sdn Bhd has agreed to sponsor the Electronic Records Managament System LAB for Faculty of Information Management (UiTM Puncak Perdana). They contributed the much needed ERMS software for the purpose of teaching and learning of electronic records management subject. It has costed them almost RM450k with 100 user license, cloud based software, two server units, networking etc for the lab.

I call this a collaborative ERMS. The intention is to use the software as an educational tools for the teaching and learning process and expose the students with electronic records management software and its software tools.

Learning electronic records without proper tools and software is ridiculous. Without the ERMS software, our future records professionals would not be able to learn and be exposed with the necessary tools to manage electronic records. As a matter of fact, this is the sole reason why me myself, and Malaysia Records Management Society and my best friend Dr Irwan and few others have worked so hard in convincing the industry especially in this case D.G.KOM Sdn Bhd to sponsor their DGFlo - ERMS software.

D.G.KOM Sdn Bhd is the Malaysian company, a 100% bumiputera company specialising in developing and supplying DGFlo erms software fully compliance with ISO16175 and the functional requirement of electronic records of Arkib Negara Malaysia.

The collaborative and smart partnership of this effort marks the beginning of the joint collaboration and joint development of an upgraded version of the Malaysia made electronic records management system between the experts and academia of the Faculty of Information Management (UiTM) and the development team of D.G.KOM Sdn Bhd.

In the pipeline, a new version of the software jointly developed between FPM-UiTM and DGFlo Innovation (a subsidiary of D.G.KOM Sdn Bhd), known as Archive and Records Management System Solutions (ARMSS) is under its way and expected to be released by March 2017. This is the result of joint development and collaborative efforts between academia and industry in research and development which is deemed beneficial to the records management field, the society and our nation as a whole.

It is TIME for Records Professionals

Dear all...

We have seen tremendous development in electronic transactions through e-commerce and mobile applications everywhere today. More and more transactions are made online. It could be in the form of buying and selling online, marketing online, common transactions between companies which use heavily electronic platforms. These require organizations to be agile in its operation to handle enormous amount of data and records transacted online.

Without proper approach and mechanism to manage the electronic resources online, in the form of data and records, derived from or as a result of electronic transactions online, then organization is proned to litigation should anything occurs. There might be some complaints to be entertained, some follow ups to be made, feedbacks to be done, actions to be completed and might be some litigation processes to be addressed to or even some audits to be accounted for. All these require proper evidence and records. Without proper evidence and records, these aspects are very much difficult to take action upon.

To ensure the corporate records and transactions are viable and accountable, there must be proper record keeping system readily available in organization. These could only be done and managed properly by records professionals. He or she will ensure everything related to records are properly managed, by establishing a proper corporate file plan structure that become the sole approach of managing the records and data in organization. No longer the records keeping management, process and approach are done in silo or considered secondary to the operation of an organization. Everything is very well kept and managed thus increasing viability of organization.

The photo depicted sessions with regard to Digital Records Keeping for the delegation of students from Indonesia. They are very much keen to explore more.