Arma News & Articles

On the last day of ARMA ’09, the focus on SharePoint was clearly compelling, and the room was full. Through interaction with the attendees, it became clear that many of us are facing the same situation.

SharePoint is already in the organization, but hasn’t necessarily been deployed through a defined strategy.

Business and government use of the World Wide Web is expanding exponentially, said Dr. Timothy P. O’Keefe, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Information Systems and Chair, University of North Dakota to the audience at the ARMA International Conference. He emphasized the need for leadership and collaboration between records management professionals and IT professionals.

Some see Web 2.0 as the solution to all information management problems. Some have suggested Web 2.0 will result in the death of records management as a discipline. O’Keefe stated the Web 2.0 explosion could lead to the change in title from records managers to content managers as a “record” is identifiable by what’s in it rather than the format of it.

Introducing this session was ARMA International’s Executive Director, Marilyn Bier. She opened the conversation by saying that over the past few years, Records and Information Management (RIM) has emerged from the shadows as more and more organizations begin to realize just how important it is to their governance, risk management, and compliance efforts. In that spirit, it falls to the individual professionals to rise to that occasion and to help our organizations evolve from within.

Enter Doug Allen, CRM, ARMA International’s 2009-10 President. To be honest, Allen didn’t enter right away. Instead, his session began with a video, highlighting ARMA International’s tradition of excellence in RIM education. And apparently, that history goes back to 1955 -- with videos presented from the very earliest days, touting the paperless office of the future, and a cute animated sheet of paper called “Scrappy” who served as one of the original mascots of the association. Sound and black and white video changes pace and we enter the modern world of information management, showcasing the association’s active Twitter, Linked-In, Facebook and iConference sites (among other educational efforts). The underlying message: this is not your father’s ARMA International.