Book Reviews

Document Management for the Enterprise: Principles, to the organization and typically constitute around 5% of total
Techniques and Applications. Michael J. D. Sutton. New records. The remainder must be systematically destroyed ac-
York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 1996: 369 pp. Price: $44.95. cording to schedules agreed upon by the ARM function and
(ISBN 0-471-14719-2.) operational managers responsible for the business areas that
produce the records. Yet the reality for most organizations is
This book will be a wake-up call for many senior executives, that it will not be practical to digitize the majority of information
CIOs, and IT managers, not to mention attorneys and auditors, assets currently in paper form. Moreover, and often because of
who have yet to be stung in a courtroom by not fully appreciat- explicit IT storage administration policies, a growing number
ing the importance of, and requirements for, recordkeeping of electronic records are being routinely destroyed after 30–60
functionality in enterprise document management systems days with no regard for their continuing value to the organiza-
(EDMS). Most EDMS products today are seriously lacking in tion and often before they should be according to established
such functionality. Developers of these products take their cues record-retention schedules. The result is often that records that
largely from CIOs and IT specialists in the organizations that could be more efficiently maintained in electronic form, includ-
constitute the marketplace for their products. It thus seems safe ing e-mail, are being printed and sent to paper file centers,
to assume that those groups lack appreciation of recordkeeping significantly increasing the number of new paper records and
and the risks of ignoring the recordkeeping aspects of modern adding to the subsequent demand for conversion to microform
systems that produce electronic documents, the large majority or scanning back into digital form at considerable cost to the
of which constitute organizational records and evidence of the organization. Thus, for most organizations there will be a con-
organization’s business. tinuing need to manage information stored in nondigital form
Apart from being an excellent planning guide for operational and for these resources to be carefully linked to digital holdings
managers and IT technicians contemplating or already in the managed in EDM systems.
midst of developing or procuring an EDMS, this book will also The information management and information technology
go a long way toward closing the knowledge gap in the area coverage is excellent. Texts on information management and
of document management in an increasingly electronic environ- technology often address only information technology. The au-
ment. The book is an 11-course meal on EDMS topics normally thor has provided an excellent balance between information
regarded as the fare of chief information officers or heads of management and information technology coverage. There is
IT. However, what separates this book from many others in good coverage of de facto, de jure, and what Sutton refers
the EDMS genre is that the author has integrated considerable to as de jour information standards. This coverage is more
archives and records management (ARM) coverage throughout. explanatory and descriptive than prescriptive. The IT coverage
I use the term ‘‘EDMS genre’’ advisedly because searches of does not, however, include discussions of intranets, extranets,
the reasonably current offerings of books with titles that include and WWW technologies and related opportunities and risks,
the words document and management appear to produce few
including opportunities to use this technology to deliver multi-
results when one excludes several that are in the main limited
media recordkeeping services. This is chiefly due to the fact
to document imaging systems. I was not able to find any others
that the development of intranets/extranets has taken off sharply
among these with coverage of recordkeeping functional require-
since the book was written, as new as it is. This is also a
ments and related issues.
CIOs who recognize that EDM systems are producing dis- comment on the growing frailties of traditional publishing tech-
coverable evidence that may place the organization, including niques when dealing with technological subjects: a book like
system managers, at serious legal risk will be certain to ensure this is written in 1995, finalized and published in 1996, and
that ARM specialists will be well represented in their systems reviewed in 1997 (if one is fortunate, given the very long lead
requirements and development teams. These professionals are time for most professional journals). Nonetheless, the planning
now being invited to the table by some CIOs and are struggling and implementation lessons found in the book are still very
to understand the information management and technology relevant.
(IM&T) perspective and technical jargon, and to frame ARM The records management sections include excellent coverage
needs and concerns in language that their IM&T counterparts of such topics as distinguishing between document and records
will both understand and support. At the same time, IM&T management, controlled vocabulary/thesauri and legal issues,
specialists lack any foundation in recordkeeping, a form of doc- all topics that will be hotly debated between IM&T and ARM
ument management that is more rigorous than the one to which professionals in any interdisciplinary EDMS development team
they are accustomed. This book offers an excellent guide for (but maybe not otherwise). Apart from clearly identified re-
both groups, and for executives to help them catch up with cordkeeping chapters and sections, including those on func-
the growing trend in the modern workplace toward the use of tional requirements for recordkeeping, Sutton offers consider-
enterprisewide knowledge- and information-based technologies able insights for the IM&T specialist on the recordkeeping
which bring with them profound changes in the ways records aspects of metadata/document-profiles/data-dictionaries, con-
are created and managed. version of legacy documents, OCR/ICR, multimedia, and ver-
Archives represent records of continuing or permanent value sion control. Of interest to both IM&T and ARM professionals
is the considerable coverage of other topics of growing concern,
such as e-mail, business systems analysis/process management,
q 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. workflow systems, cost and benefits analysis, and interdisciplin-

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ary team building. The author clearly understands that EDMS promulgate, and retire. . . . Value added at each phase is a
is not purely a technical endeavor. prerequisite for triggering the next phase. The phases are se-
The book is spiced with excellent asides from the author’s quential and temporal, so they have limited life spans.’’ p. 92
consulting experiences. For example, it provides best-practice Similarly, some professionals will view the approach as too
lessons gained only through painful experiences: ‘‘Training ‘‘docu-centered’’ for recordkeeping, especially at a time when
should be delayed until one week before a business unit is set archivists are increasingly turning to macroappraisal and sched-
to convert. As a general rule, you can expect 50 to 75% of uling at the system application or business process levels. Ironi-
training to be forgotten within two or three weeks, especially cally, modern EDMS are likely to make macroappraisal feasi-
if it is not applied. The last thing an organization wants is to ble. This may be more a matter of interpretation. Sutton es-
train the whole staff when it will be five months before some pouses both a docu-centered and a macro view when he says:
trainees ever see the product.’’ p. 311 This type of practical ‘‘Documents are the heart and soul of an organization. They
advice provides a good balance between the author’s theoretical are the lifeblood of business processes. A document is a process
and practical underpinnings and gives the reader a sense of his in motion, while a process is a document not yet at rest.’’
well-deserved credibility. p. 34 Document management is described as ‘‘the process of
Even the title of the book demonstrates the author’s insights overseeing an enterprise’s official business transactions, deci-
into the treatment of information as an organizational asset. sion-making records, and transitory documents of importance.’’
Though for a niche professional community it stands for engi- p. 9
neering document management systems, normally the abbrevia- IM&T and ARM professionals engaged in EDMS planning
tion EDMS means electronic document management system. and implementation should concern themselves with the EDMS
Although managing electronic documents alone is a daunting centrality issue. This is not simply a turf matter. It is a serious
task to begin with, modern organizations, particularly those with architectural question over which IM&T professional and librar-
a knowledge-management mandate, must manage all kinds of ians on the one hand, and ARM professionals on the other, may
documents or documentation to embrace the broadest concept find themselves at odds in the EDMS design project. The former
of documentary objects, not just electronic documents. They groups are typically accustomed to seeing documents and books
must do so on a global organizational or enterprise level. Sutton as largely independent objects (composite objects in today’s
makes an excellent contribution, setting the stage for this kind multimedia world of compound and complex documents), and
of global information management thinking by giving to EDMS to addressing relationships within documents parts (in the
the meaning enterprise document management system. He does SGML sense), embedded objects, versions, etc. By contrast,
this not just in title but in content as well in his commentary ARM requirements necessitate their being seen as existing in
on conceptual, logical, and physical architectures for EDMS. the context of other documents and bodies of documents. Where
Although one of its greatest strengths is its well crafted ARM specialists place emphasis on archival description, infor-
integration of records management considerations into the mation managers may be satisfied with minimal metadata con-
broader EDMS fabric, CIOs should not assume that the ARM tained in document profiles. Where ARM specialists are heavily
professionals in their own organizations will agree with every- vested in document classification by file schemes, records se-
thing the book has to say about recordkeeping. That should not ries/groups, and index terms, information managers rely more
be a put-off, however, as there are both legitimate professional on a combination of fuzzy/full-text search, thesauri, and good
differences of opinion and differences in organizational needs document profiles as a less constraining, more robust approach
with some of these topics. Moreover, it will be difficult to find that is better geared to modern organizational structures, pro-
other document management texts that seriously address these cesses, and realities. Where IM&T specialists tend to regard
subjects at all. What is important is that the author provides an the declining storage costs as a way to eliminate some re-
excellent checklist of topics for organizations developing EDM cordkeeping problems by just keeping everything indefinitely,
systems. ARM professionals are concerned about the long-term ability
The author is fast on the draw when it comes to pointing of organizations to navigate through very massive textbases to
out that ARM professionals have seen their role as passive find needed records, several decades hence. Moreover, they are
custodian and do not keep up with important technological and likely to be more aware of legal problems that organizations
work-pattern changes. These are fair criticisms that are by now have run into by keeping certain classes of records longer than
familiar to most ARM professionals. He is not so fast, however, necessary.
in pointing out that senior executives, CIOs, IM&T profession- Perhaps ARM professional need to be more open to the new
als, and even attorneys also elevate organizational risk factors possibilities afforded by modern technology. They should not
by making major technological decisions and investments with- simply react to new technology, but learn how to put it to work
out due regard for the recordkeeping and litigation risks associ- for the organization’s legitimate recordkeeping needs. Simi-
ated with modern EDMS; or that EDMS specialists, including larly, EDMS designers should more fully recognize the serious
vendors producing these products, continue to take their func- risks they open their organizations to by not properly accommo-
tional requirements cues from RFP specifications written by dating those needs. Senior managers responsible for core busi-
IM&T specialists who have little if any understanding of re- ness aims and processes need to better appreciate their own
roles in ensuring greater integration of the document and records
cordkeeping requirements, including some that are dictated by
management interests of their organizations, a major challenge
laws or regulatory warrants. He does not point out that develop-
to those engaged in EDMS projects. This book will serve all
ers of EDMS remain largely unaware of the field of diplomatics
of these groups well in these essential undertakings.
(the study of documents and their relationships to their creators
and underlying acts) and its implications for EDMS. Nor does
he challenge all these groups for sharing in the risks that such
ignorance has brought to many organizations.
Sutton uses the term life cycle on several levels: document,
process, EDMS engineering, and EDMS project. At the engi- Richard E. Barry
neering level, the Sutton Enterprise Document Engineering Barry Associates
Life-Cycle (SEDE) stipulates that ‘‘All documents . . . must 3808 North Albemarle Street
be managed according to a document life-cycle—an object Arlington, VA
management technique for tracking and controlling document E-mail: [email protected]
objects . . . stages are [to] define, analyze, originate, safeguard, WWW: www.rbarry.com

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