Identification and control of documentary and business procedures: an integrated model for accountability and transparency in the public sector. A case study from the University of Macerata

by Maria Guercio, Italian National Archives, and Stefano Pigliapoco, University of Macerata, Fermo School of Archival Science*

1. Records creation in the electronic environment
All the studies in place at the international level in the area of electronic records are focused increasingly on the need for qualified control tools to guide the creator’s activity in recordkeeping. The controls to be developed are recognised as necessary at two different levels: the recordkeeping system with reference to its documentary procedures and, at a more general level, also as a consequence of the technological evolution and business procedures related to records creation. 
Archival theory and methodology require that control should be exercised over the traditional recordkeeping functions (the creation and handling of records) with tools capable of identifying records and their related archival units, maintaining the relationships between records, providing efficient retrieval, regulating access, ensuring that records are not tampered with, etc. Mechanisms and  rules must be identified, developed and updated. The use of electronic systems for records creation increases the potential of traditional control over the quality and safety of the recordkeeping system. Such control cannot be dropped in the case of electronic records this control, but must on the contrary be applied integrally to archival applications and include all the records and the related documentary procedures.
What we shall seek to analyse in this report through a case study  and with reference to the European context comprises only one of these functions and the related procedures: records creation and its close connection with the documentary and business procedures which guide and regulate the creator’s transactions, their phases, and their intermediate and final results from a documentary point of view. The aim of this analysis is to show the importance of the role played by an adequate recordkeeping system in the electronic environment both as regards officer accountability and the transparency of administrative activities with respect to the fragmentation of bureaucracy and its internal organization, and in the private sector with a view to providing an efficient and reliable records system to support the decision-making process and preserve documentary evidence.
While the traditional rules, mechanisms and procedures are still valid, the need has emerged for a more integrated approach which takes into account the changes that have occurred within organizations, i.e. the development of horizontal relationships instead of a hierarchical structure in the decision-making process and hence in records creation, control and management. The recent spread and development throughout Europe of legislation on the transparency and the required forms of control over the activities of public administration is the explicit result of a general evolution in relations between citizens and public authorities. Tools that served in the past - when they existed - solely to guarantee bureaucratic control and internal efficiency are now required for all kinds of media in order to organize the documentation of the administrative structure so as to ensure a fully developed democracy.
But what kinds of documentary tools and what kinds of control over documentary and business procedures can be foreseen - especially in the case of automated systems -  and, in this case, provided also at commercial level?
In all times and in all traditions the creator establishes documentary procedures to maintain control over active records. It is not a question of technological tools or a problem regarding a special medium, although the traditional procedures do require testing and evaluation in relation to the technical environment where the records are created. In any case, the basic first step concerns the procedures themselves, as the ISO 9000 have clearly stressed from a general point of view.
During its first term (1988-1992), the Committee on Current Records of the International Council on Archives pointed out the need to standardize the most important documentary procedures at the creation level and put forwards as a possible solution the definition of a reference code containing the elements required for identification of the records themselves as well as their interrelationships and contextual information. The reference code of a record would thus include its registration number, archival date, classification code, file identification, sequential number of the records within the file, and retention term, where applicable, as essential elements to guarantee the quality of the creator’s recordkeeping system and the quality of the records themselves: their completeness, their effectiveness related to thedocumentary form, and their strength.

2. The automation of recordkeeping systems as offering new opportunities and/or new risks
In this transitional phase, hybridization is becoming a common feature of recordkeeping systems. E-mail messages, dbase information and digital images are increasingly preserved as evidential records with no particular concern as regards peculiarities of transmission, the nature of medium, the status of the records, and above all the documentary procedures. 
The recent advances in the field of Information and Communication Technology towards the creation of encapsulated objects would appear to offer some assistance as regards the preservation of certain record elements over time and space, even if the consequence could be the very information redundancy that organizations are seeking to eliminate by automating their recordkeeping systems. Being restricted exclusively to certain constitutive elements, encapsulation cannot provide an adequate solution as regards contextual information and connected business procedures, and cannot maintain many of the documentary and administrative links that determine the nature and the quality of the archival documents during the creation phase.

3. The integrated model designed by the Fermo School of Archival Science
We shall not examine the meaning and the importance of these procedures from a theoretical point of view, also because all the current research on requirements with respect to electronic records (the UBC study, the Pittsburg group and the ICA guidelines) has confirmed their key role as prerequisites for further action in the field of recordkeeping systems. It could be useful in this context to examine the concrete definition of these procedures and the way in which the records system is built, updated and controlled. We shall thus analyse the model developed by the Fermo School of Archival Science, which has already been tried out in many branches of the Italian public administration. It is interesting to note that the system, which was developed in a completely standardized environment, has been successfully used for educational purposes during the University courses, has been improved with the assistance of students, and is to be marketed by a special organization that will employ course graduates to implement the application. This constitutes an interesting and fully integrated experience not only from the point of view of archival science and information studies, but also because of its ability to create job opportunities for the students involved in the educational project. These concurrent and interrelated aims would appear to be moving in the positive direction indicated in the declared purposes of many  European Union initiatives.
The evaluation of the product at the European level is not an easy task as it involves consideration of the different national traditions and the different juridical systems that lay down the essential requirements for recordkeeping. In any case, if a record has a universal nature, if a commonly accepted definition of its elements can be formulated, as the positive results achieved by the international archival community seems to confirm, and if the globalization process is today a reality in many business activities and specifically in the documentation process, this idea of presenting a case study in the hope as attaining general consensus should not be regarded as presumptuous, but as a proposal for a common discussion.
The presentation of this case study is based on the conviction that the rules and procedures of records creation defined as standards in the Italian archival tradition possess some relevance and offer interesting elements for discussion and further development not only at national level. The reasons for this can be found in the common European heritage: the formulation of the precepts of Roman law, their revitalization through juridical studies carried out in the Renaissance, and their dissemination for centuries throughout the European community as jus communis, the foundation upon which all our different national juridical systems were to develop in the modern and contemporary periods.
While this is not the right place for such a historical overview, awareness of these common cultural and juridical roots is essential in the European context if we are to tackle the challenge of technological development.

4. Electronic control over the documentary and business procedures involved in records creation
Recordkeeping procedures
With respect to traditional records, the Italian standard for recordkeeping now requires automation if it is to become more effective. As mentioned above, however, in the case of digitalized or electronic records all the archival functions needed to create and manage the records have to be automated for vital reasons linked to the functionality of the systems. The solution can be found not in abandoning the old rules, but in updating them.
General criteria and specific tools have been identified for the creation and management of records (electronic or otherwise). Archival documents in any form and medium are identified as unique entities and recognized by the system, because of their archival nature, together with their reciprocal relations, which must be recognised and preserved in time and space. These tools thus include a records registration system (the registration of incoming and outgoing records by means of a unique code) connected to an adequate  classification scheme based on the analysis of the creator’s functions and activities. Each classification code is assigned to the records at the time of creation. The classification code includes also the definition of the file or the archival unit to which each record belongs. These tools allow the creator to define and identify the records and their present aggregations, and to pin-point the essential elements to be handled by the system (the records profile) as well as the administrative context.
Control is thus provided not only over the record itself and its documentary profile, but also over the relations among records with reference to the transaction and over the primary business procedures related both to record creation and, of course, to organizational structure. Procedures and rules must be developed within the recordkeeping system, of course in a controlled form:
•	for the linkage of archival and/or documentary units to the creating administrative structure, which includes the offices involved and the physical persons endowed with the authority and capacity to act and produce records: the table I shows the structure of the organization, i.e. the organizational units and their hierarchical links; the table II connects to each office the identifiers for each physicl person involved in the recordkeeping system (the user profile): name, password, function, user type.

•	for the management and updating of the classification scheme (codes, class titles, hierarchical organization of the scheme, content notes indicating the nature of the transactions to which the records are related, and criteria for the arrangement of records, where applicable): the table III describes the classification scheme at the general level, that is the level of theabstract categorization of the creator’s functions and activities. All this information must be definend, as well as the creator organizational structure in the initial phase of the system design and can be easily updated, but also preserved in its historical and administrative connections.	

•	for the registration of records (which includes date, identifying number, relevant office, method of transmission, subject, enclosure, etc.)  (see table VI).	

•	for the classification activity itself, which includes also the identification of references to the archival unit (classification code which includes the dossier/file identifier and the record number within the file, dates, title/subject, etc.)  (see table VIII).	

•	for the definition and revision of appraisal criteria on the basis of the classification scheme.	

•	for the assignment of the files to the relevant office or to the person responsible (see tables XI).	

•	for the management of active files, including the definition of E-mail messages or file annotations (see table XIV).	

•	for the transfer of semiactive files.

Business and administrative procedures
As Richard E. Barry pointed out at the 1995 ACA meeting, “since the use of technology is largely driven by changes in business processes and work patterns, archivists need to give increasing attention to business systems planning and analysis and end-user work habits”, with the result of changing “the image of the archivist from one purely as the ‘keeper’ of records to one also as the ‘purveyor’ of documents”. This change can be made first by linking records to business processes, a very complex task that requires a multidisciplinary approach and involves the top-level management decisions on the part of the creator. The electronic environment and the “increasing use of business systems analysis and information engineering tools” are the basic requirements for these changes of the 1980s and, to a far greater extent, of the 1990s. The spread of legislation on information and transparency and the increasing awareness of its importance are at the same time the starting point and the consequence of this evolution. 
Also in the traditional environment, each record or groups of records is linked to one or more administrative procedures, which can be assigned to one or more organizational units. The analysis of the business system and its procedures involves “identifying broad organizational goals and supporting business areas and process, business process definition and decomposition, and the development of improved processes and information architectures”. A documentary information system could be supported by a rational design of these procedures, especially if integrated within information technology architecture. This function must be designed in a flexible way: easy to change, to simplify or to develop.
In the Fermo model, it is possible to design the administrative procedures and their links to the documentary information system. The functions provided by the software application are:
•	identification and analysis of all the business procedures that the creator decides to control with reference to records creation and management (name and phases of each procedure, terms and forms for its handling, annotation management, control over each phase): the table IV shows the design of each procedure, the table V  the connection of each phase to the organizational structure, responsible for the procedure itself (or of a phase), and the table XII makes clear hwoterms and dates of each procedure and phase can be identified and controlled.	

•	identification of the links between the procedures and the related archival units (see table no. XIII).	

•	clear definition of the relevant administrative units for each procedure and their hierarchical relationships.	

•	identification of the officers with reference to their role and responsibilities in the bureaucratic processes.

Many other control elements could be and in part already are supported by the application system in this area, i.e. the senders and addressees profile (see table VI), whose main entry could be a special identifier recognised by the juridical system (also at the European level), e.g. fiscal code number. All this information, especially as regards links to the administrative, contextual structure, which has a historical character and changes in time, is maintained by the system for further archival functions such as appraisal, arrangement and description.

5. Technological requirements
As regards the technological requirements of the application, attention should be drawn to the high degree of standardization, the low cost of the hardware and software environment, and the high degree of “scalability”, which allows the creator to adopt electronic control over its records gradually, step by step. This solution implies the capability of verifying the adequacy of the system and of developing it according to its own timing. 

The origins.
As mentioned before, SIDOC is the result of the research carried out at the University of Macerata, School of Fermo for the degree in Archival studies. This research had the aim of designing a recordkeeping model, efficient and adequate both from the archival and the legal point of view.The model has also the purpose of planning the integration of the documentary flows within the organizational structure and the business procedures phases. Modeling techniques have been used to analyse the documentary flows. Each phase of the recordkeeping has been represented in a scheme, with reference to the incoming records, to the sent records and to the files transfers within the organization.

The application environment
SIDOC is an application designed for the recordkeeping through the automatization of the classification, registration and files identification; the monitoring of the documentary flows, the transfer of  the inactive files and documentary units. By adding to the application a form for the business procedures management and control, SIDOC becomes a workflow system able both to provide information on the files localisation and to know the business procedures developed by each office and the related process.

•	SIDOC provides a recordkeeping model efficient and adequate from an archival point of view because it has been designed by a group of experts in IT and archival science
•	SIDOC guarantees the integration of documentary flows and business procedures. The consequence is to provide the user with the capability of navigation in the database according to the logical links which connect the records to the files and to the business procedures.
•	the form of the business procedures management has been planned with reference to a contemporary business activity, that is to a system that requires a high level of flexibility, easy to use and to change and update.
•	the technological environment is today a standard, especially in the case of information systems in the public sector. It allows solutions at low cost and open (that is they can be integrated with different system within a heterogeneous system); it allows the management of records of different media (image format, microfilm, magnetic disk, etc.); it can  be developed as a network, for instance as Internet/Intranet network.

The technological environment
The SIDOC information system is designed for an operative network environment with an architecture of CLIENT/SERVER type. The interconnection of Server systems and Client workstations are realized through local network (LAN) or geographic network (WAN)

CLIENT workstations can consist of PCs operating in the Windows environment and meeting the following minimum requirements:

Hardware			PC Pentium 100 MHz
				RAM 16 Mb
				HD 800 Mb
				CD-ROM 8x
				Network interface			
				14-inch colour screen
				Keyboard and mouse

Operating system		Windows 3.11 or Windows 95

Any system can be used as SERVER provided that it is equipped with an ODBC-compliant relational database, e.g. ACCESS, SQL SERVER, ORACLE, SYBASE, INFORMIX, etc.

The constitutive modules
SIDOC is composed by four main blocks, that can be acquired separately and  added to the basic SIDOC information system in different moments:

•	basic system: it is the basic configuration of the system. It includes the programmes for	the automation of the records classification, registration and the connection to the files, the documentary flows management, the inactive files transfers, the records and files retrieval.	

•	workflow system for the business procedures: it includes the programmes which create a workflow system, that is the integrated management of the business procedures and the documentary flows according to the functions already described. The system consents also the elaboration of statistical data to evaluate the efficiency of the administrative structure as a whole and in its organization units.		

•	application for imaging: it includes a module for handling records in the image or electronic format involving the use of physically non-rewritable optical discs (WORM or the CD-R). This application is completely integrated with the traditional, paper record system. Virtual files are created and can be transfered

6. Conclusions
The electronic environment for documentary systems includes tools to improve the efficiency of an organization’s decision-making process and archival information system. The flexibility of the technological tools is a basic requirement together with the capacity to follow the correct criteria for records creation and handling. At present IT constitutes a key element in the area of recordkeeping. It is up to archivists, records managers, and administrators to maintain shrewd control over this development. The model here presented seems to confirm that this is possible. The results of this application say also that the system is not too complex to implement and to update.Anyway, there is no way - for the moment and with reference to the present ITC development - to avoid this complexity if the electronic records should be admissible from the juridical point of view and if their authenticity had to be maintained in time and in space.