This section outlines the purpose, target audience, scope, limitations and currency of this Technical Guide.

Purpose
Target audience
Scope
Period of currency
Acknowledgements

1.1    Purpose

This Technical Guide assists those responsible for configuring and implementing new electronic document and records management systems (EDRMS) to meet the Technical Specifications accompanying the Archives New Zealand Electronic Recordkeeping Metadata Standard.

The advice in this Technical Guide extends beyond the minimum mandatory requirements contained in the Electronic Recordkeeping Metadata Standard.  EDRMS can easily exceed the minimum mandatory requirements of the Electronic Recordkeeping Metadata Standard and achieve much higher degrees of conformance with the metadata established in the Technical Specifications. This Technical Guide is intended to provide explanations of the options available to implementers of new EDRMS.

1.2    Target Audience

This document is aimed at records managers, system integrators and those involved in configuring or implementing new EDRMS into organisations.

1.3    Scope

This Technical Guide provides advice on recordkeeping metadata to records managers and those responsible for EDRMS within public offices and local authorities. It supports the Electronic Recordkeeping Metadata Standard and the Technical Specifications. 

This Technical Guide:

• provides a brief introduction to recordkeeping metadata and the language of metadata
• covers issues that must be considered in defining and configuring an EDRMS
• identifies key configurable components associated with recordkeeping metadata commonly available in EDRMS applications
• identifies a number of options available for metadata implementation in such systems
• provides advice on how to determine which option is most suitable for a specific implementation.

Detailed advice depends on the specific capacity and sophistication of the EDRMS application. This advice has been based on an assertion of what commonly available EDRMS applications can typically do at present.

The advice in this Technical Guide conforms with the following standards issued under the Public Records Act 2005:
 

• Create and Maintain Recordkeeping Standard
• Electronic Recordkeeping Metadata Standard
• Electronic Recordkeeping Systems Standard
• Digitisation Standard.

All public offices and local authorities are required to meet the mandatory Electronic Recordkeeping Metadata Standard from July 2010.

Please note: this Technical Guide is not intended to convey the requirement to use an EDRMS, nor restrict innovative approaches to managing documents and records. 

EDRMS are not the only options available to organisations wishing to manage electronic records. For example, some organisations will use shared drives, and some will use very sophisticated enterprise content management systems.  Increasingly, organisations are looking to service-oriented environments which potentially support quite different methods of managing documents and records. 

Assistance and advice on implementing recordkeeping metadata in other environments is available from Archives New Zealand. Please contact:

Government Recordkeeping Programme
Archives New Zealand
PO Box 12 050
Wellington 6144
New Zealand
Telephone: 04 499 5595
Email: rkadvice@archives.govt.nz

1.4     Limitations

This Technical Guide is restricted to advice on implementing recordkeeping metadata in EDRMS, mostly at the initial configuration. Many business-specific systems create and maintain records, but this Technical Guide does not specifically address these environments. 

Recordkeeping metadata is not restricted to uses within an EDRMS, but this Technical Guide does not provide specific advice on implementing recordkeeping metadata to:

• support the creation of records in business systems / applications not designed to manage records
• export and import records between business systems within an public office and local authority
• migrate records between records systems
• export and import records between agencies.

Only very minimal advice is given in the section Transferring Records to Archives New Zealand about metadata required to transfer electronic records to Archives New Zealand’s Digital Archive.

1.3     Period of currency: three years

Due to rapidly changing implementation environments the guidance in this document will be regularly updated and added to. The Technical Guide will be formally reviewed for continuing relevance in 2012.