Mid Sweden University

Project documentations, minutes of meeting, emergency plans, and inspection reports are all examples of records, recorded information. One key characteristic of records is preservation, records may be preserved for long time. There is a changeover from paper based records to electronic records in many organizations. Electronic records are part of computerbased information systems and need to be handled automatically following archival requirements to remain trustworthiness during preservation. The ISO definition of record is abstract and give limited support in understanding what a record is on operational level. Knowledge valuable for practitoners involved in design and development of information systems. The aim of this paper is to identify different classes of records, and identify categories of characteristics or variables for these records, i.e. make records operational. This paper is based on a qualitative case study performed at four different organizations. Empirical data was collected from multiple sources in order to understand records. More than 100 different records were identified, which together made ten classes of records. The classes together with the characteristics resulted in an object oriented based diagram, a visualization of the analysis of the empirical data.

In many organizations there is changeover from paper-based records to electronic records. This is a natural process, when more and more information and documents are created by the usage of computer based information system. The problem is that many organizations implement information systems for managing electronic records, which not takes recordkeeping requirements into consideration to full extent. Record keeping system must fulfil requirements regarding context. This is necessary because it have to be possible to make interpretations of records, over time. The aim of this paper is to describe how much and what kind of traces of the handling process there are in paper based archives. A qualitative empirical study will be conducted. The method include interpretations of paper based records with an aim to model processes. The study includes comparisons between periods, before and after implementation of computerized systems. The process models will be analyzed and validated by dialog seminars. The contributions of this paper are; firstly descriptions of process elements that make it possible to interpret processes and records afterwards; secondly descriptions of differences of those process-elements between different time periods, thirdly: the process models will be important inputs when designing efficient digital record keeping in integrated e-services.

Technical artifacts with a long lifetime put special requirement on management of technical information. The information need to be managed and maintained to keep it understandable and valid for as long as needed and this put high requirements on effective information management because it is necessary to keep track of which technical information that is valid for which variant of technical artifact.  This article is based on a study where requirements on technical information was in focus and especially requirements that concern traceability. Seven requirements have been identified and it have been concluded that those requirements basically concern between which object that the traceability concern, that it matters if a requirement is put from internal or external need or if the requirement concern objects from different information systems. The conclusion is that a requirement is harder to reach if the connections between objects are separated in different information systems.