5b The Changing Role of the Archivist and Records Manager in the Age of AI and Automation
Tracks
Practice and Identity
| Tuesday, October 18, 2022 |
| 1:15 PM - 2:45 PM |
Presentation Type
Traditional Paper -- Moderator: Dr Eva Samaras
Session Information
Expanding Roles: The role of the professional archivist in the modern records environment must inevitably change if the archivist is to remain relevant for current and future business practices. Equally importantly are current and future expectations of the community for records. Session 5 will consider the following aspects of records and archives: are archivists - and in what ways - still conceptually driven by paper-based concepts; where data and records are being collected electronically by automated systems, how can such processes be managed legally and fairly; and not all FOI practitioners are archivists and this 'outsidership' leads to questions and issues for the archivist.
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Rachael Greaves
Castlepoint Systems
The changing role of the archivist and records manager in the age of AI and automation
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The International Standard 16175 for information and documentation has recently changed to require something drastically different – invisible and automated records management. Does this make archivists and records managers invisible too? And does it automate us out of a job?
Archivists and records managers have been fighting a losing battle using traditional technologies:
• A young mother named Vivian Solon was unlawfully deported by the Australian government because her record was not discoverable. Another was unlawfully detained because her record couldn’t be linked across systems. On the flipside, all the email records of the chain of events that led to these catastrophic outcomes was discoverable, and was used to mount a case against the Department. This is what happens when records teams only have control over some records in some systems, but don’t have oversight of all records in all systems.
• The Windrush generation of Caribbean immigrants in the UK was made effectively stateless by the government, who destroyed the only records proving their citizenship, because they were technically due for disposal. On the flipside, the Australian National University kept staff student records too long, meaning that when they were hacked, a huge number of individuals had sensitive data breached that shouldn’t have even been in those systems. This is what happens when preservation and retention decisions are made without considering the context of risk.
• In Canada, records related to missing and murdered Indigenous women were deliberately destroyed by an individual seeking to avoid the work required to respond to an FOI request. On the flipside, millions of case files were *accidentally* destroyed by the Dallas Police in a botched data migration. This is what happens when records managers and archivists don’t have any oversight.
To succeed in making information available to (only) the right people at the right time, including future generations where appropriate, we first need to know our own data. We need to understand what we have, where it is, and who is doing what to it. What risk and value the information has, and what rules apply to its handling and preservation (and whether those rules are being met). And we have to do all this invisibly and automatically. So we need to do much more than we have been, and do less at the same time.
To understand how to achieve this, we need to understand the manage-in-place model, and how it fundamentally changes our relationship with archives. We also need to review the different types of automation now available using Artificial Intelligence and other machine capabilities.
Understanding the role of the records professional in the age of AI is vital to knowing who we are, and what we will become. The landscape of information control is changing very quickly, and we need to change with it – not just to keep up with what we have been doing, but to go beyond, to a model where our governance is integrated across the enterprise, and is considering information risk, as well as value.
Archivists and records managers have been fighting a losing battle using traditional technologies:
• A young mother named Vivian Solon was unlawfully deported by the Australian government because her record was not discoverable. Another was unlawfully detained because her record couldn’t be linked across systems. On the flipside, all the email records of the chain of events that led to these catastrophic outcomes was discoverable, and was used to mount a case against the Department. This is what happens when records teams only have control over some records in some systems, but don’t have oversight of all records in all systems.
• The Windrush generation of Caribbean immigrants in the UK was made effectively stateless by the government, who destroyed the only records proving their citizenship, because they were technically due for disposal. On the flipside, the Australian National University kept staff student records too long, meaning that when they were hacked, a huge number of individuals had sensitive data breached that shouldn’t have even been in those systems. This is what happens when preservation and retention decisions are made without considering the context of risk.
• In Canada, records related to missing and murdered Indigenous women were deliberately destroyed by an individual seeking to avoid the work required to respond to an FOI request. On the flipside, millions of case files were *accidentally* destroyed by the Dallas Police in a botched data migration. This is what happens when records managers and archivists don’t have any oversight.
To succeed in making information available to (only) the right people at the right time, including future generations where appropriate, we first need to know our own data. We need to understand what we have, where it is, and who is doing what to it. What risk and value the information has, and what rules apply to its handling and preservation (and whether those rules are being met). And we have to do all this invisibly and automatically. So we need to do much more than we have been, and do less at the same time.
To understand how to achieve this, we need to understand the manage-in-place model, and how it fundamentally changes our relationship with archives. We also need to review the different types of automation now available using Artificial Intelligence and other machine capabilities.
Understanding the role of the records professional in the age of AI is vital to knowing who we are, and what we will become. The landscape of information control is changing very quickly, and we need to change with it – not just to keep up with what we have been doing, but to go beyond, to a model where our governance is integrated across the enterprise, and is considering information risk, as well as value.
