Thank you for tuning in for the second post recapping the e-Records 2024 sessions.
Presentation descriptions and details are available on the conference website. See our previous recap post for more, and stay tuned for the third and final recap post coming soon!
Cyber Risk is Business Risk – Why Senior Leadership Involvement is Important in the Cyber Conversation
by Rebecca Hanna
The two key takeaways that framed Tony Sauerhoff’s presentation were:
- Your program will never be secure. “Secure” means free from danger and risk. We should strive for our program to be more secure by identifying the information that needs the most security and understanding our entity’s limitations of resources. E.g., lack of budget, lack of knowledge, lack of cross-collaboration, etc.
- Subject matter experts of the information need to be the people identifying what information needs the most and least security. Information Technology (IT), which is the area of expertise that Sauerhoff comes from, are the subject matter experts of how to secure that information, not what information needs to be secured. IT is not in the business side of things. They are protecting the information they are told to protect. They are running backups as often as they are told to.
From an IT side, Sauerhoff mentioned that recovery is not always quick. Recovery can take months. Also, backups don’t help with malware, because once hackers have a copy, they can continue to release the information. Next, he mentioned that you should ask IT how often backups are being tested to make sure the data is recoverable. For example, if the data is being saved daily, but the backups are being run weekly, you will lose a week’s worth of information. Is that important for this business process? Lastly, brainstorm ways your business might be disrupted if you lose access to that information. It’s not always as obvious as it seems, so Sauerhoff provided an example of an ISD whose network was breached. They were not able to access the information they needed to validate if a person was allowed to check a student out from school during school pickup hours. When speaking to leadership, make sure to calculate or determine the amount of time, labor, decrease in perception from stakeholders, etc., that will be lost per day. Compare that to the amount of time and cost it will take to protect the information.
Gotcha: Social Media Capture and Preservation for Government
by Ella Castro
Many RMOs are becoming responsible for managing social media records, whether they know it or not. TSLAC’s own Electronic Records Archivist Brian Thomas and Government Information Analysts Katherine Hoffman and Erica Wilson-Lang are on the front lines. The presenters described the landscape of modern social media records management and the unique challenges in capturing information from third-party hosts and platforms. They then provided recommendations to help state agencies and local governments move forward. Some key takeaways from the presenters:
- Information can be captured and retained by government entities in different ways, but records managers can identify certain key elements to determine which method is appropriate for their situation.
- Posts and comments on social media may fall into a wide range of record series depending on their content.
- Despite the common adage, the internet isn’t forever. Third-party hosts have limited responsibility for retaining posts and comments.
People, Process, Technology – TXDOT’s Approach for Automating Records Management
by Sahar Arafat-Ray
This presentation introduced the initial rollout of TxDOT’s new automated records management system. The purpose of the system is to make the organization, retention, and disposition of records easier and more consistent across the agency using workflow build-ins, standardization, policy rollouts, training, etc., with a system governance workgroup that includes the RMO, Records Administrator, Records Coordinator, and the assistance of IT. TxDOT’s internal system (built from an electronic content management system) has internal management workflows that allow the RMO to oversee the system, Records Administrators to view rights and to approve deletion of records, and Records Coordinators to view rights of certain system features. The new design of the system, using metadata, will automatically populate the information, eliminate convenience copies, and identify form retention at the end of the process.
For the next rollout, a list of enhancements is being created. For example, part of a District Records Administrator’s job is to verify to make sure the records they approve for destruction are destroyed. In the next version, there will be a comment section for a Record Coordinator in each district to verify that the approved record was destroyed. Records destruction forms which will eliminate the current manual process and involve fewer forms will be introduced next quarter. While there is a lot of work and time at the front end of implementing the new system, as the processes come into place it will become easier to keep track of the number of records that such a large agency creates on a daily basis.
Preserving a Legacy: Digitizing the Mickey Leland Papers and Collection at Texas Southern University
by Katherine Hoffman
In the field of archives, preservation can mean much more than simply keeping objects intact. At the Mickey Leland Center on Hunger, Poverty, and World Peace at Texas Southern University, staff work to ensure future access to not only historical records and artifacts, but also to community, resources, and ideas.
In this presentation Dr. Anthony Rodriguez, a panel of student employees, and a representative from Slalom discussed the history, current projects, and future plans for the Center, which houses the records of Mickey Leland, a Texas politician who served at the state and national levels during the 1970s and ‘80s. At the Center’s founding it received a large influx of funding and was initially conceived of as a think tank and repository. Since then, the Center has struggled to sustain that initial funding level, while at the same time taking on the additional role of preserving and disseminating historical records to a global audience. Student employees described current projects such as record digitization and data migration which have given them the opportunity to exercise their expertise and learn new skills. One of the projects highlighted was a digital map showing locations where resources from the Center have been accessed. The map helps show the impact of the Center’s efforts to make the archival holdings accessible worldwide. In their continued efforts toward accessibility, the Center hopes to continue preserving the legacy and continuing the work of Mickey Leland.
Future-Proofing Agency Data
by Katherine Hoffman
In this presentation, a representative from DocuSign discussed the benefits of planning for the future of your government entity’s data. The speaker explained how streamlining and automating processes can save employee time and can help unlock meaningful data that exists in the associated records. The speaker described three steps to complete a “digital transformation,” digitization, automation, and integration (which involves tying together disparate systems). The speaker also provided demos of automated FOIA request processes in two different software applications.
