Editorial

Focusing on ERM in government and finance

What’s in store in IMAT?

IT'S April already and can we look forward to April showers? Yes, I know that’s a rather tenuous link to draw your attention to our main case study of e-business at the Met Office! The case study was originally given as a presentation at a Cimtech event last year. We thought it deserved a wider audience, hence publishing it as a case study. It was a wonderful surprise for the team at the Met Office whose system from Impact Plus had enabled this “so-called sleepy government department” (their description not ours!) to beat strong commercial competition and win the MCA Best Management Practice Award 2002 in the category of e-business. The Met Office was prompted to develop an ‘e’ capability to provide extra income yet at the same time meet its public charter requirements for top-quality free information about the weather. You can read how they did this on p.80.
Still in the realms of government, Tony Hendley, Cimtech’s Managing Director, has written an in-depth article entitled Planning for Electronic Records Management (ERM) which defines best practice and how to agree the best technology platforms. He draws upon documents from the Public Record Office (PRO) and the MoReq (Model Requirements) for electronic records management. The PRO document covers the requirements of UK public bodies and attempts to clarify the fact that the “generic requirements are not a full specification. They form a baseline that sets out, in the mandatory part of the requirements, the minimum necessary to undertake credible electronic records management.” Tony points out that there is now a firm base of good integrated ERM solutions within central government and local government—and the private sector—are quickly catching up.

To cater for this interest Cimtech and the PRO are holding a one-day conference entitled Electronic document, content and records management for e-government on 20 May 2003. Cimtech is also involved with several government departments, agencies and local authorities on planning, procuring and implementing electronic records management.

As always, the NewsTrack section brings you up to date with what’s been happening in the industry and this month the Focus on... section looks at content management in finance and e-commerce. Articles cover archiving, storage, XML and collaboration and case studies look at, amongst others, insurance companies (including some salutory warnings in the form of photographs of crunched cars), an investment company, a local authority.

Anne Grimshaw
Editor