Information Revolution

Ask a solution architect with Adrian Kearns

As part of an occasional series trying to join some dots between information management, information architecture, and other professions, we invited Adrian Kearns to come in and talk about what he does, the kinds of problems architects try and solve, and some of the ways he tries to go about it.
While Michael battles with a touch of the laggy video, we have some good discussion about throwing technology at something that isn't a technology problem, the good ol' Five Whys technique, loose coupling, and more!
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton

Libraries, knowledge bases and records

A free-ranging* conversation about the value of establishing a library or knowledge base of authoritative information than people want to access and can trust!
We touch on everything from shifting the focus of our practice towards getting people the right info, through Conway's Law and the DMBOK, to the persistent value of knowing what problems we're even trying to solve.
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton
* No, that's not a euphemism for completely without focus!

Can we scale?

If we've got a thousand records to manage, what do we do? How about a million? How about a billion? We talk about the problem that records and information management practices don't seem to change in the face of scale, some of the implications of that, and what we might try.
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton

Three things about how SharePoint in Microsoft 365 works

This episode Michael share three things he wishes he'd known sooner about how information is structured in Microsoft 365, compared to in an EDRMS:
Microsoft 365 Groups change the way you manage access;
there is no folder structure, a site just sits there on its own; and
using content types are key to managing metadata when there's almost no inheritance.
Some links to learn more:
A surprisingly good visual of all the things connected to a Microsoft 365 Group: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/office-365-groups
Thinking about sites as standalone things, these pages might be helpful: "Guiding principle: the world is flat" https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/information-architecture-modern-experience
Introducing content types: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/introduction-to-content-types-and-content-type-publishing-e1277a2e-a1e8-4473-9126-91a0647766e5
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton

They've gone feral

Episode 40! Wow! Thank you to all who have been listening. For this one, we're back on the people stuff, thinking about when folks at work won't stick to the script.
A couple of things that come up:
Fundamental Attribution Bias https://www.simplypsychology.org/fundamental-attribution.html
Five Whys https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-use-the-5-whys-technique-for-a-root-cause-analysis
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton

Information governance

It's been a minute! Is "information governance" just a rebrand, a way to get people to listen to us? Is it a thing you can get from a piece of software? Surely not. So, what is it?
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton

Custodial hangovers

In the era of paper, records management hinged on a custodial model: get the things of value, describe them in order to take care of them, and help people to access them if they ask. How much is this still our practice in 2024? And what does it mean?
Karl mentions Edgar Schein's definition of organisational culture, here's an open access PDF of Schein's Coming to a New Awareness of Organizational Culture.
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton

Auto-categorising, auto-classifying and retention

Judi and Michael talk more about auto-classifying records with Judi describing her experiences and the two of them exploring the value of NOT using where something has been filed as the basis for deciding how long it should be retained for. Michael opens with a wee addendum to last episode - there is a data catalogue, by name, in Microsoft Purview!
With your hosts:
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton
Karl Melrose was an apology for this ep, but hasn't disappeared!

Auto-classification in Microsoft 365

Michael takes us through how you can group information in Microsoft 365 and then trigger actions on it, looking at Microsoft Purview (f.k.a. the Compliance Center) and SharePoint Premium (f.k.a. Syntex).
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton

Ontologies

If domain models and information asset registers are two ways of modelling your organisation's information, how about ontologies? Judi leads the conversation on what they're all about.
A few notes:
A snapshot of the Australian Series System as implemented by Archives New Zealand in their system Archway https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/webarchive/20190705140941/http://archway.archives.govt.nz/ArchivalSystem.do
The article 'All Communication Is Miscommunication' https://harishsnotebook.wordpress.com/2024/04/14/all-communication-is-miscommunication/
The Records In Contexts ontology https://www.ica.org/resource/records-in-contexts-ontology
An All-of-Government Ontology options paper https://www.archives.govt.nz/about-us/publications/all-of-government-ontology-options-paper
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton