Andrew Warland, on his blog: Recordkeeping metadata in Office 365 and SharePoint

James Lappin, on his blog: Project Cortex and the future of document management in Office 365 Long post, but well worth the read.

Mark McGregor, on LinkedIn: Coronavirus Heralds Three Seismic Shifts in Working Practices, Changing the Way We Work Forever.

John Mancini, writing for Quality Associates Incorporated: Getting Over the Perfect and Embracing the Good

John Mancini, writing for Quality Associates Incorporated: A "BRIDG" to Understanding Capstone

ARMA InfoCon 2020 Call for Speakers Now Open

Nick Inglis, Executive Director, Content and Programming at ARMA, announced today that ARMA has opened the call for speakers to participate in ARMA InfoCon 2020, scheduled for October 26-28, 2020 in Detroit, MI.

Submissions are due by March 20, 2020. Speakers will receive a free CORE registration.

More information and a link to the submission form can be found here: https://www.arma.org/general/custom.asp?page=2020-call-for-proposals

Asif Rehmani, on LinkedIn: Training SharePoint users is a waste of time.

I have mixed feelings about this. I agree - for the audience that is business users. But I do think it's helpful to have someone around who knows the *how* (what his workshop covered) as well as the *why*. I also tend to think that that person should also have information management chops to support the why's - e.g. why use a document set vs. a folder vs. a list, or which is better, manage in place or records center, etc.

John Mancini, blogging for Quality Associates Incorporated: Isn't Email Management ALREADY Supposed to be Under Control? 

John Mancini, blogging for Quality Associates Incorporated: Five Reasons M-19-21 Readiness Isn't Business as Usual

John Mancini, blogging for Quality Associates Incorporated: Simple Sounding M-19-21 Digital Records Requirements are Deceptive

John Mancini, blogging for Quality Associates Incorporated: Why Does M-19-21 Digitization Matter? 

NIST Announces Release of Version 1.0 of the NIST Privacy Framework

Just received an email from NIST:

Dear Colleagues,

We’re thrilled to announce the release of Version 1.0 of the NIST Privacy Framework: A Tool for Improving Privacy through Enterprise Risk Management! This would not have been possible without collaboration and feedback from so many of you at each step along the way – thank you so much. 

NIST Privacy Framework Webinar: Ready, Set, Adopt Version 1.0! - January 29^th, 2020 at 1 PM ET

Join this webinar for an in-depth review of the Framework and learn how your organization can adopt this voluntary tool to identify and manage privacy risk and build innovative products and services while protecting individuals’ privacy. For more details and to register, visit the event page.

Implementation Support and New Resources

To support your use of the Privacy Framework, we’ve updated our website with many new resources.

• Visit the new Privacy Framework Resource Repository to explore crosswalks, common Profiles, guidance, and tools to support implementation. For the launch, we’ve provided mappings to some key NIST guidance, but we encourage you to contribute resources to share with the community.
• Whether you’re new to the Framework or seeking more information about adoption, see our hypothetical use case Profiles and updated frequently asked questions.
• We’ve also published a companion roadmap to promote collaboration to address key privacy challenges for organizations and improve future versions of the Framework.

If you have questions about adoption or would like to share feedback about your experience with using the Framework, please contact us at privacyframework@nist.gov. We look forward to continued collaboration with you, as the Framework is a living document.

Some light reading for the weekend. :) 

AIIM Accepting Awards Nominations Through Jan 21, 2020

AIIM has announced that it is accepting awards nominations through January 21, 2020. Nominations are being accepted for awards for leadership (WIIM, CIP, Community & Engagement), the Company of Fellows, and the Order of Merit. Each award has different requirements; for more information, or to nominate a deserving individual, visit https://www.aiim.org/awards.

The AIIM Blog - How to Perform a Content Migration - Your Checklist for Success

Originally published on December 19, 2019

This post described a representative content migration process and checklist, including the need for a content cleanup before the migration and the importance of quality checking and control.

https://info.aiim.org/aiim-blog/how-to-perform-a-content-migration

The AIIM Blog - The CIP vs the IGP

Originally published on December 26, 2019

This blog post compared the AIIM Certified Information Professional (CIP) certification to the ARMA Certified Information Governance Professional (IGP) certification.

https://info.aiim.org/aiim-blog/differences-between-the-certified-information-professional-and-the-information-governance-professional

The AIIM Blog - The Best Training for Records Managers

Originally published on December 31, 2019.

In this post I discuss a number of training options for records managers beyond AIIM's offerings.

https://info.aiim.org/aiim-blog/the-best-training-for-records-managers 

My blogs at The AIIM Blog and the AIIM Community blogs

My blog posting has been rather light here of late because I've been blogging fairly regularly at the AIIM blog and the AIIM Community blog. So I thought I'd cross-post those posts here once they've gone live over there. I'm not going to copy them verbatim; rather I'll summarize and then link to the live posts over there.

Marcus Evans, Janine Regan, Christoph Ritzer, Andrea D'Ambra, and David Kessler, Norton Rose Fulbright Data Protection Report: Record Retention is a Key Component of Your Privacy and Cyber Compliance Program

Simon Reader, Information Commissioner's Office: Data Protection Impact Assessments and AI

H/T: Eduardo Ustaran

ARMA seeking nominations for the ARMA International Board of Directors

ARMA announced that it has opened nominations for the Board of Directors, who will serve 2- or 3-year terms effective July 1, 2020. Nominations are open for three positions:

• President-elect
• Director
• Treasurer

The deadline to apply is Nov 1, 2019. More details including specifics about responsibilities and qualifications can be found at https://www.arma.org/page/Board_Elections. 

Joe Shepley, CMSWire: No One Cares About Information Governance But You

MER opens call for speakers for MER2020

MER, the Managing Electronic Records conference, has announced its call for speakers for MER2020, scheduled for May 4-6, 2020 in Chicago, IL. The deadline to apply is October 18, 2019. Additional details are available from the speaker prospectus at https://www.merconference.com/page/1436799/call-for-presenters?ct=t(A-10-Join-the-Team-Oct-01).

Carlos Pauling, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/navigating-professional-jungle-gym-carlos-pauling/

H/T: Pam Bartoli

NIST: NIST Releases Preliminary Draft of Privacy Framework

H/T: IAPP

Randolph Kahn, Business Law Today: The Case to Rethink Records Retention in 2018 and Beyond. Just seeing this because Randy just posted it to LinkedIn. Worth a read.

CIO Magazine house editorial: The Dark Side of Robotic Process Automation

H/T: Nintex

Todd Hefner, Law.com: Demystifying Social Media Discovery. Short version, which Todd leads with: " 'Social media information is treated just as any other type of information would be in the discovery process.' Locke v. Swift Transportation Co. of Arizona, LLC, No. 518CV00119T, 2019 WL 430930, (W.D. Ky. Feb. 4, 2019)."

AIIM Opens Call for Proposals for AIIM20

AIIM has opened its call for proposals to speak at AIIM20, scheduled for March 3-5, 2020 in Dallas, TX. Speakers who are selected will receive a free full conference registration; travel and any preconference workshops or conference add-ons are the responsibility of the speaker.

Proposals are due by Friday, September 13; all speakers will be notified in the fall as to whether they were selected or not. Submissions will only be accepted from end users.

For more information or to submit, visit https://aiimconference.com/callforspeakers.

Julia Evans, on her own blog: Get your work recognized: write a brag document. As the article notes, this is a great way to recall everything you did for performance review time; it also helps when it's time to update the resume/CV, submit to speak at an industry event, etc.

H/T: Mary Mack

International Organization for Standards: Tackling privacy information management head on: first International Standard just published. The standard is ISO 27701, which builds on ISO 27001 and ISO 27002.

John Mancini, CMSWire: 8 Hacks to Simplify Content Management for Small Companies

My new post on information management and employee separation is up: https://info.aiim.org/aiim-blog/the-break-up-list-a-checklist-to-avoid-information-management-issues-with-employee-separation

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) of the UK: Data sharing code of practice: Draft code for consultation (link to 105pg PDF)

Cindy Zuvich, Document Strategy Magazine: Selecting the Right Model for Your RIM Program: Centralized vs. Decentralized vs. Hybrid

Arian Ravanbakhsh, NARA Records Express: New OMB/NARA Memorandum on Transition to Electronic Records

Bill Tolson, Database Trends and Applications: The Perils of Ignoring 'Leaver' Data in Regulated Industries

ARMA Seeks CEO

ARMA announced today that it is seeking a Chief Staff Executive to lead the global operations of the organization. Applications are due by July 31, 2019 to ARMAjobs@armaintl.org. Details are available here: https://www.arma.org/news/news.asp?id=461223

Upcoming AIIM Training courses - July - December 2019

Here's my irregular update on upcoming AIIM training courses. We generally offer public courses a few times a year in Washington, DC; Denver, CO; Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Midrand, South Africa.

North America: 
Sep 24-27, Modern Records Management Master Class, Denver, CO. Details

Oct 22-25, Foundations of Intelligent Information Management, Washington, DC. Details
Nov 12-15, Modern Records Management Master Class, Washington, DC. Details

Europe: 
Oct 1-4, Foundations of Intelligent Information Management, Amsterdam, NL. Details

Nov 26-29, ECM Master Class, Amsterdam, NL. Details

South Africa:
Aug 16-19, ECM Master Class, Midrand, SA. Details
Sep 17-20, Modern Records Management Master Class, Midrand, SA. Details
Oct 22-25, ECM Master Class, Midrand, SA. Details
Nov 19-22, ECM Master Class, Midrand, SA. Details
Dec 3-6, Modern Records Management Master Class, Midrand, SA. Details

The most current course schedule is always available at https://www.aiim.org/Education-Section/Public-Classes/In-Person-List-Page?sorttype=dateasc&page=1.

All of our courses can also be taught as private classes. I wrote more about that option here: https://informata.blogspot.com/2016/10/aiim-private-courses.html

If you have any questions please contact me at jwilkins@aiim.org.

AIIM Accepting Nominations for 2020 Board of Directors

AIIM is currently accepting nominations for candidates to serve on the AIIM Board of Directors for a three-year term beginning January, 2020. The first Board meeting for selected candidates will be as a guest at the December 5, 2019 meeting (virtual and optional for guests).

Candidate qualifications include:
a. knowledge of key industry trends
b. experience in strategic planning, implementation and budgeting
c. demonstrated commitment to AIIM and the industry
d. willingness to attend four Board meetings per year (one is virtual) with one allowed absence
e. AIIM Professional Member in good standing

Nominations may be submitted by the nominee or his/her supporter. The nomination
package includes the following items:
a. nominee’s current resume
b. brief statement from the nominee regarding the role and value he/she believes AIIM should play/bring over the next 2-3 years
c. one-page statement regarding the nominee’s contribution to that process as a member of the Board of Directors
d. two letters of support from individuals that can attest to the strategic acumen and professional integrity of the nominee

Completed nominations and letters of support can be sent to Boshia Smith,
Community/Membership Administrator; questions may also be directed to her at
bsmith@aiim.org. Deadline for nominations is Friday, September 20.

Chad White, Litmus: Presentation Tips: Lessons Learned from Giving 100+ Talks and Webinars

H/T: WBT Systems

Michael Lewis, FCW: Tick tock: NARA's electronic records management deadline is approaching

Kevin Casey, The Enterprisers Project: How to explain Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in plain English

H/T: Dianne Jolly

Get CIP CEUs from reading industry content

I noted in an earlier post that we've upped the renewal requirement for CEUs from 45 to 60. This aligns us to most other industry certifications, and 20 CEUs a year still represents less than 1% of your work hours spent keeping up with changes to the industry, technology, etc. The renewal price remains unchanged, and represents a significant discount to the exam price itself (the other option for renewal).

We've made one other addition to the CEU process. Effective immediately, you can read publications and receive CEU credits for those as well. As with other CEU submissions, AIIM publications certainly count, but you can also submit other publications, white papers, etc. from other associations, vendors, book authors, or any other source.

To qualify for CEUs, a publication needs to meet these requirements:

• It has to be on an information management topic and informational. Vendor-written and -sponsored white papers certainly count for the portion that is educational (even if product-specific); a conference brochure would not. 
• It has to be at least 8 solid pages of content - not counting the title, the sponsor writeups, ads, etc. So no typical short-form blog posts, infographics, etc. By way of example, AIIM's own Industry Watches are all good for 1.0 CEU each; our tip sheets and infographics are too short to receive CEUs. 

CEUs will be awarded at the rate of 1.0 CEU per ten pages, rounded to the nearest ten pages. So if you read the entire 2019 CIP study guide cover to cover you'd get 25 CEUs - 264-page PDF minus 13 pages at the start and 1 at the end = 250 pages or 25 CEUs. 

To submit a publication for CEUs, simply note the information in the CEU submission form. You do not have to attach the publication, though you certainly can. You should retain the publication in the event that your record is selected for random audit.

As always, feel free to ping me with any questions at jwilkins@aiim.org.  

Dr. Mansur Hasib, in SecureWorld: A Political Science Major in a Cybersecurity Classroom... Being Taught by a Political Science Major?

 Long article but well worth the read. As I noted in retweeting this post, this is exactly how we position the CIP, as the broad or horizontal stroke that complements the narrow, deep-dive knowledge and expertise.

CIP Exam Approved for GI Bill Reimbursement for U.S. Veterans

I wrote a blog post about this on the AIIM blog but wanted to point readers of this blog to it as well.

In a nutshell, if you're a U.S. military veteran with education benefits remaining, you can take the CIP exam and get the exam cost reimbursed. The GI Bill doesn't cover training courses, just the exam - but it does cover retakes if required. For all the details, visit https://info.aiim.org/aiim-blog/cip-exam-approved-for-reimbursement-under-the-gi-bill.

The Updated CIP Exam is Now Live!

I've been a bit remiss in posting this here because I've been busy posting it to the official AIIM blog. But I want to make it official here as well:

The 2019 update to the Certified Information Professional (CIP) exam is now live! 

Major changes to the exam include:

• Significant refocus on business issues and outcomes, rather than getting so far into the weeds of different processes and technologies
• Slight reduction in the coverage of taxonomies, information governance, and records management, for the same reason
• Slight increase in the coverage of case management and analytics & AI
• Significant increase in the coverage of privacy and data protection
• Added robotic process automation

Major changes to the program itself weren't many, but there were a couple: 

• We increased the number of CEUs required from 45 to 60 over 3 years, bringing us into alignment with every other major industry certification. 
• We increased the price of the exam to $349 for AIIM Professional members and $385 for non-members. The renewal fee, however, remained $135 / $150 respectively. 
• Reinstatement no longer has a 1-year time limit. If you ever passed the CIP exam, you can reinstate. However, you still need to submit CEUs and pay the reinstatement fee. 

As part of the exam update, we also completely rewrote the CIP study guide, which remains FREE for AIIM Professional members and $60 for non-members. And we updated the CIP Prep course and rebranded it "Foundations of Intelligent Information Management." I'll explain what that means in a separate blog post. 

We also upped the free sample exam from 25 questions to 100, so candidates should have a more accurate picture of where they are in relation to the official exam. 

What does this mean to existing CIPs?

In the short term, nothing. If you're a CIP in good standing, 

• You do not have to retake the updated exam (though you're welcome to!). As long as you maintain your CIP status, you're good. 
• Your current renewal cycle will still require 45 CEUs; you don't need to satisfy the 60 CEU requirement until your next renewal cycle. 

But it does demonstrate AIIM's continued commitment to ensuring the CIP remains relevant and valuable to the industry and the community of information professionals. 

For more information about the updates or the program, visit https://www.aiim.org/cip or send me an email at jwilkins@aiim.org. 

Setting the CIP v2019 Passing Score

How time flies! As I noted just about three years ago, one of the final steps in the development of any certification is setting the passing score. There is a widespread misconception that the passing score "should be" a certain score such as 70% - 75%. This is akin to setting the retention for some or all of your records at 7 years: Nobody really knows how they got there, and it's not defensible, but everyone else is doing it so it must be OK.

In order for a passing score to be defensible, it needs to be criterion-based. This is typically done through some sort of standard-setting study. There are a number of ways to do this; a common way used for certification exams is modified Angoff scoring. This is the approach we've always used to set the CIP passing score. 

The way Angoff scoring works is that subject matter experts, who themselves are representative of the target audience, take the exam in an unproctored, untimed, and unscored setting. As they go through the exam, they rate the likelihood of a candidate like them getting that question correct. The harder the question is perceived to be, the lower that percentage will be. So for example, a super-easy question might be given a 95% rating (because people still pick B accidentally instead of A), while the lowest grade, 25%, represents a pure guess on a question with 4 possible answers.

Once the SMEs finished their ratings, we had a call to discuss them. Each item had a range of ratings and we discussed the individual ratings of those items with large ranges. We looked at the complexity of the individual item, how the beta testers answered, and how well those questions discriminated - in other words, did good scorers tend to get them right, while poor scorers tend to get them wrong? SMEs were allowed to change their ratings after discussion and many did on many items. This ended up with each item having a difficulty rating and a statistical validity associated with that rating. 

We then took all the individual items and assembled the final passing score range of 56% - 64%. We then set the passing score right in the middle of that mathematically determined, defensible, range. So the final passing score for the updated CIP exam remains at 60.00%. 

But a passing score of 60% seems quite low, right? It's exactly the opposite: a 60% passing score reflects that the exam is actually pretty challenging. Had we put the passing score at, say, 70%, only about half the beta candidates would have passed, many of whom are superior candidates compared to the 5+ year candidate that the updated CIP exam is targeting. 

I hope this information underscores my, and AIIM's, continuing commitment to doing the CIP the right way, not simply throwing together a bunch of questions and setting an arbitrary passing score. Questions or comments? Ping me at jwilkins@aiim.org. 

Dani Deahl, TheVerge: Metadata is the biggest little problem plaguing the music industry

Greg Milliken, M-Files: The 3 Waves of Innovation in Information Management (and How Context is Everything)

Updated CIP Exam to Go Live June 1, 2019

Short version: If you're a CIP, you do NOT need to retake the exam (though you are welcome to!). If you are a candidate, the new exam goes live on June 1.

I'm pleased to announce that we're just about to complete the CIP exam update process and the new exam is scheduled to go live on June 1, 2019. I'll write more about the changes to the exam in another post later this week. In the meantime, what does this mean to you?

If you're a CIP. The update doesn't directly impact you. You're still a CIP as long as you renew your status. You can, of course, renew by taking the exam, either the current one or the updated one when it goes live; most CIPs maintain their status with CEUs, and the exam update doesn't directly impact that.

The CEU program is being updated slightly. As I wrote in January, we are increasing the CEU requirements from 45 over 3 years to 60. This brings the CIP in line with nearly every other information management-related certification at 20 hours per year. This is not an onerous amount, representing less than 1% of a full-time work year. As industry professionals, we've found that most CIPs complete significantly more than 20 hours a year in continuing education - you have to in order to keep up with everything!

All current CIPs will be able to complete their current renewal cycle under the current program. Subsequent renewals, and any new CIPs, will need to comply with the updated program requirements.

If you want to become a CIP. When the updated exam goes live, the current exam will be retired. That means that you have until the end of the day on May 31, 2019 to take the current exam. Any exams currently scheduled for June 1, 2019 or later will be delivered using the new exam.

We're updating the study guide and training materials right now, and plan to have them go live at the same time as the new exam. Candidates who have already purchased the current training course can send an email to certification@aiim.org and receive access to the new course materials and study guide as soon as they are available.

The current materials are still valid for 75-80% of the updated exam; metadata is still metadata, workflow is still workflow, etc. But we did add information on robotic process automation, analytics and AI, and privacy and data protection. The intent is still to cover those topics, like all topics on the exam, at the strategy/business issue/business outcome level. Candidates who don't want to wait for the updated AIIM materials can use other references to prepare including AIIM research and white papers, resources from other groups like IAPP, etc.

The AIIM website will be updated with all of the updated resources, exam blueprint, etc. when the new exam goes live on June 1. In the meantime, please direct any questions directly to me at jwilkins@aiim.org.