2003 ARMA Conference Proceedings paper outlining Canadian government examples in content and information management. A historical piece, with focus on Canadian Federal RDIMS initiative up to 2003 and City of Coquitlam. Background to ARMA session co-delivered by Cheryl McKinnon and Heather Gordon

1. “Recognizing Value from a Shared
RM/DM Repository: Canadian
Government Perspectives”
Cheryl McKinnon, Hummingbird
Heather Gordon, City of Coquitlam
Proceedings Paper
Electronic document and records management technologies have been on the market for
decades. Beginning with imaging systems that allowed the conversion of paper documents into
electronic format, technologies then evolved into DOS-based systems that allowed the tracking
and cataloguing of word-processing documents along with search and retrieval tools. The present
world includes systems allowing 24/7 web-access to electronic data in an unprecedented number
of formats. While there are many common elements between document and records
management systems, it is only in the last few years that these two areas have reduced the
overlap with the emergence of technology that truly merges the two management systems.
The two case studies to be presented in this session will review government organizations at a
federal and a municipal level. Each has chosen to deploy a shared repository approach to
electronic documents and records. The RDIMS Initiative in Canadian Federal Government, and
the CEDMS project at the City of Coquitlam will be reviewed here in order to discuss the benefits
of proceeding with an integrated, shared-repository approach to information management for not
only government, but any organization serious about a consistent method by which to manage
electronic data.
The concept of integrating records and document management technologies is not new. For
years integration at various levels has existed between popular RM and DM products. Integration
could exist at a programmatic level (transfer and duplication of data between the two), a metadata
level (common user/group management, common categorization) or at the database level
(shared, not duplicated or synchronized data). 1
Integration techniques that are done at a superficial level leave the organization with two separate
repositories of information: documents vs. records. Two sets of administration tools, two sets of
user/group definitions, two security models are all characteristics of the early days of RM/DM
integrations. Most early integrations (late 1980s-mid 1990s) were done at this basic level and
generally benefited organizations looking to bridge the gap between management of paper
records in the RM system and electronic documents in the DM system.
The development of Electronic Records Management functionality to supplement the paper
management capabilities of RM systems moved the need for integration onto another level. Now
there was the possibility of an electronic object residing in one or more repositories, depending on
its categorization, and whether it had been “declared” a corporate record. Again, typically a
“transfer” approach was taken to integration, often resulting in the removal of the electronic
document from the DM system, as it was migrated to the records repository. This was often
necessary in order to allow the RM tool to apply the lifecycle management rules to the electronic
record as it would to the paper. While fulfilling the needs of the corporate records office, such
integration methods were often awkward for typical knowledge workers: introducing the
requirement to be aware of, search, manipulate two separate repositories of information, and two
sets of software applications.
The next phase of integration emerged in the middle-late 1990s. Responding to market
pressures for a more seamless approach to RM/DM integration, as well as advancing theories of
1
An excellent source of information on the approaches, benefits and drawbacks of the various integration
models for ERM/EDM can be found in the working papers of the AIIM Standards Committee on “Integrated
EDM/ERM”.
See: http://www.aiim.org/standards.asp?ID=24484

2. the information lifecycle and records continuum, software vendors began adding elements of
records management administration to core DM systems, and some DM functionality to RM
systems. Enhanced search and retrieval, better handling of electronic objects, integration to
mainstream office applications (including email) were characteristic of the enhancements made to
RM systems. DM vendors began to add capabilities to set basic lifecycle rules on documents,
enhanced ability to manage paper items, and ability to migrate documents and metadata to
alternate media for long term storage purposes.
The market today is moving rapidly into a model of a truly “shared” repository for a broad range of
knowledge assets – document and records management being the cornerstone. Beginning in the
late 1990s, vendors developed and integrated the full suite of RM/DM features into a single
product that organizations can deploy at either departmental or enterprise levels. Shared
databases, shared metadata, shared security models and administrative tools have minimized the
deployment burden on IT, given a comprehensive view of documents and records to records
professionals, and provided the end users with a simpler and more intuitive approach to creating,
categorizing, accessing, sharing and securing corporate data.
In this age of unprecedented concern over the handling of electronic data for regulatory and other
compliance issues, the distinction between records and documents may not always be crystal-
clear for typical knowledge workers. An organization subject to financial or other disciplinary
actions for poor information management practices needs to look at a comprehensive and
consistent approach to managing electronic documents (including the persistent problem of
email).
Industry analysts, trade groups and vendors themselves are also validating the shared repository
model. Gartner Group, among the more influential analyst groups has defined a category of
information management technology it has named the “Smart Enterprise Suite”.2
Such single-
vendor bundles of integrated modules should and do include many of the following capabilities:
 Content management — including document management and Web content
management, extending to digital asset management and support for rich media
 Collaboration — including messaging, alerting, real-time application sharing, presence
and threaded discussions
 Multichannel access — providing connectivity to a range of desktop and mobile devices
via a mix of connectivity methods is supported for both content management and
collaboration
 Information retrieval — including information categorization, taxonomy generation,
profiling and expertise location
 Expertise location and management — to dynamically profile users and facilitate access
to their tacit knowledge
 Community technology — enabling functionality for building and maintaining online
communities
 Process management — targeting not the repetitive tasks supported by traditional
workflow, but the ad hoc and dynamic activities characteristic of knowledge workers
2
M. Gilbert, F. Caldwell, S. Hayward. “The Smart Enterprise Suite is Coming: Do We Need It? Gartner
Group, May 2002. Available at www.gartnergroup.com.

3.  Portal framework — providing a consistent user interface for business-to-employee (B2E)
users (they may be employees within the enterprise or those within the extended
enterprise of value-chain partners3
Hummingbird Enterprise along with several of its competitors in this market space has been
positioned as “Visionaries” in the emerging SES technology sector.4
The “Smart Enterprise
Suite” approach to information management is the logical extension to the shared-repository
approach to records and document management. An SES platform extends the content created,
collected, managed and categorized by the organization into a collaborative, interactive repository
which manages content and information from variety of sources, and which can be accessed by a
diverse set of users and applications.
How has government reacted to the evolution in electronic information management practices
and technologies? This seminar will look at two examples: the federal Government of Canada
(GoC) and the City of Coquitlam.
The GoC has been at the forefront of a developing a consistent vision of information management
across various departments and ministries. As recently as May 2003, the Treasury Board
Secretariat published an updated “Management of Government Information” guideline.5
The
mission of TBS is “dedicated to helping the Government of Canada manage its human, financial,
information and technology resources prudently and in a manner that best supports the
government objectives and priorities”.6
The “Management of Government Information” (MGI) is a
powerful statement on the direction that Canadian federal departments must go in order to
manage its electronic assets for both present and future needs.
The policy recognizes that “the Government of Canada is increasingly using information
technologies to serve Canadians and to record its business - which requires it to ensure that
information collected or made available electronically must be accurate, complete, relevant, and
clear, and is accessible and usable over time and through technological change”.7
Giving
direction on how information should be created, used and preserved in the context of government
activities, the MGI policy recognizes three fundamental principles: that “all employees are
responsible for the management of information under their control and custody”, that information
management requirements must be built into program design and processes” and that
information management is most effective in a culture that values information and adopts
supportive governance and accountability structures”.8
The main policy objectives are: all
information under the control of federal departments is to be effectively managed throughout the
lifecycle of the data; maintaining compliance with privacy legislation, official language
requirements; and insurance that information is readily available to serve public objectives and
programs.9
Each public servant is mandated to apply information management principles,
document their activities and decisions, and be aware of information management issues and
communicate them to the IM and IT specialists in their branch. Senior managers are to be
accountable for the implementation and execution of the MGI within their realm of responsibility
and are asked to be “champions” of information management practices.10
The MGI policy is not
3
Ibid.
4
M. Gilbert, F. Caldwell, S. Hayward, G. Phifer. “The Smart Enterprise Suite Magic Quadrant for 2003”.
Gartner Group, March 2003. Available for purchase at www.gartnergroup.com.
5
The original “Management of Government Information Holdings” was published in 1995.
6
Treasury Board Mission Statement, found at: http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/common/us-nous_e.asp.
7
Treasury Board “Policy on the Management of Government Information”. See: http://www.tbs-
sct.gc.ca/pubs_pol/ciopubs/tb_gih/mgih-grdg1_e.asp#pre .
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.

4. mere lip service to the concept of improved IM practices. Treasury Board, in conjunction with
Canada’s National Archives and National Library will all monitor the activities mandated under the
MGI policy. Annual reports and audits from each department will be used to assess the success
and failures of information handling practices.
The renewed MGI is part of an overall strategy of improved information management practices in
the GoC which has evolved over decades. In the early-mid 1980s, several pieces of legislation
began push federal departments to pay more attention to record-keeping practices. The 1983
Access to Information and Privacy Act mandated that governments provide open access to non-
sensitive information upon public request; the companion privacy legislation outlining the careful
balance between a renewed impetus to openness, with personal privacy guarantees. In 1986, a
security policy was issued, defining more clearly how information pertaining to sensitive issues
(whether personal, commercial, or that of national security) should be dealt with. By 1987, the
National Archives Act asserted a more “top-down” level approach to information management by
obliging government departments work with, and obtain consent from the National Archives with
respect to information handling and disposal issues.
The mid-1990s presented two significant challenges to the GoC. The introduction of personal
computers during this period empowered a wide range of federal workers to take more control
over the creation and capture of electronic information as part of their duties. On the other side of
the coin however, was a series of large-scale layoffs of employees in an attempt to bring the
deficit under control.11
An estimated 6%12
of the staff cuts affected clerical workers – secretaries,
administrative assistants, file clerks; the job category that typically served as the underpinning to
traditional records keeping practices. This combination proved to be a dangerous one: an
explosion of content creation, coupled with inconsistent or non-existent practices for information
management.
Two “scandals” erupted during this period which pushed information management practices and
concerns to the front page: The Somalia Inquiry and the Krever Commission Inquiry. The
Somalia Inquiry was an investigation into misconduct of certain troops serving as peacekeepers
in Africa. The question quickly arose as to when senior defence staff knew about the activities,
and whether a coverup had occurred. The investigators questioned whether full disclosure of
information had occurred, and the issue of document sabotage, alteration or unauthorized
destruction was raised. An unprecedented one-day, all staff search of DND records occurred in
April 1996: essentially all normal worked ceased, while tens of thousands of DND staff searched
records.
The Krever Inquiry was established in 1994 to investigate the safety of Canada’s blood supply in
the wake of HIV and hepatitis transmission through the health care system. Once again,
allegations of document destruction and tampering were raised, purporting to hide evidence that
disease transmission was known to senior health executives and that no action was taken until
too late.
It was in this era of information management crisis that the Treasury Board moved to address
document and record keeping practices – particularly electronic – with the release of a Request
for Proposal for a comprehensive, integrated DM/RM solution to be rolled out throughout the
GoC. The “RDIMS” solution (Records, Document, Information Management System) sought a
user-friendly, comprehensive electronic document, records, image management system with
integrated workflow and reporting that could be deployed in either of Canada’s official languages.
While the requirements were written in the mid-1990s, the RDIMS solution can be viewed as a
precursor to the “smart enterprise suite” approach to information management. An integrated
11
See: http://www.parl.gc.ca/english/hansard/previous/163_95-03-
02/163GO1E.html.
12
Ibid.

5. suite addressing a wide range of IM requirements that was flexible, customizable and available
from a single vendor was the objective.
The RDIMS RFP was issued in February 1996 as a direct result of the work done by the
“Electronic Work Environment Management Board which was established in 1994. “Document
and records management was determined to be a key operational priority of the Board.
Accordingly, an interdepartmental steering committee was established to provide leadership and
guidance for planning, evaluating, and implementing a system for document and records
management based on a common requirements statement”13
The EWE board agreed that
existing information management practices were inconsistent across departments and that
existing systems were not adequate to meet the needs of an increasingly electronic workplace.
The vision of the solution was to go beyond what was then considered traditional document and
records management – office documents and paper – and look to a flexible application that could
accommodate new forms of information as technology advanced: email, digital photos, video and
sound.
A work environment that was responsive to the “functions, work processes and information needs
of all employees” was stated as an objective for the proposed solution14
. Easing the workload of
the federal employee by enhancing the ability to “create, manage, retrieve, and re-use information
intuitively and seamlessly at the right time, in the right place, in the right format, and in a cost
effective manner”15
was a key objective and criteria for solution selection.
Compliance with legislative and policy requirements, including public access to information was
also a driving force behind the RFP. Canada’s federal Access to Information legislation in 1983
opened a broad range of public data to the public, and the ability to effectively manage,
categorize, locate and disseminate both electronic and traditional paper information was key.
Cost savings was also a goal, specifying the motivation “to operate in an effective, efficient and
economical manner”.16
Core guiding principles also were specified in the RFP. In addition to the technical requirements,
the information management guidelines that the system would serve were outlined: recognition
that IM was not limited to a single discipline such as records or IT; that information was a
resource to be shared; that the status quo for IM was unacceptable, that basic RM/DM/IM
practices needed to become pervasive and not disruptive to users, and that the integrity of
electronic objects would be maintained.17
The contract was awarded to CGI, a large Canadian systems integrator in 1998. The solution
included core document management products from PC DOCS (now Hummingbird Ltd.)
Document management, imaging, basic workflow, supplemented by records management
modules from PSSoftware (now Open Text) and Provenance (now Documentum) and reporting
tools from Crystal Decisions encompassed the “RDIMS” desktop suite. Hummingbird’s RM
product was added to the contract at a later date. The contract also specified an initial pilot phase
of 250 users, which was successfully completed at the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs.
The contract was structured as a “Shared System” initiative; thus allowing any and all federal
departments to benefit from a common integrated application at a price point that was more
attractive due to the large and comprehensive scope of the contract.
13
Public Works and Government Services. “Records/Document/Information Management: Integrated
Document Management System for the Government of Canada, Request for Proposal”. Ottawa, February
6, 1996, pg. 58.
14
Ibid. p. 61.
15
Ibid.
16
Ibid., pg. 62.
17
Ibid., pg. 63.

6. By early 2003, 33 departments had acquired over 37,000 seats of the RDIMS solution, with the
majority of the seats rolled out. The requirements of the system are reviewed on an ongoing basis
with vendors and integrators in order to keep it relevant and technologically current as the market
and requirements shift. A highly structured governance structure keeps the momentum for the
project going and ensures that the government’s ongoing requirements are understood and
accommodated. A Release Management Working Group, to which each department sends a
representative, meets weekly in order to share implementation lessons, voice new requirements,
and check on the status of outstanding issues. Regular and formalized communication channels
between the government representatives, the integrator and the vendors have proven critical to
success. What is unique about the committee structure is that it gives the very diverse
departments the ability to share best practices, lessons learned, technical tips and to develop a
common strategy for information management in the GoC. Sub-committees focused on issues
such as records management, change management, training and others feed back their findings
to the main group.
Critical to the ongoing support of this “Shared System” initiative is its backing by the highest
levels in the GoC. An ADM (Assistant Deputy-Minister) level steering committee focused on IT/IM
issues was formulated in 1999, and the Chief Information Officer of the GoC, as part of the
Treasury Board Secretariat, has absorbed responsibility for IM issues across the GoC.18
The RDIMS initiative has garnered attention worldwide for the cohesive approach the GoC has
taken towards information management – with document and records management as the
cornerstone. Canada is consistently ranked at the top of various surveys on e-government
programs19
. The “Government On-Line” initiative, mandated to deliver on line services in
accordance with the priorities of citizens and businesses, is also responsible to the Treasury
Board and CIO office; establishing an organizational link between IM practices and the flood of
electronic transactions received from and sent to constituents and other stakeholders.
Canadian government organizations at provincial and municipal levels have also looked to the
RDIMS model as a guide as they grapple with the very similar issues in electronic
document/records/information management. One such organization, the City of Coquitlam,
located in British Columbia, also has adopted the vision of a shared repository for records and
document management as it developed its vision of information management at the local
government level.
Coquitlam’s EDM/RM Solution
Background and Requirements
As in most other organizations, staff members at the City of Coquitlam create electronic
documents using various desktop software applications. These include the traditional Microsoft
Office suite of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as a few other specialized applications such
as Corel Draw, Visio, Acrobat and AutoCAD. Prior to the implementation of an EDMS/RMS
solution, these documents were saved to any one of several department, user or application
specific online locations, with retrieval based on employee memory of the document’s file path.
When the document was completed, it was printed, signed and a hard copy set aside for filing. It
then was classified, filed, retrieved and disposed of according to the rules prescribed by the city’s
corporate records management program.
The origins of this program can be traced back to the early 1990s. With the passage of British
Columbia’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act in 1994, local government and
18
Treasury Board Secretariat. “Review of the Shared Systems Initiative”, November 1999, pg. 6. See:
http://www.cio-dpi.gc.ca/ssi-isp/documents/critical-docs/initiatives/1999/initiative_e.pdf
19
Accenture. “The Government Executive Series: e-Government Leadership – Realizing the Vision;
Innovation Leaders: Canada”. 2002. pg 2. See:
http://www.accenture.com/xdoc/fr/locations/france/pdf/grasecan.pdf

7. universities in BC realized they needed to take a more systematic approach to the care of their
records. In Coquitlam’s case, a review of its recordkeeping practices and analysis of the new
FOIPPA workload resulted in the creation of a full time position to deal with FOI requests and
records management in 1997. Reporting directly to the City Clerk, the new Records Management
Coordinator dealt almost exclusively with freedom of information requests in the first year of the
program. Subsequently, a decision was made to create a new position of Assistant City Solicitor
to take on the FOI responsibility combined with more general legal duties. This left the Records
Management Coordinator free to devote their time to the development of the records
management program.20
The immediate priority was the creation of a corporate-wide file
classification system and records retention schedule, but the Coordinator also was responsible
for the city’s micrographics program and corporate archives. There also was an expectation, on
the part of senior management, for the Coordinator to pay a key role in the selection and
implementation of a system to manage electronic document-based information.
By January 1, 2000, the file classification system was developed and applied corporate-wide for
non-electronic records, and by January 1, 2001, the retention schedule component of what had
been dubbed the “City Records Classification and Records Schedule System,” or CRCRSS, was
in place across the organization. On April 15, 2001, City Council approved three key records
management policies, including one dealing with records retention and disposition. This policy
declared that all recordkeeping must be carried out according to CRCRSS.
The one deficiency in the RM program was that it did not address the control of corporate
electronic records and it relied, for the most part, on manual and semi-automated techniques for
managing the city’s paper-based records. The three new policies clarified that the program’s
principles extended to records in all media formats, but there was no system in place to easily
apply those principles to the electronic recordkeeping environment. As a result, there was limited
corporate control over where electronic records were stored, how they were indexed, the number
of duplicates that were created, or how they were handled when they outlived their administrative
usefulness.
The negative results were significant: considerable staff time spent finding documents, with a
proportional decrease in efficient customer service; unnecessary duplication of documents
resulting in more difficult retrieval, loss of version control and increased digital storage costs; and,
from a risk management perspective, the inability for the City to provide evidence of its actions
when required for legal, legislative or financial reasons.
The city’s senior management recognized that the proliferation of desktop computers and the
decentralized electronic recordkeeping practice they promoted played a large role in creating
these inefficiencies. By the late 1990s, a number of key senior managers were suggesting the
answer lay in electronic document management technology – a solution that would make it simple
for staff to share document-based information, to track multiple versions and to retrieve
documents quickly and efficiently.
The technological groundwork for such a solution had been laid in the early 1990s, in the city’s
1991 Five Year Information Technology Strategic Plan. This strategy called for the automation of
the city’s major business functions, including its procurement and payment, payroll, permit
application tracking, and tax, utility and other revenue collecting processes. It also recommended
the automation of its basic records management functions. Throughout the 1990s, the report’s
recommendations were addressed one by one, with the city taking a best of breed approach to
the selection of major business applications. The development of a “regional town centre”,
complete with a new city hall building, allowed the city to upgrade its area network to service
three main campuses linked by fibre optic cable capable of transferring data at rates up to 100
MB per second. Desktop hardware and software also was standardized. By 1999, all
recommendations except the one dealing with records management had been addressed, and
attention turned to the city’s document management needs.
20
In April 2003, the position was reclassified and renamed Records and Information Management Analyst

8. From an information technology perspective, the desired solution focussed heavily on search and
retrieval and version control functionality, since those two areas were causing the most obvious
difficulty for end users. As discussions between IT and records management staff progressed,
however, it became clear that the city needed more than just a document management
application - the solution needed to evolve into a full fledged records management system that
would manage documents and records across the organization and regardless of record medium,
and that would ensure that the electronic records created within the system were complete,
reliable and authentic.
Taking as its inspiration the federal RDIMS initiative, the city seized an opportunity presented by
the Municipal Information Systems Association of British Columbia (MISA-BC) to lead a project to
produce a generic request for proposal for an integrated EDMS/RMS standing offer that could be
used by any local government in BC. A systems analyst was hired by Coquitlam on temporary
basis in the summer of 2000 to write the RFP with input and financial support from 13 other
municipalities. In drafting the document, the systems analyst relied heavily on the US Department
of Defense’s 5015.2 Records Management Standard, but also examined such standards as the
European Commission’s Model Requirements Specification (MoReq)21
Without the buying power
of an organization as large as the federal government behind it, however, response to the RFP
was low, and the standing offer, although eventually awarded and publicized by MISA-BC, was
rarely pursued by municipalities.
The City of Coquitlam itself desired a broader range of proposals, and so, in early February 2001
issued a request for proposals for a system that would manage the city's electronic and paper-
based documents and records, and which would include components related to document
workflow, imaging and access to records over the World Wide Web. The proposals were
evaluated by two groups of staff members. The Functional Evaluation Team consisted of 24
employees representing all departments, and was responsible for evaluating the functional
requirements specified by the RFP and the ease of use of each solution proposed. The second
group, consisting of senior managers, was responsible for evaluating each proposal from the
point of view of technological requirements and growth capacity, support services quality,
proponent stability, implementation strategy and timelines, and price. The Executive Committee
also was responsible for negotiating the contract with the preferred proponent.
Seven proposals were received in response to the RFP and, of these, three were judged to be
complete and went forward for evaluation. The three short listed proponents made presentations
to each of the evaluation groups between March 28 and May 12, and Concerta Consulting’s
proposal of a 415-seat Hummingbird DOCS Open 3.9.0 and DOCS RM 3.9.0 solution was
selected as the best solution to meet Coquitlam’s needs.22
The contract was awarded by City
Council on June 4, 2001, for $354,166 worth of client and and server software, consulting time, a
production scanner, and imaging software.
Design
From mid-June to mid-July, two consultants from Concerta worked closely with the Records
Management Coordinator and Systems Analyst (who served as project leaders) on basic system
design. During this phase the servers and database were configured, system defaults were set,
forms were designed, and the file plan and retention schedule were imported. This phase also
saw a terminology shift from the use of “electronic” in the proposal and evaluation phase to
21
United States, Department of Defense, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications, and
Intelligence Design Criteria, Standard for Electronic Records Management Software Applications (DoD 5015.2-STD)
(Washington, 2001); European Commission, Requirements for the Management of Electronic Records (MoReq
Specification), prepared by Cornwell Affiliates plc. (Bruxelles-Luxembourg, 2001). The International Standards
Organization’s 15489 standared was only in draft form at the time.
22
Concerta Consulting Inc. is a Vancouver-based consulting company specializing in document management systems
and has extensive experience implementing systems similar to the one proposed for the City of Coquitlam in numerous
sites across Western Canada. Their current clients include a number of Lower Mainland municipalities, including the City
of Richmond, the District of West Vancouver, the District of North Vancouver and the City of Port Moody.

9. “enterprise”, and the new solution was christened the “Coquitlam Enterprise Document
Management System” – CEDMS.23
Early in the design phase, a number of key decisions were made, the most critical of which was
that the integration with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio would be mandatory, not passive.
Passive integration of the Hummingbird product allows users to click Cancel on a Profile form and
be taken to the network or local drive structure through the familiar Windows dialogue box. With
tight, or mandatory, integration, clicking Cancel merely takes the user back to their unsaved
document. This results in both documents and records being captured in the system, and
documents are registered as soon as they are saved.
Secondly, it was decided that the document profile and search forms would be kept very simple.
The Profile form (Figure C1) contains only six mandatory fields (identified by red field labels), and
two, the Entered By and Application fields, are automatically completed by the system. The Title
field is a 255 character free form field, while Author, Document Type and Code are validated fields
linked to look up tables. The Correspondence Tracking fields may contain data if users wish, but
they autofill when email is imported with the names of the message originator, addressee, cc’d
individuals and the name of the company of the originator if that individual is in a staff member’s
Outlook contacts list. Key date information is captured in the History section of the form, and a
field is provided for Source Record Date, to be used to record the date of a scanned image’s
original record. The Made Record field autofills with the date a document is turned into a read-
only, and completely unalterable, Record. The Search form (Figure C2) was designed to look as
similar to the Profile form as possible. Users may search on any and all Profile fields, as well as
the document contents (which are keyword indexed), or any combination of Profile fields and
contents.
Figure C1
It also was decided that, by default, all documents would be viewable and editable by all system
users. This approach reflected senior management’s desire to promote collaborative work and
information sharing. Controlled through the Security section of the document Profile form, the
onus is on users to decide if they need to restrict a document
in any fashion. The one exception is for Human Resources
staff members, whose security default is set to their own HR
security group.
To secure a document, users simply tick the box by the word
Restricted on their Profile Form, and the document then can
be retrieved only by the person(s) in the Entered By and
Author fields. Clicking on the Access button takes the user to
the Document Access screen from which they can choose to
grant access to various groups (corresponding to the
network Active Directory security structure) or individuals
23
Nearby City of Richmond’s Hummingbird solution, implemented in 1996, is called REDMS.
Figure C3
Figure C2

10. (Figure C3). They can further customize the type of access these trustees are granted by making
selections in the Access Rights section.
To encourage users to use the default security setting for all but the most confidential or sensitive
documents, users were made aware of the system’s audit trail
functionality. Referred to as document “History” by
Hummingbird, the audit log is set to track the following
transactions on a document: edit, view, classify, edit profile,
print, mail, new version, version deletion, and make record
(Figure C4).
From a system administration perspective, it was decided to
allow only two users in the organization to hold system
administrator rights – the CEDMS Systems Analyst and the
Records Management Coordinator. Only the Records
Management Coordinator has Records Manager rights in
DOCS RM, which allows them full access to all RM
functionality, including the creation of file plan terms, creation
of storage and disposal actions, and the use of storage
management and final disposition functions. Nine clerical staff across the city currently hold what
were dubbed “Records Administrator Rights” which allow them to use CEDMS’ storage
management functionality to prepare active records for transfer to semi-active storage, and these
employees and an additional 18 clerical staff have the rights to create and maintain new case
files and volumes in the file plan. Ordinary users have no RM rights except those allowing them to
view the file plan and assign documents to open file volumes.
A decision also was made to not allow any users other than the System Administrators to delete
documents. In part this related to a concern that, with access being completely open by default,
users easily could delete other
user’s documents by accident.
To deal with test documents,
documents imported twice and
so on, it was decided to allow
users to queue documents for
deletion, but to do so, they must
display a document’s Profile
form and change the file
classification in the Code field to
a special code for “Trash”.
In addition to these key
decisions, the other major
challenge during the system
design phase was the importing
of the existing file plan and
retention schedule (Figure C5).
Since its inception, CRCRSS
data had existed in an MS
Access database and was
made available to staff through
printed reports and data
exported in Word format. The
file plan, a basic block numeric system with a functional block
level and primary and secondary levels underneath, was fairly
easy to translate into the hierarchical term structure used by
DOCS RM, and was imported using a SQL script written by
Concerta.
Figure C4
Figure C5
Figure C6

11. At the secondary term level, the DOCS RM Properties / Term Change form (Figure C6) was
customized to include the Access database’s fields for active, semi-active and total retention
periods and final disposition data, as well as fields for Office of Primary Responsibility,
arrangement notes, appraisal rational, and flags designating certain series as personal
information banks or vital records. The top half of the Term Change form remained as it came out
of the box, and drives all file numbering, file closure and rollover, and file movement and disposal
rules. As such, the Term Change form now serves as the city’s official Records Retention and
Disposition Authority for each individual records series.
Deployment
In mid-July 2001, the newly designed system was rolled out to a pilot group of approximately 25
staff members in the City Clerk’s Office and Information, Communication and Technology
Division. These end users spent the next two months testing the system (which was set up using
passive integration until the roll out was complete). The pilot group also tested the training
materials and documentation developed during the design phase by the Records Management
Coordinator and Systems Analyst. Some minor changes were made based on user feedback, but
by far, the most troublesome aspect of the pilot came from system instability related to running on
a Windows 95 platform.
Desktops across the city had been upgraded in 1999 so that all contained, at a minimum, a 450
Mhz CPU and 128 Mb of RAM, and all were running MS Office 2000 on a Windows 95 platform.
The CEDMS roll out was timed to coincide with ICT’s upgrade to Windows 2000, and the
EDMS/RMS desktop clients were rolled out with the new Windows 2000 image.24
PCs were
upgraded on a department by department basis that coincided with the CEDMS training
schedule.
That training, and the actual roll out to the city’s entire complement of 415 desktops, ran from
mid-September to mid-December. Because senior management wanted all staff using Word and
Excel to attend CEDMS training, it was determined that outside professional trainers would be too
expensive. Instead, the training was carried out in-house by the Records Management
Coordinator and Systems Analyst, who conducted 42 four hour training sessions for over 360
staff during the roll out period. The original intent was to provide training customized to suit the
needs of each department, but this was quickly revisited once it was realized how much time
would be required to develop such specialized training modules. In the end, all staff received the
same training, which included a brief demonstration of how to save a document and retrieve it,
followed by a more in depth, hands on, field by field examination of the Profile form and more
advanced search techniques. Other topics included version control, the Make Record
functionality, attaching documents to email messages, importing email to CEDMS, and a 45
minute explanation of the file plan structure and how to search it.
On January 6, 2002, passive integration was switched off and use of the EDMS/RMS became
mandatory for all users.
By this time Concerta also had developed an integration between CEDMS and the city’s permit
application tracking system, AMANDA. Users of this system were able to create and retrieve MS
Word documents through the AMANDA interface, and these documents were saved in a secure
directory on one of the network drives. With plans to switch CEDMS to mandatory integration at
the end of the training phase, the EDMS had to be integrated with AMANDA in order for Word to
function properly through that interface. The integration developed by Concerta allows AMANDA
users to click on their usual “documents” button within a permit application folder and select one
of their many Word templates. The integration pulls data from the AMANDA database and uses it
to complete the Title field in the CEDMS Profile form for the new document. It also pulls the
Author and Entered By fields data from the user’s system login and defaults the Document Type
to “Letter,” the type representing the majority of templates. The structure of AMANDA permit
numbers makes it possible to link various types of applications (such as zoning, building, and
24
In September 2002, all desktops were upgraded to Intel Pentium 4 1.8 GHz machines with 504 MB of RAM and 19 GB
hard drives running MS Office XP on Windows XP v2002 SP1. Business applications database server runs Oracle 8.0.5.

12. development variance permits) to their appropriate records series code in the CEDMS file plan.
CEDMS looks under the appropriate series for the application number and, if it locates an open
file with that number, places that file number in the Code field. If it does not, it creates the file and
first file volume for the new permit application and inserts that number in the Code field. As a
result, AMANDA users are provided with an automatically completed Profile form, which they can
either accept as presented or edit (for changes to Author, Document Type or access restrictions..
Another decision that had been made very early in the planning process was to bring all important
or useful legacy documents on the network into CEDMS. To that end, throughout the training
period and during early 2002, staff members were encouraged to clean up their private network
space and shared departmental folders and import any documents they wished to keep into
CEDMS. The Records Management Coordinator provided guidelines regarding the kinds of
documents that would be valuable to import (including those relating to active case files and
those used as templates) and the Systems Analyst carried out a number of bulk imports for staff
with large numbers of forms and template documents. Then, during the first week of April 2002,
all Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Visio documents were deleted from the network user drive, and
during the first week of July 2002, all such documents were deleted from the network shared
drives.
Results and Lessons Learned
One of the key factors driving the ambitious implementation timeline was a commitment to City
Council to use the EDMS/RMS to make the regular Council meeting agenda package available
on the city’s website prior to meetings by September 2001. This package, often up to 800 pages
in length, contains the order of business for the meeting and all reports going forward to Council
for information or action. Up until that point, only the Order of Business had ever appeared on the
website and the package itself was distributed in hard copy. One of the benefits of the
EDMS/RMS solution was to enable staff to scan the package, or parts thereof, assemble it
electronically and post it to the site, thus broadening its distribution and reducing printing costs. A
commitment also was made to senior management to complete the roll out by the end of the
calendar year.
Meeting these commitments demanded the implementation schedule be very condensed. While
this meant the system was up and running very quickly, it demanded virtually full time dedication
to the project by the Records Management Coordinator and Systems Analyst, with many of their
regular duties being put on hold. Had these two staff not been full time employees, and had the
basic records management components of file plan and retention schedule not been in place
beforehand, the project deadlines would not have been met.
The natural tendency of human beings to resist change and alter work habits provided another
challenge. In the EDMS/RMS environment, saving documents and searching for them is a very
different process from what people were used to in the old MS Windows and Office environments.
There was a significant degree of resistance to document security being open by default and, in
general, to any attempt to centrally manage electronic recordkeeping. Some staff strongly felt that
the electronic documents they created were their own property and that the employer had no
business attempting to manage them.
Training presented its own set of challenges. Some staff were quite adept at exploring the
software independently – using online help and experimenting with various functionality on their
own. Other staff members were hesitant to explore the software, while still others ignored any sort
of documentation (from online help to Coquitlam specific manuals and tips) and phoned for
assistance the moment something did not work as expected or they found they did not know how
to carry out a particular function. Added to that was a wide range of computer skills. Since training
sessions were mandatory for all staff members using MS Word or MS Excel, sessions included
attendees who were extremely computer literate as well as others who had difficulty with basic
keyboard skills.
By far the most difficult aspect of the system to get users to understand and embrace, however,
was its records management functionality, and in particular, the file plan. While the file plan had

13. applied corporate-wide to paper records since January 2000, it really only affected administrative
staff in charge of filing. The EDMS/RMS brought the need to understand the file plan to the
individual computer desktop, in most cases to senior and middle managers and front line
operational staff, all of whom had little time or inclination for filing. The structure of the file plan
allowed users to choose a “Help” category that would flag a document for follow up by
administrative staff, but the volume of electronic documents created compared to paper
documents caused many overworked administrative staff to demand that users at least make an
attempt to classify documents themselves. Those users strongly resisted doing so, in part
because the file plan was seen as difficult to understand (despite a useful search functionality
provided by DOCS RM), but also because it meant giving up their network or personal directory
structure in favour of the hierarchical structure imposed by the corporate classification scheme. A
number of users also resented the new reliance on the retention schedule as a tool for managing
their electronic records. While some were relieved they no longer had to think about when to
delete their documents, many were loathe to relinquish that control over retention decision
making.
Despite the challenges, two years after the roll out began, the implementation is considered a
success. Over a dozen file formats are integrated with CEDMS, including MS Word, MS Excel,
MS PowerPoint, MS Outlook, Acrobat, Visio, Notepad, Internet Explorer, Volo View Express, JPG
Image, TIF Image, GIF Image, DOCS Binder, DOCS Report Viewer, and Winzip. Specifically, the
system contains over 125,000 documents and records, including 68,000 Word documents,
20,100 Excel spreadsheets, 31,300 pdfs (including 3,700 Council minutes, 5,100 bylaws, 16,000
form survey certificates and 5,000 utility as constructed drawings), and 3,500 email messages.
Excluding bulk imports of images from approved backlog scanning projects, an average of 10,000
new documents are created in CEDMS each quarter. The system also manages over 37,000 file
volumes and almost 2000 physical boxes.
An early benefit came from the system’s version control functionality. As soon as all staff had
access to the system, those who were used to working collaboratively on reports and project
documents found it much easier to keep track of the most recent versions of such documents.
The only difficulty in this regard proved to be document security. A number of staff insisted on
securing all their documents to themselves, a department specific group or to a small number of
individuals, making it impossible for other staff needing to refer to or edit the document to access
it. With the passage of time, however, security restrictions have become less common, with only
about a third of the documents in the system having some sort of restriction placed on them.
After about a year, users began to appreciate the system’s search functionality as well. At first,
they were unconvinced and found searching for documents difficult. As more documents were
saved to system, however, and as increasing numbers of users recognized the benefits of being
consistent, accurate and descriptive when assigning document titles and of keeping access rights
open as much as possible, they began realizing that they were locating information much faster
than in the past. They also could be assured that a document did not exist if they could not find it
in CEDMS – a benefit of both the clean up of the network shared drives and the decision to make
the use of the system mandatory. Both those decisions meant staff members need only look in
one place for MS Office-based documents – the document management system.
One of the early victories in retrieval proved to be a request for copies of the 1971 zoning bylaw
and the 1972 building bylaw (both repealed in 1996) and their amendments in the context of a
third party legal action. Before the EDMS/RMS, such a request would have involved an
administrative staff member working off a report generated from an Access database and going
through physical bylaw files to pull certified copies, if they existed, and making copies of each
bylaw where copies didn’t exist. This would have taken days, given that there were over 900
amendments to the zoning bylaw and just under 40 amendments to the building bylaw. Some
federal grant funding had enabled the city to scan all its Council minutes and bylaws and import
the images to CEDMS, and pulling the information together for this request was as simple as
specifying some basic search criteria for document type and title and then simply printing out the
pdf images over a couple of hours.

14. Figure C7
Users also are slowly beginning to value the system’s Make Record functionality. While few
appreciate all the elements that make a document a complete and reliable record, they view the
Made Record flag as a useful indication that a document is no longer a draft. This functionality
also is slowly allowing electronic records to replace paper as the “file copy” of ordinary letters,
memos and email. The next step in the system’s development will be to deal with the assembly
and profiling of compound electronic records and those with stamps, annotations and seals. At
present, the official copy of these more complex records still is considered to be the paper
version.
From an information technology perspective, another benefit proved to be the freeing up of a
significant amount of the city’s disk space. This was accomplished in part through the deletion of
legacy documents on the network shares, but also because of the system’s integration with MS
Outlook. The latter allowed users to email references or pointers to the original document in the
database, rather than copies of the document to fellow CEDMS users. This dramatically
decreased document duplication caused by emailing attached copies of documents, which in turn
were saved in various network or local disk locations.
From a records management perspective, a surprising early benefit of implementing the system
proved to be an improvement of the file plan structure itself. Since all electronic documents
suddenly were affected by the file classification structure, a number of people contacted the
Records Management Coordinator to say that they couldn’t find an appropriate spot for their
documents. In a number of cases, these documents were found to exist only in electronic form
and thus never had been encountered in past physical inventorying exercises, yet they
sometimes represented entirely new functions. In these cases, new categories were added to the
file plan to accommodate them. Additionally, users who had never shown an interest in discussing
their records with the Records Management Coordinator asked to discuss the parts of the file
plan relevant to them, resulting in changes to the structure in areas that had perhaps not had
much previous input from records creators (not for lack of trying on the part of the Records
Management Coordinator). That ability to play a role in developing and maintaining the structure,
and the increased familiarity with it, has led to a respectable 3% misfile rate.
The system also drastically reduced the time spent on transfers of physical records to semi-active
storage and is proving to assist in streamlining the process of destroying records (or transferring
to archives) as well. Before the EDMS/RMS,
administrative staff in each department or division
completed transfer forms by hand and attached hard
copy (sometimes hand written) box contents lists to
the form. The Records Management Coordinator
then entered the box level description from the
transfer form into an Access database, assigned
shelf locations to the boxes and then sent hard copy
location reports (run from the Access database) to
the owners of the records. Depending on the
number of boxes to be transferred, the process often
took days. Using CEDMS’s storage management
functionality, transfers are as simple as scanning file
label barcodes as the files are placed in boxes. This
selects the virtual representations of the file volumes
in CEDMS and these volumes then are moved into
virtual boxes using basic drag and drop functionality.
The virtual box has a location and shelf position
number assigned to it and the file volumes inherit
that location information automatically. Locating a file
in storage is a simple matter of finding the file
volume in the CEDMS file plan and viewing its properties (Figure C7) – that screen shows the
unique number of the box containing that file and the box’s shelf location number.

15. The system also drastically decreased the time spent on file label preparation. At the beginning of
the calendar year, the Records Management Coordinator runs a process to rollover all year-
based file volumes to the new year, and then runs a Microsoft Query-based mail merge to create
a document containing all labels for the new year. The labels (complete with bar codes) are
printed in the city’s on-site printshop and distributed to the relevant departments who then need
only attach them to new file folders. In January 2003, over 7000 labels were created in this
manner.
None of these benefits would have been realized if senior management staff had not recognized
the value of adding an RMS component to their vision of the EDMS and tightly integrating the two
technologies. The project itself would have failed had there not been open and respectful
communication between the Clerk’s Office and ICT, communication that evolved into an
extremely positive working relationship between the two units throughout the planning, design
and implementation phases of the project.
The project also would have failed without senior management’s desire and commitment to
implement such a comprehensive system across the organization. Their endorsement of the
basic system design decisions (especially the one related to mandatory use) meant that staff had
no choice but to learn how to use the system. That approach was softened by system champions
at the end user level, but without it, even today the system would be used by only a core group of
staff and mostly for collaborative records going through the Council approval process or related to
Council decision making in some way. With use being mandatory for basic Office applications,
while a considerable shock and cause of distress at the beginning, with time and practice, as well
as some refresher training in early 2003, the system has become accepted by most users, and
many have come to recognize, appreciate and even champion its usefulness.
The next major project will be to upgrade to DM/RM 5.1, but after that, the city probably will be
developing the imaging and workflow component of the system. There are a number of imaging
backlog projects either underway or being evaluated, and it is anticipated these will continue over
the next few years, along with analysis of functions where imaging and workflow could be brought
into active file management procedures. Within five years, the disposal processing functionality of
CEDMS will be in full use as electronic records become due for destruction or, more importantly,
transfer to archives. By then, the system will have to include policies and procedures for dealing
with access to and preservation of the city’s permanently valuable electronic records. Among the
decisions to be made will be those concerning file format, preservation media, data refreshing
and migration schedules, and rules around how we ensure the authenticity of those records as
they are moved from one technology to another over time.