COLLEGE OF COMPUTING, INFORMATICS AND MEDIA

PUNCAK PERDANA CAMPUS, SELANGOR

BACHELOR OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT (HONS)

INFORMATION CONTENT MANAGEMENT

MANAGEMENT OF RECORDS IN ORGANIZATION (IMR451)

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT:

ARTICLE REVIEW

TITLE: RECORDS MANAGEMENT AS INVISIBLE WORK: A STUDY

OF FINNISH MUNICIPALITIES

PREPARED BY:

AIN NAZIERA BINTI HAMID (2021467802)

PREPARED FOR:

DR. ABDUL RAHMAN BIN AHMAD

SUBMISSION DATE:

18TH DECEMBER 2022

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, I would like to praise and thank Allah SWT for giving me the
strength to complete this assignment within the specified period of time. Without Him, I would
not be able to complete this given task. I also like to thank our parents and family for the
encouragement and support throughout the completion of this assignment.

Special appreciation goes to my beloved lecturer, Dr. Abdul Rahman bin Ahmad, who
has imparted a lot of knowledge in this course and gave an in-depth explanation of the
instructions for this assignment.

Not forgetting my classmates who never tire of answering all my questions regarding
this assignment. Therefore, I am able to complete the assignment within the time period set
by the lecturer. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to anyone who
contributes their ideas in completing this assignment.

i
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

No Content Page
1. Acknowledgement i

2. Introduction 1

3. Article review 2-5

4. Conclusions 6

5. Sketch Notes 7

6. References
 INTRODUCTION

Records management is in charge of effectively and methodically controlling the

development, reception, maintenance, use, and dispose of records. This includes methods for
gathering and preserving records that serve as proof of and information about corporate
transactions and operations. Records management aims to assist a company in keeping the
required paperwork readily available for both business operations and compliance audits.

Records are strategic tools in e-government that help to build confidence between
citizens and public entities. Records management professionals are responsible for effectively
managing the information received and produced by the organization.

Records management is a key factor in promoting the initiatives of open, transparent

and trustful e-government. Public organizations are obliged to make sure that sensitive
information and privacy issues are protected carefully. This makes records management
strategic and explains why it should be a part of organization’s daily routines.

With the help of new technology, information can be used for various things. Changes
in technology, societal norms, or business procedures also have an impact on how records
are created and maintained. Different actors create information systems independently and
records administration is handled incorrectly with substandard or incompetent resources in
the absence of a shared knowledge and clearly defined roles. The records management world
has gotten blurry.

Since records are an essential instrument for communication between citizens and
municipal entities, the development of e-government requires reliable records. The purpose
of this study is to determine whether records management is hidden within Finnish municipal
institutions.

1
 ARTICLE REVIEW

Studies conducted by the government and at work have not revealed much interest in
records management. ICT studies have touched on some issues related to records
management, such as privacy concerns, but they have not taken a comprehensive approach
to recordkeeping. Studies have found issues with these systems' usability and adoption.
Attention has shifted to making ensuring that these needs are carried out covertly, behind the
scenes, as users may find meeting recordkeeping obligations to be esoteric and bureaucratic.
According to Oliver (2017), to manage information, organisations have also switched from
EDRM systems to other business systems, like Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
system. Naturally, this does not increase records management's visibility within businesses.

The findings indicate that information is now valued differently than it was in the past
and that technology has altered how public sector organisations use information. There are
also high expectations for how technology will handle challenging record-related problems.
The effect of not knowing is that records managers and archivists are acknowledged while
dealing with paper records, but not necessarily when dealing with digital data. Poor records
management resource allocation and the growing delegation of records management tasks to
other experts are indications that RM specialists are not acknowledged. The disparity between
large and small municipalities' budgetary capacities may also be a factor in the shortage of
resources (Svard, 2018). This impacts the municipalities' ability to successfully adopt public
sector information (PSI) and further, how they are able to give their residents access to PSI.

Depending on where they happen to live, this can put citizens in unequal
circumstances. Ignoring RM experts can also result in instances where records are not initially
identified and captured, they are handled illegally, and they are deleted or destroyed without
sufficient planning. There is a need for study that looks at what records management now
means, what records managers actually perform at work, what skills are needed, and how the
education of RM professionals should be developed. RM professionals play a vital role in
organisations as well as society at large.

The problem of daily records management in organisations is included in several

studies, but they do not look at how visible it is within the organisation. On the websites of
Finnish municipalities, Kautto and Henttonen (2017) investigated the presence and
accessibility of FOI and privacy statements. The study revealed that it was challenging to
locate the statements on websites. This suggests that, at the very least, some good records
management practises are concealed from the public in actuality. There does not appear to
be a correlation between a municipal organization's size and the visibility of its records
management standards. However, one explanation could be that records management

2
problems are not explained to outsiders because they are not initially noticed within the
business.

While administrative and medical secretaries are frequently left out of research, the
advent of welfare technology has increased interest in the invisible work of health, social, and
homecare workers, such as doctors and nurses. Despite the advantages that information and
communication technology (ICT) has brought to the field of medicine, studies have shown that
ICT can also have unintended consequences (UAC) for hospital staff, including decreased
efficiency, increased effort required to complete routine tasks, and the addition of new tasks.

Researchers should pay more attention to invisible groups or professionals. Muller

(1999) advises questioning to whom something is invisible, who is observing, and what is
being watched when talking about invisibility. Every job always involves both visibility and
invisibility, so professionals need to strike the correct balance between the two. Consequently,
it is important to thoroughly examine both sides of the work.

For research findings, there were fifty-eight respondents in all. 51 respondents were
drawn from municipal organisations, while seven were drawn from other relevant groups like
the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, regional councils, and federations
of municipalities. The majority (55%) of respondents worked for small municipalities with less
than 10,000 residents, while 12% worked for large towns with more than 50,000 residents.
The 53 respondents' current job experience ranged in length: 43% had less than one year of
experience, 28% had between five and ten years of experience, and 19% had more than thirty
years. Out of 58 respondents, five did not respond to this question.

According to the research, records management tasks are not evident in municipal
organisations. Managers and other professionals view records management job as regular
because they are unaware of its requirements and significance. Records management is
neglected when organisations are reorganised, their tasks are outsourced, or when
administrative regulations are updated. An individual without the necessary training or
background is given responsibility for managing records. Sometimes even the appointment of
a record professional is not clear. In one example, the organization's archive manager has
resigned, and an IT designer has been given additional work responsibilities.

People frequently lack knowledge of what documents are in e-context or how to handle
them in specific circumstances. Professionals in records management (RM) provided
examples of requirements that are part of their work in both the questionnaire and the
interviews, including wide-ranging expertise in legal issues when handling records, expertise
in information retrieval, registering, and archiving, internal organisational processes, and
requests for information that citizens are authorised to make. As a result, the RM specialist is

3
frequently the one to attempt to resolve a legal problem with records management. Records
management difficulties started to become more apparent, and communication between IT
and RM specialists continued to advance slowly.

Records management (RM) professionals are hard to find in part due to the industry's
extreme fragmentation. The issue for the recordkeeping contact persons is that they could not
have much time for issues with archives or records management, such as if they only work in
records and archives management on certain days of the year or during the holidays.

Sometimes RM professionals have the authority and duties to control the

organization's records but lack the guts to exercise their authority. All respondents asserted
that records management (RM) professionals themselves may have some influence on the
field's exposure. To see "the broad picture" and be able to talk about various information
management-related problems, one needs to understand ideas and various concepts. One
must take initiative. This means that rather of waiting for someone else to create instructions
and rules, we must create them ourselves. Knowing one's own strengths and shortcomings
will help one prepare for.

Furthermore, all four interviewees agreed that records management professionals'

orientation and interest can increase the visibility of their work. It is crucial that RM
professionals take care of their professional development, capabilities, and learning. In the
absence of that, there is a chance of professional marginalisation.

The study indicates how records management is hidden in municipal institutions. The
nature of the work, its requirements, and its significance are unknown to managers and other
experts. The RM professionals in this study argued that their work involves problem solving
and contains components of knowledge work and that it necessitates a broad range of
expertise. Municipal organisations lacked adequate resources for records management
activities, and the roles involved were not clearly defined. Records management experts were
frequently excluded from IT-projects and e-development since the field was mostly linked with
paper processes. These results support earlier research that claimed records management
and RM specialists were underappreciated.

According to the study, the substantial fragmentation of the records management

industry makes RM specialists invisible. Professionals come in a variety of educational,
occupational, and job-related backgrounds, despite their seeming unity. Moreover, women
make up the majority of all employees in the category of RM professionals. This implies a
gendered nature to the occupation. These results are consistent with previous findings that
the labour is gendered, done behind the scenes, by "non-persons," is invisible, and that it is
informal and informally structured.

4
 The findings also imply that municipal entities do not recognise the importance of
records management activities. Most of the time, records management and RM professionals
are ignored, and they are only considered to be paper process handlers. Professionals in RM
must continually defend their existence and line of work. However, this study discovered that
the lack of motivation and drive among RM experts in furthering their job can make the task
invisible.

5
 CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, when seen through the prism of variables linked to invisible work,
records management and the job of RM specialists are invisible. According to this study, the
RM profession is highly fragmented, gendered, and does not classify as a labour of
professionals or associate professionals. Temporary resources also work in informal
frameworks.

The study demonstrates that records management professionals are adversely

affected by the work's obscurity. The creation and preservation of records as proof of previous
activities is at the core of the job done by RM experts to ensure accountability and
transparency in society. This puts e- government to achieve its objectives at risk, notably the
objective of fostering more confidence between the general public and governmental
institutions.

In a digital context where documents may be quickly altered and manipulated, good
records management is essential to good governance. In this case, we do not imply that RM
professionals are the only group of experts with the necessary expertise to handle information
in e-government environments. Instead, we are encouraging cooperation with other
information specialists in order to gain a more comprehensive perspective and achieve
equilibrium in this disorganised information environment. However, effective collaboration
necessitates the capacity to pay close attention to different points of view and to discuss and
accept the differences among information professionals.

6
SKETCH NOTES

7
 REFERENCES

Kautto T., & Henttonen P. (2020, October). Records management as invisible work: A
study of Finnish municipalities. ScienceDirect.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0740624X1930317X