-----Original Message-----
From: The Information and Records Management Society mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Marc Fresko
Sent: 27 July 2016 17:06
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Living in a world with personal work filestores
Katharine
Assuming you are comparing Google to Microsoft Windows/Office (a wild guess...) I'm not quite sure I agree. More accurately, I'm sure I don't quite agree...
I've been working for a couple of years helping clients working with Google as their office infrastructure - Google Docs originally, now called Google Drive. It seems to me that Drive is not so different to Windows/Office. Information governance with Drive is possible - as possible as with Windows, in fact, but with differences. Drive presents unique governance challenges that do not arise with Windows, but vice versa too.
Both Drive and Windows allow you work as if one record exists in several places (even though it isn't). Drive (with sharing) does a much better job of deceiving you than Windows/Office (with shortcuts). But fundamentally, records exist in one "folder" in both environments (or at least you can pretend that is the case - really they are just strings of bits identified by metadata which is also strings of bits). To be fair, managing folders in Google does seem hard - you likely end up relying on users managing individual records more than folders.
The "Google formats" present another challenge. But it is easy enough to convert records to other formats, e.g. an ISO standard format. This sounds undesirable; but just think about what a "Microsoft Office format" really means, given people view records with all sorts of combinations of software and fonts and so on... Even though formatting might suffer, the underlying meaningful content is probably as certain in both environments, regardless of (most) format migrations.
To my mind, the greater challenge is presented by the uncertain, constantly-shifting, "cloud" offering. These services in the cloud evolve in a way that is neither under users' control nor entirely predictable. But that is true of Office as much as it is true of Drive. Another thorny issue concerns the management of accounts.
Most importantly, governance of information in either environment depends hugely on user training and user behaviour. I reckon it is as possible to train users to govern information well in Drive as it is in Windows/Office.
All this does not put off some of the largest companies in the world from adopting Drive - and nor should it. Our job, in the IRM area, should be to support such radical new environments where necessary, finding new tools and techniques as necessary. I might start to think about training possibilities, now that you raise the question. Your focus on the need for training confirms my view, that this is about people more than it is about technology.
Marc Fresko
-----Original Message-----
From: The Information and Records Management Society mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Katharine Schopflin
Sent: 26 July 2016 10:48
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Living in a world with personal work filestores
As someone who's moved to a non-Microsoft environment for the first time, I think there's really a need for practical guidance on using Google Drive.
Some of the features are positive - for example the east of sending links rather than attachments - but others really don't help encourage good behaviour to ensure people know which is the most authoritative version of a file. And the default to Google formats (even if you have Office installed) positively encourages multiple versions of the same document (one in XLS, one Google Sheets). Plus, being Google, the idea of structuring the data is an afterthought.
Using Google Drive is the norm in the tech sector, and very few such companies will have any governance infrastructure. I'm an information manager of many years' standing and I almost don't know where to start in trying to encourage people to save things in the right way (you can't use the concept of 'the right place' because it doesn't really exist with Google).
Anyone designing any courses?
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