ACT

Information Awareness Month 2008

The Information Awareness Month (IAM) 2008 was again a very successful initiative organised by associations with a common interest in various aspects of information use and management. This initiative of the various bodies within the information management community aims to increase public awareness of the importance of information. The IAM committee comprises members of the Records Management Association of Australasia (RMAA), the Institute of Information Management (IIM), Australian Society of Archivists (ASA), Australian Government Libraries Information Network (AGLIN), and the Australian Library, Information Association (ALIA) and actKM. This year’s theme was Safety: Security: Privacy. This year we had over 30 events organised in different Australian centres.

IAM committee in the ACT again demonstrated a very effective collaboration between contributing organisations, which resulted in 14 events organised in Canberra during this month.

The launch of the IAM 2008 in the ACT was organised by the National Archives of Australia for the second time. The 1st May cocktail function at Parkes was organised by the Records Management Association of Australasia (ACT Branch) and the National Archives. It was a wonderful night, attended by around 50 industry representatives.

IAM committee in ACT with host Ross Gibbs from National Archives of Australia:  from left - Kym Holden representing AGLIN, Stephanie Ciempka representing RMAA, IAM 2008 launch host Ross Gibbs, Vladimir Videnovic representing IIM, Matthew Eggins representing NAA, Karna O’Dea representing actKM and Elizabeth Estbergs representing ASA.

One of the highlights of the month in Canberra was the Business Intelligence / Corporate Performance Management discussion group organised by the IIM. This meeting featured two presentations: Toward Intelligent (and Intelligible) Government Business by Dr Mark Grundy and Enhancing Reports with Maps and Geospatial Tools by Brendan Halloran. Brief overviews of these presentations is available in this issue of the IIM newsletter.

L: Dr Mark Grundy: Toward Intelligent (and Intelligible) Government Business R: Brendan Halloran: Enhancing Reports with Maps and Geospatial Tools

At the meeting of this group participants have decided to form the BI/CPM Community of Practice.

ACT BI/CPM COP is a self-directed forum that would continuously provide organisations in the ACT with access to better practice in defining strategies, developing business cases and requirements, selecting and implementing solutions, and ensuring ongoing solution up-take and productivity gains.

Very successful IAM 2008 in ACT was closed with the Gala Dinner at the Canberra Club. Guest speaker was Brand Hoff, founder of Tower Software, who gave a very personal story of Tower Software from its first days until resent acquisition by Hewlett Packard.

  Brand Hoff, presenting the “Tower Software story” at the IAM 2008 finale in ACT 
 

Vic

May, Information Awareness month seems a long time ago. At the end of May we had a very successful meeting with close to 40 information management professionals at the presentation by Matthew Brennan, Director of Performance Audit Victorian Auditor-General's Office. Matthew's presentation was on the recent Auditor-General's audit of record-keeping in government agencies. The presentation is available by following the link to Matthew's presentation.

The audit involved a self assessment of 100 agencies and a detailed review of 8 agencies. Whilst 70% of surveyed agencies responded that they had objectives and policies when it came to the detailed review it was interesting to note that whilst most agencies had objectives and policies they:

• did not cover all agency records or all record formats
• did not make reference to relevant legislation such as the Public Records Act
• were not kept up to date
• were of varying quality

The IIM Melbourne Committee has commenced planning of a series of breakfast and afternoon seminars around the theme "Future Trends and Managing Risk Through Information Management". This series of seminars replaces the Showcase originally planned for August. Members will be advised shortly of event details.

NSW

IIM Sydney was very fortunate to have John Powell, CEO Alfresco present to the May meeting on "Enterprise Content Management - The Open Source Opportunity". The meeting organised by Len Asprey Honorary Life Member of IIM. In his presentation John spoke about:

• How he founded his company on an Open Source business model
• Why this business model innovation is creating such momentum
• How organisations around the world have adopted Alfresco, and thus Open Source
• And how these organisations have gained significant business value despite the perceived risks.

The next IIM Sydney meeting will be held at Opticon Australia Level 29 580 George St, Sydney on Wednesday 13th August. The speaker is Jason Kaminski. Jason's presentation is titled "Managing Information in 2008 and Beyond - A Practical Perspective". 

In his presentation Jason willdiscuss the risks inherent in managing information in today's technology-enabled business world, and provides some guidance on how to deal with these risks. By generating increasing numbers of transactions and volumes of information (data, documents, web content and records), information technologies have stimulated the generation of even more information and at a faster rate. Practical approaches to mitigate information risk management are often overlooked by organisations. 

WA

Dave addressed the future of information management being far from clear. The regulatory requirements of compliance and the pervasiveness of social computing provide compelling and conflicting pressures that cannot be easily reconciled; a true Catch 22 for the IT function. Follow this link to his address Global Concerns address .

Other presentations from the conference available on the IIM website are:
“Userland”                                             Yathin Naidoo
Yathin is currently the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) competency leader within the Deloitte Enterprise Information Management (EIM) group and has over 15 years of information management experience. Yathin took  a user experience approach Deloitte have started to analyse some of the implementations they’ve seen and present these.

Aspects of Business Intelligence            Rob McKinnon
Robert (IBRS)provides senior management executives with business IT advice, IT strategy development insight, and assisting with project delivery and project recovery. With over 30 years IT and business experience. Robert examined the wide array of BI technology currently available and some of the hallmarks that denote successful BI implementations.

Is Compliance Really Worth our Time and Effort?              Kemal Hasandedic
Kemal has 19 years experience in records management in local government and he will discuss the components of what I believe is required for a Best practice ECM solution that reflects the core compliance requirements required by legislation. The key in my mind is a: Framework for Records and Information Compliance

The Final Information Gap                      Robert Eames
Robert has over twenty years experience in management and consulting at senior levels. He has worked in Australia and overseas in operational, financial and marketing management and will look at:

• Data Elements – The basic building block
• Organising the Data – Leadership goes a long way
• Process and skills – Getting Information out of Data
• Knowledge – An undervalued asset
• Twelve tips to win the hearts and minds battle

The June 25th event - EDRMS Focus on Change Management was tremendously successful and was fully registered a month prior to the event. The presentation by John Townsend, CIO, NOPSA, was interesting and timely in WA with the current energy crisis. Due to the interest we organised a second session for July 9th. There were 70 at the first event and 60 at the second event. John Townsend is a former Perth Branch President, Regional Director and National IIM President.

IIM Perth held its 2008 AGM in conjunction with its August 6th event, "Virtualisation the Impact of Technology on Information Management" with presentation by Dr Kevin McIsaac, Intelligent Business Research Services (IBRS). Kevin provided a tour of virtualisation; talked about the hype from the facts of Storage and Server virtualisations; why virtualisation is the most important IT infrastructure trend of the decade and how virtualisations relates to information and records management. 

IIM Perth has a new committee with Jo Hutchinson - President, Terry Gaston - Financial Controller and Neil Whitely Branch Administrator. Branch Councillors are: Laya Baker, Carole Harris, Amanda Lea, Judith Morrisey, and Justain O'Flaherty. Special thanks goes to the outgoing President Carole Harris for keeping the Perth branch active an invigorated.

The next event in Perth is on the 15th October at Cliftons. The event "Technology & Society Shaping in Parallel" is sponsored by Lateral Minds. Keep this date free.