tfpl blog

Google vs Microsoft: Google Sites vs SharePoint

In February 2008 Google launched the latest addtion to their Google Apps suite:     Google Sites.  It has been dubbed as Google's answer to Microsoft SharePoint:  an application that allows teams  and workgroups to create collaborative sites to share information and documents. 

Google are allowing any individual to create a Google Sites application for their organisation for free, and in minutes.   Google's hope is that the application will then spread virally within the organisation, as that individual invites other colleagues to join and collaborate with them.   

Google are by-passing IT departments, hoping that teams impatient with their organisation's systems will jump ship to Google Sites.

However Google are offering IT departments a way back into the loop.  Once a Google Sites application has reached a critical mass in the organisation then  IT departments may want to step in an take control of it.  Google have made provision whereby a Chief Information Officer can sign in and demonstrate that the or she owns the organisation's domain name. They willl then receive administrative rights over their organisation's Google Sites.   They also have the option of  upgrading to Google Apps Premier Edition, and at that point becoming a paying Google customer.

The risk of this model is that it poses a question mark over control of the sites. Could I see my team's collaborative site deleted by our Chief Information Officer who had subsequently secured administration rights?  Conversly, from a Chief information Officer's point of view,what would be the point of paying to upgrade to Premier Edition if I didn't get the ability to weed out reundant sites?

I created a TFPL Google Sites application this afternoon, simply by registering with my tfpl.com e-mail address.  If or when any of my TFPL colleagues creates an account for themselves using their work e-mail address they will be:

• told that there is already a TFPL.com instance of Google Sites
• able to see my name and e-mail adress and the names of any other TFPL colleagues who have already created an account for themeselves
• able set up collaborative sites within TFPL.com (the sites themselves are similar to wikis)
• able to assign access permissions to any site they set up within TFPL.com. They can choose between allowing all TFPL colleagues to see it, restricting access to invited colleagues ( they can  also invite people outside the organisation) or allowing the whole world to see it.

In theory if my other forty colleagues signed up we could be up and running with collaborative sites for our projects and programmes within a couple of hours.

See also  Sarah Perez's article on ReadWriteWeb   Is Google Sites the next SharePoint

The future of RM

Earlier this week, we hosted another free training course for our registered temporary workers.  The course, ‘From EDRM to Google Docs: what does the future hold for records management?' was led by James Lappin.

Around 30 of our temps heard James compare three different models for managing electronic documents  (EDRMs, Microsoft SharePoint and Google Docs).  The advantages and disadvantages of each were examined.

‘I thought James Lappin's presentation was excellent. I was particularly impressed with how the presentation was structured and the content thought out.’

‘James is clearly an excellent trainer and able to relate his knowledge of systems in a relaxed manner which makes the information easy to absorb.’

For more information about temps training events or temporary recruitment at TFPL contact katy.crosse@tfpl.com

What you do once you have successfully implemented EDRM?

On Wednesday I heard an extremely witty and informative talk by Ben Plouviez of the Scottish Government.  Ben is one of a select group of people who can say they have successfully implemented an EDRM system all the way across a large and important organisation.

Rolling out EDRM is a long old slog. You have to procure it; configure it; build your fileplan, your retention schedules and access rules; write your policies and procedures; pilot it; take it to every team, get their folders set up and get them trained.  By the time you've done all that you are three years older than when you started.

And what happens next?    Here is my summary of  Ben's advice on what to expect (or rather what not to expect)

• Don't expect a post -implementation party:  most of your project team will have found other roles in the weeks immediately before the end of the implementation project

• Don't expect much in the way of resources to manage and support the system:  Once you've implemented the system the organisation's attention, energy and resources will be diverted elsewhere.

• Don't expect to be able to find people with the multiple skill sets you need to support the system: your ideal support team understands the business and its operational needs; the technology and the configuration of the system; the organisation's records management policies, fileplan, access rules and retention rules; and the legal framework (particularly Data Protection and FOI).  There aren't human beings alive who combine all of these skill sets.

• Don't expect to know what is really going on in terms of usage of the system:  there are very few benchmarks out there for what constitutes good usage of an EDRM system.   Your system might be able to tell you that a certain team has saved a certain number of e-mails to the EDRM.  But what does that tell you? Should they be saving more than that? or less than that? Are they the right e-mails?  When you do come up with a good key performance indicator don't automatically assume that your system will be able to run you a report on it. 

• Don't expect the system to help with information overload: as the system grows and grows with more and more departments contributing to it and more and more documents on it, so the search results return more and more hits and the quantity of information overwhelms the quality of information.

• Expect technology to always move one step ahead of your EDRM:  How does the EDRM capture things like blogs, wikis and instant messages when these things were barely thought of when your implementation started?

• Don't expect your fileplan to survive organisational change unscathed: however hard you try to ignore the organisational structure when you draw up your fileplan, it will inevitably colour the fileplan and when the organisation changes the fileplan will need to be adapted to.

• Don't expect the work on the EDRM to ever finish!

Ben was speaking at Unicom's conference  'Preserving and protecting data and information assets'

Why use your work computer?

 

Two Saturday's ago I read Stephen Fry's Guardian article Deliver us from Microsoft, about a new laptop called the Asus Eee PC.

He described a laptop which:

• was no bigger or heavier than a normal sized hardback book
• cost £229
• took 20 seconds to start and ten seconds to close down
• had usb ports, speakers,  wifi web access, and webcam
• has no DVD or CD drive
• uses Open Source instead of Microsoft's operating system and software
• allows you to create, read and edit MS excel, word and powerpoint documents through the open source package OpenOffice.
• has a charger that is as light as a mobile phone charger.

In an age when a fully functional laptop is cheaper than an Xbox and as light as a book, what is the incentive for an individual to use their organisation's computers?  Won't they just buy their own devices, configure them how they like and use them for whatever they want in work and in play?

I decided to buy one of these Asus Eee PCs.  They took some tracking down  because they have been selling like hot cakes.  I found a post on a geek forum saying that 237 Tottenham Court Road had received a delivery of 200 of them on Saturday Feb 9.  I got there at 12 noon on Monday February 11.  They only had thirty left, they'd already sold eleven that morning (and sold another while I was chatting to them). They were confident the rest of the batch would be gone by the end of the day.

When I brought it back to the office it was like bringing a new born baby in, lots of colleagues crowding round, wanting a look and a hold.   One week on and I'm delighted with the thing.  My old work laptop is now permanently moored at my desk, kept on for the convenience of its connection to the work e-mail server.  I use the Asus Eee when I am working at a client's office, working on the train, and of course, for playing around with at home.   

The funny thing is that TFPL's head of IT (Michael) is far more interested in my Asus Eee than he ever was in my work (Dell) laptop.  Every time he passes my desk he asks me how it is working, and he sat for the best part of an hour connecting it up to our work shared drive.  He's even offered to rebuild my old Dell.

New job for 2008?

The start of the year is a traditional time for reflection as well as planning for the months ahead.  It's not surprising, therefore, that a number of knowledge, information and records management professionals, along with ICT and sales and marketing professionals, spend January beginning an active search for their next role. 

Despite predictions of an economic downturn, January at least has started really positively here.  Both the number of people registering with us as candidates and the number of roles we are recruiting for, have increased by 10%.   

If you would like an informal chat about the opportunities on offer at the moment, please contact luisa.jefford@tfpl.com

SharePoint versus EDRM

A delegate on one of my recent EDRM training courses told me that his organisation (a large financial institution) had been planning their EDRM implementation for years and were just about to start their roll-out when they received some unwelcome news.  Another part of their organisation had purchased SharePoint. 'What should I do?' he asked me.

EDRM systems and SharePoint are both competing for the same space and market (and as the above example shows, sometimes competing within the same organisation). But there are marked contrasts in the strengths, weaknesses and records management model behind the two types of system.

Strengths
The strength of EDRM is the control it gives to organisations.  They can ensure that all their teams and departments store their documents and records within one organisational classification (fileplan). 

The strengh of SharePoint is the flexibility it gives to teams and workgroups:  a team can set up a team site or a project site within which they can have:

• their own document library to store their documents and records
• a calendar
• a bulletin board
• links to, and feeds from, other sites
• news and pictures etc.

Weaknesses
The achilles heal of EDRM is user acceptance.  The fact that teams are forced to store their records in an organisationaly defined structure brings with it the risk that teams and/or individuals will reject the structure and opt to store their documents elsewhere. Some EDRM implementations have been prematurely aborted due to lack of user-take up. 

The achilles heal of SharePoint is the overall coherence (or lack of it!) of the repository. Each document library inside each team site or project site is a world on its own.  There is no place to maintain an overall classification to bring together and make sense of all the records in the system.  My colleague Miles describes a typical SharePoint implementation as 'a tangled mess of websites, with document libraries popping up all over the place'

Speed of implementation
EDRM is notoriously slow to implement:  not just the time to configure and integrate the software, but the time taken to build the organisation's fileplan, and the time taken for the phased roll out to reach all parts of the organisation. 

SharePoint is not necessarily any easier than EDRM to configure, but once you have got it up and running teams can set up project sites and get working straight away.  Another colleague (John) describes project sites 'spreading like bindweed' as team after team sets them up.

Records management model
EDRM stems from a well worked through records management model, based on the International Records Management Standard and the statements of functional requirements issued by the National Archives (TNA 2002) and the European Union (MoReq).  Retention rules and access rules are linked to fileplan headings and passed down to the folders and records saved under those headings.

SharePoint has not attempted to meet the TNA 2002 or MoReq requirements (the strength of Microsoft's position in the market means it can prosper without them).  Instead SharePoint has its own records management model.  Rules can be defined whereby documents needed as records can be copied from document libraries in team sites, and sent to another type of site, called a records centre.  Retention rules can be applied to those documents copied to the records centre. 

I am sceptical about the value of the records centre in SharePoint.  It is an afterthought, a place where no-one visits and no work is done. A records graveyard rather than a trusted, referenced and used archive. 

Conclusions
I am no fan of the records management model behind SharePoint, but I must admit that the project site is a much more lively and interesting environment to work in than either the traditional hard copy file, or the electronic record folder in an EDRM.  My hopes are that we as a profession can:

• find ways of helping our organisations to structure and make sense of these team and project sites, rather than relying on the SharePoint's unproven Records Centre concept. 
• find ways of influencing Microsoft to improve the functionality of SharePoint in ways that make the above task easier.

SharePoint Summit

On April 1, 2008 TFPL are hosting a one-day conference in London at which practioners and consultants from a variety of UK organisations and sectors will share their experiences in using SharePoint for records management and collaborative working:  to see the programme and for details of how to sign up follow this link

Home-shoring!

Many thanks to Vivienne Winterman who reports from a conference entitled Mobile and flexible working in the public sector.

Flexible working is a key issue in helping central and local government meet 'transformational' targets.  With the reduction in office space being a key requisite to fulfil this initiative, staff need to work more flexibly away from the workplace - ideally from home.

The new term for this is 'home-shoring' as coined by Kevin Breach, a Senior Advisor from ACAS who spoke at the conference.  Changing the culture of both management and staff is key to the success of flexible working.   

TFPL has recently carried out reviews for several councils movng in this direction.  They have realised that access to both internally produced and externally published information at the desktop will be a key requirement to successful out of office working.  If staff can access well managed resources via the web/intranet it will be easy for them to adapt to working from home two or three days a week.

The requirements of EDRM and e-books and e-journals are forcing organisations to look closely at how they manage and share internal documents and how they procure and manage externally published information.  Organisations need to deliver these services centrally, reduce duplication of effort, time and costs and enable the workforce to work collaboratively whether they are in the office or elsewhere.

Cities of the future and records of the past

This lunchtime I went to see an interactive exhibition entitled 'the city of the future'  by Patrick Kieller.

When I got there I was confronted by five big screens, each showing black and white films from the BFI archive, each film shot in a city (London, Liverpool, Dublin etc) between 1895 and 1905.

Kieller's reasoning for this was that the best way to appreciate how different the future might be is to look at the past and gauge how different that was.

I use a similar logic when working out retention schedules for records.  Outside of some highly regulated functions (banking, accounting, health and safety etc.)  UK legislation has little or nothing to say about how long records should be kept.  Instead of asking people to look into the  unknown future I ask them to think back to the remembered past.  I ask them whether it would matter if they had no records of that particular type of work from 5 years ago.  Who would it matter to and why?  And would it bother those people if we didn't have those records from 10 years previously?

I saw the same types of people trudging across Blackfriars bridge on the 1895 film as I did when I walked back across it on my return to work.  On the film people were walking across the bridge in strange clothes, and it was odd watching the horse drawn vehicles, some with really slow lethargic nags and others with sprightly high stepping horses.    On the way back to work some of the people on the bridge were pressing funny little metal things to their ears whilst talking.

Enhancing your cv!

We hosted another free training event for our registered temporary staff last night.  Around 20 people heard consultants Jayne Eaton and Katy Crosse share hints and tips about revamping a cv.

The evening also included a mini cv surgery and advice on how to make an impression at interview.  Attendees were given a list of sample interview questions and a sample cv.

For more information about training events for temporary staff, contact katy.crosse@tfpl.com

Managing tomorrow's people - the future of work 2020

We are delighted to announce that Jackie Gittins, Director of HR Consultancy at PricewaterhouseCoopers, will address the inaugural TFPL Connect meeting, to be held at the RSA on February 21st 2008. 

In 2007, PwC undertook a scenario-based research project to explore the people management challenges of a variety of social, economic and population factors.  Jackie will outline the findings of the research, including the key themes and scenarios the researchers identified.

In addition, Kate Arnold of NHS Direct; Tony Sheenan of Ashridge Management College; Alun Davies of Lovells; and Alison Wellens of the Information Commissioner's Office will discuss the knowledge and information management challenges of Managing the future workforce.