Information Governance, Information Assurance, and Digital Continuity seem to be taking over from records management and archives in the blogosphere just as electronic documents have taken over from paper, but are they of any greater substance or is it again the availability of new formats prompting a re-invention of original (and well tried) principles?

The UK National Archives is overseeing the development of a Digital Continuity Framework for national, local and quasi-governmental organisations which will likely be adopted by many others with a concern for the long-term preservation of their digital information. However, they are taking a very mechanistic view with little mention of records management principles to identify what is vital information or of Information Assurance to prevent loss of that information. Can one really be divorced from the others?

If an organisation is to put much effort, over so long a period of time, into storing, updating and reviewing its information, surely it makes sense to do that only for that information which has value, either directly for the organisation itself, or for the wider community, from a historical point-of-view? To do it for every scrap of data the organisation has ever accumulated is surely not feasible, nor worthwhile. That's where records management comes in!

Equally, if that long-term archive is not secure, either from external penetration (for spoliation or theft) and from accidental or deliberate malicious distribution, then you don't need to store it as it will probably be available on the internet for anyone to read, anyway! That's where Information Assurance (aka Data Loss Protection) comes in!

Together, as Information Governance, and overlaying a resilient and recoverable infrastructure, the organisation could look forward to long-term digital continuity, as well as having access to records in other formats, too!