DOD close to e-records software standard

The Defense Department is in the final stages of revising its records management standard for software. Ron Kelly, who works in DOD’s information policy directorate in the chief information officer’s office, said earlier this week that the new guidance will incorporate more network-centricity functions and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and privacy issues. Kelly did not give a specific date for when the new standard would be released, but said it would be soon.“We are asking vendors to treat this like a new standard,” Kelly said during a Federal Information Records Managers Council meeting at the FOSE trade show in Washington, D.C. As for FOIA and privacy, Kelly said the revised standard will address how to deal with additional metadata, such as e-mail, and workflow requirements, alerts and timing issues. It also builds on automatic linking, user-defined fields and logic from Version 2 of the standard, which DOD issued in 2002, he said. DOD also is adding guidance for net-centric systems. That includes data discovery standards, such as e-mail, National Archives and Records Administration’s archival export standards, import and export standards when moving records among compliant records management systems, and the revised standards encourage use of services-oriented architecture, Kelly said. Once DOD issues the revised standard, Kelly said Joint Interoperability Test Command, which is the primary user of the guidance, will work with vendors to test products for compliance with the criteria. He said the command will require vendors to pay $30,000 over three years for testing and certification work. After the software application guidance is completed, DOD will begin work on the department’s overall records management guidance, known as DOD Directive 5015.2, Kelly added.