Process Facet

Outputs and Findings

The second facet of the investigative phase of the project related to the process aspects of managing e-records. It included business processes and practices; business systems (not only IT systems); workflow; information flow across the organisation as a whole and within parts of it; the information / records management processes as a sub-set of business processes.

Participants in the Delphi study on the process aspects of ERM responded to five rounds of questions to identify, explore, and clarify the issues and solutions. We analysed the participants' responses using a range of different approaches (subject themes, numerical ratings, subjective explorations) to provide a broad view of the data. The outputs were produced in textual, numerical, and tabular forms.

The study was carried out over five rounds, moving from identification and exploration of the issues through ranking them in order of urgency or importance to suggesting and evaluating solutions. The first four rounds were carried out by means of a series of questionnaires; the final round involved the completion of an online survey.

The primary method of analysing or summarising the data received was by thematic analysis; the resulting analyses or summaries were then presented in a variety of textual, schematic or visual ways. Reponses to selected issues from the Process Delphi Study were subjected to phenomenological analysis to examine their implications at greater length. Full details of these methodological approaches are given in the publication AC+erm Project: Philosophical, Paradigmatic and Methodological Underpinnings, available via the Project Approach section, and elaborations are also included in the output documents themselves.
 
The outputs from the Delphi Study have been split into two documents, one containing thematic analyses and summaries, the other phenomenological analyses (both documents are available through the links at the bottom of this page). The contents of these documents are summarized briefly below:

Thematic Analyses:–
 •  All rounds – lists of questions
 •  Round 1 – thematic analysis of issues (text).
 •  Round 2 – ranking of issues in terms of urgency/importance (graphs and tables).
 •  Round 3 – solutions to issues, split between those that focused on process aspects and those that addressed primarily human aspects (text).
 •  Round 4 – no separate outputs; list of questions given.
 •  Round 5 – evaluation of solutions (text – collated responses to the survey).

Phenomenological Analyses:–
The output consists of the analyses of the two topics selected for examination. The analyses were produced collaboratively, the contributions of separate project team members marked as different ‘voices’ within the analysis. Voices 1 and 2 analysed the responses independently, Voice 3 read what they had written and added further thoughts. (The ‘voices’ are not consistent between analyses – i.e., Voice 1 in the one analysis could be Voice 2 in the next.) The list of topics analyzed is as follows:

 •  Records Management principles and methods
 •  What is really ‘new’?