ARMA Vancouver Chapter - Blog

A Better Sign-off Statement: Rethinking IG Policy Acknowledgment by Lewis S. Eisen

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 03:02:45 GMT

I never liked the traditional wording of policy acknowledgement statements. They typically read something like this: Employees must read, understand, and sign this policy.
While the underlying concept may have some merit, the practice is problematic on a number of levels. As IG professionals—working in an area that already suffers from shaky credibility in many organizations—we should be especially sensitive to the issues it raises.

1. Overly Intrusive
The requirement for an acknowledgment on every single policy is unnecessarily intrusive.
One can see that clearly by putting the shoe on the other foot. Seriously, how much would you like it if every time a new law or by-law was passed, the government sent you a copy and you were required to send back a signed statement that you had read and understood it. No doubt, you’d very quickly grow to resent that process. We all understand that we are subject to laws and by-laws whether or not a copy of the text has been directly provided to us individually.
The step is just as redundant in an employment context, where the requirement to follow organizational policies falls under the terms of the employment contract.
In reality, then, the purpose of an acknowledgement statement is really not to create a mini-contract, but rather merely to prove that the content of the document was communicated. But we have other ways of accomplishing that goal without demanding a signature.

2. Ineffective
Its effectiveness level is poor. As you know, too often people sign those statements without reading the document carefully or understanding it fully. An Information Management policy is doubly cursed: it’s a policy and it’s about IM, which is nobody’s favourite topic. That document will get about as much attention as the Terms and Conditions pop-up window that intervenes between the installation of a new app on your phone and being able to begin to use its functions.
On a literal interpretation, if you read the text but don't understand something, you are technically in breach of policy. Moreover, it’s even irrelevant whether what you understand is exactly what was intended by the writer: so long as you think you understand the content, you’re in a position to sign the document. That makes the risk of miscommunication significant.
You might want to shrug that risk off as the employee's right to take. That may be, but if so, what's the real point of the exercise? If our goal is to get engagement, then any unnecessary formality is a potential obstacle.

3. Disrespectful
This is my focus in all my policy work: is the language respectful to the reader? Nobody appreciates being spoken to as if they were a child who can’t be trusted to take responsibility. We’re dealing with adults in all cases.
The traditional wording--Employees must read, understand, and sign this policy--is clearly demeaning. The Parent–Child dynamic is in full play, and the undertones are the following:
1. Your job is to obey.
2. If you screw up, you can’t claim ignorance about the rule.
That subtext is not helpful when we’re trying to improve compliance around information policies. More useful subtext would acknowledge that people are capable of learning and taking responsibility for their own actions.
Too often, in practice, the acknowledgement statement is used in place of providing proper training on the topic. It's a way of shifting responsibility for knowledge acquisition away from the organization and onto the individual. That’s a lost learning opportunity.

A better statement
A more useful statement would be a commitment from the employee that where something was unclear, they would take steps to seek clarification.
If you insist on using an acknowledgement statement in your policy instruments, may I recommend drafting one that also communicates trust and professional respect from the writer toward the reader. The following is an example:

“I acknowledge and agree to carry out my responsibilities under this policy.”

By rethinking the language we use in our policy acknowledgments, we can foster an environment of mutual respect, which, in turn, improves compliance and organizational culture. You might even find that people react to the nicer wording by actually reading the document, to figure out exactly what they're committing to.

About the Author
Drawing on over 40 years’ experience as a practising lawyer, business consultant, and federal government policy writer, Lewis Eisen is a leading global authority on the use of respectful language in policy drafting. He shows people how to shift their policy writing culture from confrontational to cooperative, and his approach has been adopted at organizations around the world. The 4th edition of his Amazon international bestseller Rules: Powerful Policy Wording to Maximize Engagement was released in June 2024, and he recently won the ARMA’s Britt Literary Award for 2025.

The Impact of Microsoft Teams on Records Management Strategies, by Andrew Geider

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 21:06:20 GMT

Every organisation has a records management strategy. Regardless of whether they make that strategy explicit in a strategy document, it is implicit in the choices they make about applying retention rules to the content in their business applications. An organization might be seeking to:

Try to move documents and messages needed as a record into one business application that is optimised for recordkeeping;
Intervene in several, most or all of their business applications so that each of these applications are optimised to manage their own records;
Manage records ‘in place’ within the native applications that they arise in, even when an application has a structure and a metadata schema that is sub-optimal for recordkeeping.

Each of these rival strategies has pros and cons. Each is a legitimate records management approach. This situation is made more complex by the arrival of the cloud suites from tech giants Microsoft and Google. Each cloud suite is a combination of several different document management, collaboration, filesharing and messaging applications. Each cloud suite embodies an implicit records management strategy. The strategy is discernable by the retention capabilities that the suite is equipped with, and by how those capabilities relate to the applications within the suite. This opens up the possibility that an organisation might be proposing one type of records management strategy but may also deploy a cloud suite that is informed by one of the rival strategies.
It is clear from the way that the Microsoft (Office) 365 cloud suite has been set up that Microsoft has adopted an ‘in place’ approach to records management. In the MS 365 suite no one application is superior for records management purposes than any other. Retention functionality sits in the Compliance centre, outside of any one application. Retention rules can be set in the Compliance centre and applied to any type of aggregation in any of the collaboration/document management/messaging/filesharing applications within the suite.
In the early years of Office 365 it may have been possible for an organisation to deploy the suite while continuing with a strategy of moving all documents and messages needed as records into one specific business application that was optimised for recordkeeping. Since the coming of MS Teams this no longer appears possible.

MS Teams deployed as an organisation’s primary collaboration system
The phenomenal rise in adoption of MS Teams over the past two years is prompting some fundamental changes in the records management strategies of those organisations who have adopted it as their primary collaboration application. Prior to MS Teams:

An organisation was able, if it so wished, to configure its main collaboration system with a records management friendly structure and metadata schema. This kind of ‘records management by design’ is not possible in MS Teams;
Most large organisations tended to deploy a document management application as their main collaboration system. Microsoft Teams is a messaging application. The organisation has therefore gone from trying to manage messages in a document management application, to trying to manage documents in a messaging tool.

These two changes are related: the reason why MS Teams is not as configurable as previous generations of collaboration systems is precisely because it is primarily a messaging system in which content is pushed to individuals and teams via Chat and Channels.

The impact of MS Teams on an organisation’s records management strategy
Let us think of how the records management strategy of a typical large organisation may have evolved over the past two decades:

In the early 2000s they may have implemented a corporate electronic document and records management system (EDRMS) and told their staff ‘if you want a document or a message to be treated as a record, save it into our EDRMS’.
In the early 2010s they may have wanted to introduce a document management system that is more collaborative in nature, such as Microsoft SharePoint. They might have said to their staff ‘if you want a document or message to be treated as a record, move it into a SharePoint document library’.
in 2019 or 2020 they may have rolled out Microsoft Teams, giving every individual a Teams Chat client and every team a Microsoft Team with a set of channels into which messages and documents can be posted. They may now say to their staff ‘if you have an important document or message, post it through a Team channel’.

Here we have some elements of continuity as well as discontinuity.
The main element of continuity is that the organisation is still encouraging staff to contribute every document or message needed as a record to one particular application. They are still making a distinction between:

an application that they designate as being a record system (and hence will apply their retention principles and retention rules to);
other applications that they do not regard as record systems (and hence do not commit to apply their retention principles and rules to).

The element of discontinuity lies in the rationale behind this distinction.
When the organisation implemented an EDRM or SharePoint as its corporate document management system and asked staff to move any documents and messages needed as a record into that system, they could argue that they were taking a ‘records management by design’ approach. They endeavoured to configure their corporate document management systems with a logical structure that reflectsed (as best they could) their business processes and to which they attempted to link appropriate retention rules and access rules.
They could justify the routine deletion of content in other applications by arguing that the records management by design approach relies on important documents and messages being placed into an application that has records management frameworks configured into it.

The access model in MS Teams
SharePoint is a document management system. The access model for SharePoint sites and document libraries is flexible. You can make the site/library a silo if you wish by restricting access to a small number of people, but equally you can open up access widely. You can reduce the risk of opening access widely by confining the right to contribute, edit and delete content to a small group while opening view access to a wider group.
MS Teams is a messaging system first and foremost with a document management component (provided by SharePoint) as a secondary element.
You can only view content in a given Team if you are a member of that Team. Each Team member has access to every channel within the team (apart from private channels) and to the Team’s document library. Each Team member can contribute posts to channels and can add and delete items from the document library. Broadening the membership of a Team is therefore more risky than opening up access to a document library in a SharePoint implementation, because everyone that you make a member of the Team has full edit and contribute rights in the Team.
A further disincentive to adding extra members to the Team lies in the fact that by making someone a member of the Team you are exposing the individual to the flow of messages in and out of the channels of that Team. There is a catch-22 here. The more you widen membership of a Team the more you drive message traffic away from Teams channels and into Teams Chat. This is because the wider the membership the greater the likelihood that any given message will be uninteresting, irrelevant or inappropriate for some members. If you keep the membership small you may increase the percentage of traffic going through the channel but you decrease the number of people to whom that traffic is accessible.

We asked ChatGPT to write a blog post

Wed, 12 Apr 2023 16:26:18 GMT

As the world becomes more data-driven, the need for effective information management and governance continues to increase. In British Columbia, Canada, records management professionals play a critical role in ensuring that organizations are able to capture, store, and utilize information in a way that maximizes its value and mitigates risk.

At the heart of this work is the concept of information governance, which refers to the strategic management of information across an organization. This includes policies, procedures, and technologies that enable organizations to manage their information assets in a way that is compliant with legal and regulatory requirements, supports business objectives, and minimizes risk.

Being an information governance professional means having a deep understanding of these concepts and being able to apply them in a way that is tailored to the specific needs of an organization. It requires a combination of technical knowledge, project management skills, and an ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders at all levels of the organization.

One of the key benefits of effective information governance is the ability to minimize risk. This includes everything from ensuring compliance with privacy regulations to protecting against data breaches and cyberattacks. By developing robust policies and procedures around data security, access controls, and data retention, information governance professionals can help organizations reduce the likelihood of data-related incidents and mitigate the impact if they do occur.

Another benefit of information governance is the ability to optimize the value of an organization's information assets. By implementing processes for capturing and analyzing data, organizations can gain insights that can help them make better decisions, improve operational efficiency, and enhance customer experiences. Information governance professionals play a critical role in helping organizations develop the tools and processes needed to achieve these goals.

In addition to minimizing risk and optimizing value, effective information governance can also help organizations improve their compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. In many cases, compliance requirements are complex and constantly evolving, making it challenging for organizations to stay up to date. Information governance professionals can help organizations navigate these requirements by developing policies and procedures that are compliant with current regulations and ensuring that they stay current as regulations change.

Finally, effective information governance can also help organizations improve their reputation and build trust with their customers. In an age where data privacy and security are major concerns for consumers, organizations that can demonstrate a strong commitment to protecting their customers' data are likely to be more successful in the long run. By developing strong data security policies and procedures, information governance professionals can help organizations build a culture of trust and transparency that can differentiate them from their competitors.

In conclusion, being an information governance professional is an important and valuable role in today's data-driven world. By helping organizations minimize risk, optimize value, improve compliance, and build trust, information governance professionals play a critical role in ensuring the long-term success of their organizations. For records management professionals in British Columbia, Canada, developing the skills and expertise needed to be an effective information governance professional is essential for staying ahead in an increasingly competitive and complex business environment.

IM Support at Environment and Climate Change Canada

Thu, 17 Jun 2021 20:17:19 GMT

Nicole Kapphahn

If there’s one thing to be said about completing a co-op work term during a pandemic, it’s that it’s certainly unique. That being said, I’ve been extremely lucky with my position as Information Management Support at Environment and Climate Change Canada, as it has been almost entirely remote with a brilliant group of people I’m able to digitally connect with.

For the most part my work has been remote; organizing and cleaning up shared drives from my kitchen table. But when I first started my position I had to go into the office to work with physical records. This was due to a litigation hold. This was an unexpected addition to my work term, but litigation holds become priority number one once they’re put into place, so the first couple months of my time at ECCC were spent working on the hold before continuing onto my other work.

A litigation hold (or legal hold) occurs when an organization is required to preserve records that may be relevant to a legal case. This applies to both physical and digital materials, and the organization may be directly involved in the case or may simply have relevant records. Oftentimes the records just need to be initially identified and held by the organization and may not actually have to be provided until a later date, if ever. But records identified as being under the legal hold must be kept safe. This means that any physical records must be identified and held separately from other records, so that they will not be modified or destroyed in the regular course of business. Digital records must be identified and held in much the same way, although metadata complicates the matter. Metadata is a vital (and vulnerable) part of the record, and as such digital documents that are under litigation hold can’t be deleted, moved, modified, or even opened – because even the act of opening the document changes the metadata and thus invalidates the authenticity and evidential value of the record.

The particular litigation hold I was working on required that the materials be placed on hold and immediately provided, which meant that we had to move quickly to not only identify relevant digital and physical materials, but to also scan each physical document and provide it within the stated deadline. This meant my supervisor and I had to go into the office.

Going into a government office right now is no mean feat, requiring multiple steps of approval. The first step was to apply through a government application, justifying why it was absolutely necessary that I had to be there in person. And before my application could even be approved I had to ensure that I had completed various training modules, including one on Covid-19 safety. Once I was approved for entry I had to do a self-check each day through the Covid-19 self-assessment app to ensure that I wasn’t exhibiting any symptoms and could safely and ethically go to the office. There was also a manual check-in system put in place by security; this was to ensure that everyone in the building was authorized to be there, and ensured that if there was a Covid-19 exposure that everyone present at the relevant time and location could be notified.

There was something rather eerie about being in a completely empty office floor. A maximum number of people were allowed on each floor at a time, and (except for one notable day where a man rounded the corner and both of us jumped alarmingly high) for the most part it was just myself and my supervisor – and we were stationed at opposite ends of the floor, mainly communicating through Microsoft Teams as per usual. At the time we only had to wear masks if we left our work area or were in the presence of other people, so for most of the day I just had my mask at the ready, but didn’t have to wear it. Protocols have now changed, and if I were to go back I would have to wear a mask the entire time I was in the building, regardless of whether another person was even on the floor with me.

I spent several days in the office going through boxes and boxes of paper documents, helping decide their relevance to the litigation hold and scanning every required page as quickly as possible. While it would have been possible to re-apply for entry into the office if necessary, we wanted to complete the in-person work as rapidly as possible to limit potential exposure. I have to admit, I enjoyed being in the office. Despite the perks of working from home, I found that I had missed the ritual of commuting to work, and quite enjoyed getting to see where I would have worked if times were different. I was one of the few new hires that was actually issued an ID card, and I even took a picture of my desk for posterity. What could have been! That being said, there was a sense of relief once I went back to working from home.

I am very lucky and my co-op term has been extended an additional four months (in part so that I can play catch-up on the work that I was unable to complete due to the litigation hold), however there is virtually no likelihood I’ll be able to go back to the office again. The only justifiable reason I would have to re-enter the office would be to fulfill another surprise litigation hold (which everyone hopes against!) and even then, as cases fluctuate and protocols become stricter, the likelihood of my being approved to enter the building becomes more and more slim.

This was my first time working in an information management capacity, and extenuating circumstances aside, it was fascinating. Being able to learn first-hand about the legal ramifications of proper (or improper) information management and seeing its practical application through the litigation hold was really eye-opening. More than anything it emphasized to me the literal evidential value of records (and the associated metadata) and the importance of preserving authenticity. Working on the hold made me appreciate the importance of proper information management even more than I had before.

BC Archives Library Barcoding Project

Wed, 09 Sep 2020 20:53:08 GMT

Grace Chen

From September 2019 to March 2020, my thoughts and dreams were full of catalogue records, spreadsheet data, stacks on stacks on stacks, and barcode stickers (stuck upon archival quality cardstock). The reason I had these stickers flitting in and out of my thoughts constantly was because the BC Archives, which is co-located with the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, BC, had just launched the Archives Library Barcoding Project, of which I was overlooking as part of my co-op work term during my UBC MLIS degree. The project was instated in compliance with the museum’s modernization strategy and coincides with the launch of the library’s new ILS, powered by Evergreen and part of the Sitka consortium. The goal? Barcode every item within the library and ensure that each item matches the correct record within the catalogue, improving collection accessibility greatly, and also providing a chance to upgrade the quality and uniformity of the catalogue records and data. At the same time, the project provided an opportunity to perform a thorough inventory of the collection and assess the collection’s health in terms of preservation.

This was a thriving time within the BC Archives Library; the daily operations of the Archives Library Barcoding Project meant a much higher amount of movement and action than the library was used to seeing, and the results were visibly obvious as more and more rows of books began showing the tell-tale signs of barcode completion: the aforementioned barcodes on cardstock were visible peeking neatly out the top of each volume, and BARCODING COMPLETE signs surrounded by happy faces and shooting star doodles.

The barcoding officially began in October 2019, and initial estimates of completion were based on vague estimates of how many items the library had that needed barcoding (including books, oversized materials, maps and atlases, microform, pamphlets and special collections materials); the amount of time it may take for the library’s team of motivated, barcode-spearing, book-loving volunteers to complete x amount of items; and the amount of volunteers the library could safely accommodate at any given time. Therefore, the initial estimate for the library’s 72,000 items (post-project update: this number nearly doubled) was tentatively set for around two years.

I am happy to report that the barcoding team, which consisted of near 30 excellent volunteers, flew through the shelves, making steady (and quick! And exciting!) progression through the entirety of the first floor of the library and was working through the second floor when work was put on hold with the rest of the pandemic-stricken world. Our last round of stats showed over 65% completion of the General Stacks (books) and 25% completion of the pamphlets, an outstanding statistic to finish my term off with.

Much of the work I was doing involved looking at, preparing, and cleaning the data within the catalogue records, which had their own problems after years of changing systems and changing staff. Immediately after the first week of volunteer action, we realized that the barcoding would progress far more efficiently if we incorporated a “pre-clean” of the shelves before sending volunteers in. This involved me getting to know the Dewey Decimal System very intimately while performing a shelf read of the rows; many adjustments to our catalogue records were needed in order for volunteers to be able to match up and barcode every book. For example, many of the books were multi-volume and required a unique barcode per volume; however, the catalogue records only showed a single holding for all the volumes. Therefore, each volume required an individual holding to be made in order to associate each physical volume with an individual barcode. Secondly, there were many instances where the library held multiple copies of a book, and similarly, the catalogue records did not reflect this multitude. The completion of the pre-clean stage meant that volunteers could barcode more, work with less disruption, and flag fewer problematic items.

While this shelf-reading seemed, at times, never-ending, the results were quite worthwhile. I came across many items that were not represented in the catalogue and therefore needed to either be freshly catalogued or its proper record needed to be found, which was the more common approach. It was often the case that there was a Dewey Decimal number-related mix-up. In some cases, the Dewey Decimal number on the book had been incorrectly written; this was easy to fix as a search for the book’s title often turned up the correct record and only required a new spine label to be affixed to the book. In other instances, the book carried the correct Dewey Decimal number, but the associated record did not. Again, a quick search for the book’s title and an adjustment to the record data could fix the problem easily. These mix-ups were the main reasons for books being marked missing in the catalogue; the book was physically not in the place the record said it was supposed to be. There was even an instance in which we discovered that multiple rows of books had been mistakenly shelved due to confusing the numeric zero for the uppercase letter ‘O’. The amount of glee that occurred after finding a book whose catalogue record stated had been missing for the last ten years is indescribable!

There were also larger puzzles that needed solving. I remember an instance in which the library held a book that had been reprinted many times in many different editions. Half these volumes were downstairs and the other half was upstairs in a completely different Dewey subject area. I ended up having to decide which area more appropriately suited the books and relocated them; however, their Dewey Decimal numbers were still rather odd as a result of having so many different editions of the book. Varying methods of differentiation had been applied, including the use of further numbers, the addition of publication years, and the addition of letters. I ended up researching the editions so that I could place them in chronological order and figure out their dates of publication (which are sometimes not disclosed when the book is self-published or published with very small publishers) before deciding on the configuration of letters and numbers that would make the most sense, re-labelling all the books, and finally reflecting all these confusing changes in the catalogue records.

In conclusion, I was delighted to have helped spearhead a project that I found quite exciting, that uncovered many library mysteries and missing items, and that would ultimately improve the quality of the collection’s searchability, access and representation, as well as track who has checked out what book and which books get requested the most. There were of course many other aspects of the project that expand out of the scope of this post, but the daily operations in regards to the records management of the library collection is well reflected.

Welcome

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 16:51:20 GMT

Welcome to the ARMA Vancouver blog. As virtual delivery becomes more important, we are launching our new space with a grant opportunity for all ARMA Vancouver members. It's easy to apply: just submit a blog post around 1000 words in length on a records and information management topic. Topic examples include case studies, work experiences, COVID and RIM, innovations and developments, technology, RIM strategies in various sectors, and many more! The possibilities are endless.

If you're passionate about your career in RIM and would like to gain some writing and publication experience, please submit your entry to info@armavancouver.ca. Entries may be edited for typographical errors, and we reserve the right to refuse entries that are inappropriate or do not conform to professional and ethical guidelines. Each member who submits a blog entry will receive a $100 grant from the Chapter, limit one grant per submitter.

This is a great opportunity for students and new professionals to submit recent papers, or work experiences. We strongly encourage submissions on Indigenous topics or from professionals working in Indigenous contexts. Twenty grants are available and will be distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis. Group-written submissions are also encouraged. Thank you for helping kick off our blog and helping this space grow!