In considering the next phase of our Partnership Research Network, the question of archiving our content – research reports, special editions, audio and video material – was raised. How long should these documents remain active? What to do with those that are inactive? What to keep and what to dispose of? In other words, the question of how to preserve not only our young history, but above all that of the partner organizations we work with, and, more broadly, the history of the components of the Canadian and Quebec philanthropic ecosystems.
The idea of devoting a special edition to the challenge of “active information management” and the storage of so-called “passive” documents grew out of this initial reflection. We quickly got in touch with several partner foundations and archive professionals and discovered a fascinating world.
This special edition approaches the theme of information management from several different angles, with the aim of generating a broader conversation on the subject. We indirectly raise the question of the importance of information management and archiving for Canadian foundations.
The first philanthropic foundations and organizations in Quebec were founded during the first third of the 20th century. Although this type of organization has existed for over a century, through our conversations, it became clear that their relationship to information management is still in its early stages. Few, if any, foundations have archiving practices, and few have a clear information management policy.
Information management: a major challenge
And yet, being well-informed, having access to quality information, and reducing the impact of misinformation or disinformation, are key elements in ensuring a healthy democracy and establishing winning conditions for a more egalitarian society.
In this respect, all philanthropic organizations and institutions have duties and responsibilities in terms of remembering their history, and in terms of good information management. Both the information they generate on a day-to-day basis and the information they use in connection with the relational ecosystem surrounding their activities is relevant.
To move in this direction, it is important to be familiar with the current legislative framework for global information management:
- the federal government’s legislative framework: such as the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act or the Library and Archives of Canada Act, which serves as a reference framework for businesses and organizations; or even,
- the provincial legislative framework: the Act to modernize legislative provisions as regards the protection of personal information, or the Quebec Archives Act.
Aller dans cette direction bénéficie grandement d’une gouvernance de l’information.
Moving in this direction benefits greatly from information governance.
Information governance is a framework for managing information resources. It establishes the responsibilities of the various stakeholders using general principles to ensure efficient management of information, and to extract its full potential for the benefit of the organization[1].
Pour une fondation philanthropique, être attentif à une bonne gestion de l’information et au besoin de mettre en mémoire les documents passifs s’inscrit dans la mise en place d’une politique précisant les modalités globales de gestion globale de l’information.
For a philanthropic foundation, paying close attention to the proper management of information and the need to store passive documents is part of the implementation of a policy specifying overall information management procedures.
Gartner defines information governance as a framework of responsibility for ensuring appropriate behavior in the creation, evaluation, use, archiving, deletion, and storage of information. This concept includes standards and statistics, roles and policies, as well as the processes required to ensure the appropriate use of information and enable…[organizations] to achieve their objectives[2].
What are the advantages of properly “considering and managing” information?
Information is a vital resource for the smooth running of any organization. It is therefore an essential component of an organization’s overall governance. According to Gartner[3] (2009, p. 3)
The general objectives of good governance are to improve the speed and effectiveness of decisions and processes (efficiency), to make maximum use of information in terms of value creation, and to reduce costs and risks for the company or organization.
Good information management is an integral part of a foundation’s organizational culture and is the responsibility of all parts of the organization.
From a small to a large foundation, this responsibility is divided between:
- internal resources: from the Board of Directors, and its offshoots in working committees, to the professional team (from small (one to three people) to medium-sized (four to a dozen people) or larger (more than twelve people); and,
- external resources: documents from organizations that are part of the Foundation’s operational and relational network.
Managing the information requires specific skills in order to think through the appropriate processes. Recourse to an external resource – via the use of an intern from a college or university program, a self-employed professional or even a specialized firm – is to be considered seriously so as not to limit this operation to a purely IT function. As Hagmann[4] (2015, p. 29)points out,
IT governance ensures the risk and compliance of IT architecture, systems and infrastructure, but is not concerned with how information is created, used and disposed of in a way that adds value to a business.
For information to add value to a foundation, it is important to consider the information lifecycle as a whole, and to work through the major moments of this cycle in a simplified way, using the most appropriate tools and procedures. There are four main stages in the information life cycle [5].
- Creating data and supporting documents: data formatting.
- Data organization and use: procedures for organizing and classifying data.
- Data protection and management: various operations to ensure the authenticity and integrity of documents, on the one hand, and their reliability and usefulness for the required durations, on the other. This implies establishing a schedule defining the periods of use and their status: active, semi-active or inactive data or documents.
- Preservation and disposal: documents are preserved according to their status, with the eventual disposal of data or documents and the archiving of a greater or lesser number of data and documents, depending on the established archiving policy and the types of documents (digital or physical) to be archived (archives) or preserved (museum).
Why archive?
Different reasons are given for archiving documents.
- To better understand past achievements, the roles played, the impact measured, the place occupied by an organization at different stages of its life cycle.
- This allows us to enrich our historical knowledge, so that history does not become a partial representation based solely on the memory of major organizations and social players.
- For a foundation, archives provide information about the context of its emergence and development. This ensures that the origins of the wealth available to the foundation are not forgotten, and that the sources of its endowment are transparent.
- Archiving is also a tool for providing information on a foundation’s identity and operational trajectory. A good knowledge of the archives’ content is an essential source for ensuring the smooth running of a foundation. A review of this trajectory highlights past successes and mistakes that have marked its evolution. It also enables us to follow its innovative trajectory.
- This source of historical information will be even valuable if it includes stories told by the founders themselves, or by people representing the various stakeholders in the foundation’s ecosystem.
What are the obstacles to archiving?
- Change of document management platform (e.g. from Google to Microsoft).
- Staff turnover: loss of human memory and document location.
- The evolution of technology: old technology put aside, loss of knowledge and information.
- The complexity of the tree structure: how to organize documents, intuitive processes for day-to-day work.
- Managing physical documents: finding the right way to maintain them.
- Hiring an archiving professional is costly, rendering it restrictive, but necessary for the efficiency of the process.
- A constraining decision-making process based on simple questions: what to keep, how to design an efficient and simple classification system, how to strike a balance between rational and emotional reasons for keeping data or documents?
- No one dedicated to the task of maintaining corporate memory.
- There is no formal legal obligation to archive foundation-specific data. There is nothing to this effect in the Canadian Income Tax Act with regard to charities.
Tips, tools and ideas, recommendations of the President of the Association des archivistes du Québec:
Archivists are professionals in the appraisal, processing (classification, description and indexing), preservation, dissemination and archiving of information. Our definition of archives includes:
… all documents produced or received, whatever their date or nature [paper, digital, audiovisual, photographic, etc.] by a person or organization in the course of its activities and preserved for their general information value. (Archives Act, article 2).
In this way, they can help organizations inventory, organize and describe their archives, assess the value of archives in order to sort them and preserve those with heritage value, develop and implement an action plan for archive preservation, support organizations in disseminating their archives (digitization, exhibition, enhancement of Wikipedia pages, etc.) They can also facilitate knowledge management and the safeguarding of organizational memory. Finally, through their work, they can facilitate access to information and the protection of an organization’s personal information (Bill 25).
Foundations wishing to receive professional help in inventorying, processing and preserving their archives can:
- Post a job offer on our website (write to us at infoaaq@archivistes.qc.ca) or contact educational institutions to receive assistance from interns (supervised by a professional) (you’ll find a list of educational institutions and a general overview of the tasks of a technician and a professional in the field here: Become an archivist | Association des archivistes du Québec (in French only).
- Use a private company in the field (search for “document management services”, “archive services”).
- Call on a private archive in their area offering professional consulting services or https://rsapaq.com/services/(in French only).
We also offer ressources on our website that may be useful to individuals and organizations:
- Managing personal archives: the “Archiviste de famille” kit, including a guide and explanatory videos Archiviste de famille | Association des archivistes du Québec; (in French only).
- Practical management guides for associations and similar organizations Guides pratiques de gestion | Association des archivistes du Québec; (in French only).
- Academic publications, our professional journal and our Convergence blog. (In French only).
Conclusion
The knowledge mobilization that accompanied the production of this special edition shows us the lack of best practices in terms of good information management and archiving of passive documents in Canadian and Quebec foundations.
With the exception of a few avant-garde foundations, few philanthropic organizations have policies in this area, or dedicate specific resources to it.
We are therefore appealing to the community of grant-making foundations to share their experience of strategic information management and archiving of historical documents.
