AIIM Standards Watch

StratML

In December, we announced the initiation of the StratML project. The committee has held a couple of meetings to work on the schema elements needed for transforming organizational strategic plans into the StratML format. The current focus of the committee is on the validation of the StratML elements. You can review at:

· The names and definitions of the elements in the StratML core outlined in Appendix C of the document available at: StratML Summary and Results White Paper

· The names and definitions of the elements in the StratML performance plans and report framework available at: StratML Performance Plans

Standards Week 2008

AIIM's Standards Week 2008 is now a piece of history. We had 7 committees hold meetings last week while we were in Boston for the AIIM Exposition and Conference. It was great to see so many friends.

Now for an overview of some of the activities of the week...

The US TAG (Technical Advisory Group) to ISO TC 171 held a meeting during which they reviewed the progress against commitments that had been made during the last ISO meeting in London. Significant progress is being made on all the tasks so that during the next meeting to be held in Beijing we will have very good discussions.

Implementation Guidelines - This committee began work on the next version of the popular ARP-1 document and discussed methods of getting additional adoption of the document and listed standards by the states.

iECM - The committee has many projects it is trying to work on. The focus of the committee will be on metadata. Given that there are many metadata projects being worked on by numerous groups, the committee discussed how to bring the work together to ensure that we do not have opposing efforts.

Evidentiary Support - This committee has been dormant for a while but is being revived to focus on record authenticity issues. It is being lead by Bob Williams, Cohasset and Paul Doyle, Proofspace and Sedona Group. They will be looking into producing some white papers and best practices as well as sharing evidentiary support information through blogs.

DIQP - The DIQP (Digital Image Quality and Preservation) committe heard presentations from Charles Dollar and Rick Laxman on preservation issues. Charles spoke on his ongoing research in the area and Rick shared what the Church's Family History Division is doing to preserve and provide access to their very old records.

C27 (Document Management) - In addition to discussions on various projects, this committee discussed the use of blu-ray disks for document imaging. As a result of the discussion, AIIM will be having a letter sent to OSTA, Optical Storage Technology Association, requesting that they focus on promoting the standardization of blu-ray disks.

PDF/UA (Universal Access) - The committee made good progress on their document and is planning to have it available before the meetings in Beijing which means they have a very aggressive committee meeting schedule to follow. They have made significant progress and feel it is now time to get other prespectives included in the standard.

While PDF Healthcare did not meet in Boston during Standards Week, they did hold their normally scheduled bi-weekly conference call.

We hope to see you at a Standards meeting soon!

PDF Reference as Standard

In December, we announced that the PDF Reference as an ISO standard (ISO 32000) was approved with one negative. After a meeting in January, the international working group was able to resolve the negative comment so that the negative vote was changed from Negative to Affirmative with Comment. This change means that the standard is fully approved and will be published soon.

After dealing with the comments, the working group began discussions on the next version of the standard by identifying features that should be included in the next version of the standard. The following are some of the ideas the committee is discussing for future versions of ISO 32000:

3D, CAD, Engineering

• Incorporate the 3D algorithm, PRC into Part 1
  
• Improved measurement, 3D, focus on CAD
  
• Non-Scaling lines and patterns
  
• GIS features
  

Document Features

• Extensions to portable collections (packages)
  
• Hyperlinks on objects and not an area
  
• Use of native Unicode in PDF page content streams
  
• Root-level dictionary of all used resources
  
• Clarification of resourced inheritance when rendering
  
• Associate annotations (especially comments) directly with page content
  
• Improved file provenance and "audit trails"
  
• Per-page metadata
  

Accessiblity

• MathML Integration
  
• New Tag Types
  

Color

• Enable N-Colorant ICC profiles as source profiles
  
• Output intent enhancement
  
• Black Point Compensation
  
• Add processing instruction for color conversion
  
• Support for DeviceLink profiles
  
• Specify exactly how color has to be rendered on an output device
  
• No more uncalibrated color in a PDF
  
• Extend color model for better support of spot colors and overprints between spot colors (and with process colors)
  

Architecture

• Remove or improve cross-referencing via XRef table
  
• Move to an XML coded file
  
• Multiple levels of data
  
• Support for Newspaper XML document instances and related style-sheets

If you would like to contribute thoughts on the above items or have features you would like to recommend be included in a future version of ISO 32000, Document management – Portable Document Format (PDF), please feel free to send your questions and/or recommendations to bfanning@aiim.org. If you would like to participate in this effort of revising the PDF file format, please let us know that as well by sending an email to bfanning@aiim.org.

PDF/Archive Training

AIIM announces the availability of training on PDF/Archive. The PDF/A training provides you with a solid understanding of PDF/A and the standard ISO 19005-1, Document management – File format for the long-term preservation of electronic document – Part 1: Use of PDF 1.4 (PDF/A-1). The course will cover the technologies and best practices that help you to implement PDF/A in your organization so that you can preserve your electronic documents.

Some of the specific topics that will be covered include:

• Preservation
• Preservation Problem
• Overview of ERM
• Overview of file formats
• PDF/A Introduction
• Digital Signatures in preservation
• Overview of conformance levels and restricted features
• Color
• Metadata for preservation
• Workflow and migration for long-term preservation
• Conformance levels and issues
• Creating PDF/A documents from digitally born documents
• Scanning to PDF/A (converting images to PDF/A)
• Validating PDF/A files
• Implementation best practices
• Selecting PDF/A products
• Relevance of other PDF standards to PDF/A
• Legal and compliance implications of PDF/A

The training is available as private classes that can be tailored to your organization's specific needs. Additionally, we will be offering public training classes in several locations. Please watch the AIIM web site for a location near you and for the introduction of the web-based version of this training.

If you would like to have more information on this training, please contact Betsy Fanning at bfanning@aiim.org.

Standards Watch Blog

The Standards Watch Blog is back!

The AIIM Standards department has been busy with a number of meetings and documents. Over the next couple of weeks, we want to catch you up on the items we have been working on and let you know about some exciting projects that are coming up.

Last week, we held several committee meetings in Boston during the 2008 AIIM Exposition and Conference. Highlights from the meetings will be posted later this week.

As a preview, we have started the StratML effort, begun work on the next version of PDF/A and PDF standards, and PDF/Engineering is in the final stage prior to being published and made available to the public. The Implementation Guidelines committee that creates the AIIM ARP-1 document which many of you have downloaded is beginning work on the next version of this document. Watch this blog for more details on these and other standards projects.

2008 Emmett Leahy Award

Emmett Leahy Award Committee
Christine Ardern, Eugenia Brumm,
Charles Dollar (Chair), Luciana Duranti,
John McDonald, Bruce Miller, John Phillips,
Mary Robek, and Anne Thurston

The Emmett Leahy Award Committee is pleased to announce that nominations are being accepted for the 2008 Emmett Leahy Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Information and Records Management Profession.

The Emmett Leahy Award recognizes an individual whose outstanding contributions have had a major impact on the information and records management profession. Established in 1967, this award honors the spirit of innovation, dedication, and excellence in records and information management of Emmett Leahy, an icon in the development of the lifecycle approach to managing records and information.

The Emmett Leahy Award, which is not formally affiliated with any profession or professional association, will be presented in Las Vegas, NV, October 20-23, 2008. Anne Thurston, the 2007 Emmett Leahy Award recipient, typifies the outstanding contributions to the information and records management profession that are associated with the Emmett Leahy Award. Additional information on Emmett Leahy, the Emmett Leahy Award selection criteria, Anne Thurston, and previous recipients is available at http://www.leahyaward.com.

Any individual whose contributions to information and records management meet the criteria for the Leahy Award is eligible to be nominated. A nominee does not have to be a Certified Records Manager, a member of a professional organization, or reside in North America. Previous recipients include records and information users, academics, archivists, records managers, information technology specialists, and consultants. The Emmett Leahy Award Committee does not accept posthumous nominations.

A nomination letter providing contact information for the individual along with a brief description of his/her impact on the records and information management profession should be sent to Charles Dollar at thecdollar@cs.com by February 1, 2008. The 2008 Emmett Leahy Award Committee, which consists of the previous ten recipients, will review the nominations and select six to eight finalists who will be invited to submit a formal application by May 1, 2008. The Committee will review these formal applications and select the individual whose contributions have had a major impact on the records management and information profession.

The Emmett Leahy Award Committee will present the award to the 2008 Emmett Leahy Award winner at the Annual Business Meeting of the Institute of Certified Records Managers held in Las Vegas, NV October 20-23, 2008.

Huron Consulting Group is pleased to support this prestigious award that brings innovation to the forefront of the records and information management industry.

ARP-1

What is an ARP-1, you may be asking yourself. ARP stands for AIIM Recommended Practice. ARP-1 is a recommended practice on the Analysis, Selection and Implementation of an Electronic Document Management System (EDMS). This document presents a set of procedures and activities that should be considered and/or performed when considering an EDMS for your organization. If you are in need of guidance for where to start with your EDMS project, this is the perfect document for you and at the right price -- FREE! You may download a copy of it at www.aiim.org/standards. Join the nearly 3,000 who have downloaded the document since the newly revised version was posted on the web.

While you are visiting our Standards web page, check out what some of the other committees are doing and come join us!

StratML

AIIM's Standards Board recently agreed to add the StratML project to the AIIM Standards program of work. The first meeting of the committee is scheduled for January 10, 2008 beginning at 1:30 p.m. Eastern at the AIIM Headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. (A draft agenda is attached to this message.) While a conference call has been established for the first meeting it is recommended to attend in person, if possible.

StratML is planned to be a standardized XML template and vocabulary for strategic plans, performance plans and performance reports in alignment with policies and standards. This standard will enable the sharing, referencing, indexing, discovery, linking, reuse and analysis of the elements of strategic plans including goal and objective statements. While the initial focus of StratML has been on the US Federal Government, it is believed that private organizations of all sizes will find value in the use of StratML as they draft planning documents.

AIIM Standards meetings are open to anyone who wishes to attend and is willing to actively participate in the development of the standard. Please let Ebony Dowtin at edowtin@aiim.org know if you will be attending the meeting on January 10, 2008 or if you would like to be added to the listserv for this committee so that you can follow the development progress. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact, Betsy Fanning at bfanning@aiim.org or Owen Ambur at owen.ambur@verizon.net.

Next Steps for ISO/DIS 32000

Earlier this week, we announced that the ISO/DIS 32000 accomplished a major hurdle in the approval of the draft standard. This approval does not signify that the document is to be published soon. Through the vote we received numerous comments, mostly editorial, which need to be incorporated into a revised draft. Additionally, we received a negative or No vote which must be dealt with. ISO procedures allow for No votes to be changed to Yes with Comment provided the No voter is satisfied with the way their comments are being addressed. We are currently in the process of addressing the comments and are hopeful that the voter will consider them and take appropriate action.

There are two paths that the standard may take. If the No vote is not changed to a Yes with comment, the revised standard including the modifications for the comments received will need to be balloted for a 2 month approval ballot. If the No vote is changed to a Yes with comment, the modifications from the comments will be incorporated into the standard and it will go to publication.

If you are interested in PDF, we urge you to get involved in the committee efforts. Once this version of the standard is published, the committee will begin work on the next version. All future versions of this standard will come from the committee.

PDF Reference 1.7 A Step Closer to ISO Standard

The ISO ballot to approve the PDF Reference 1.7 as an ISO standard closed yesterday. Of the 14 member countries voting, 13 have voted in favor of the standard and 1 has voted negative. Discussions of the comments will be the focus of an international meeting in the end of January in Orlando, FL. We expect one additional ballot final approval ballot to be conducted prior to the standard being published.

While this draft is nearing publication, there is much work to be done as we add new features and enhancements to the standard. If you would like to be a part of this effort, please contact Betsy Fanning at bfanning@aiim.org.