The many policy documents listed from Web sites maintained by the International Council on Archives, the National Archives of Canada, the Australian Archives and the Archives Authority of New South Wales reflect the international scope of the effort. More research and development is needed. The idea of studying the economics of complying with the functional requirements in particular organizational settings, determining what institutions are willing to spend to meet regulations to make them compliant, is one important need. Another possibility for substantial research is to consider the need for functional requirements for recordkeeping other than evidence, such as for decision making and corporate memory. We also need to understand the impact of electronic records on personal recordkeeping, and discussions about the degree to which individuals create records that are consistent with the principles generally associated with institutional recordkeeping have already provided another fruitful avenue for research.
Records are important to organizations and to all of society.
Electronic records systems merely add new problems and concerns for the adequate management of records. What is being described here amounts to the records professions' rediscovery of records, including a better message for archivists and records managers to take to the world. If followed up, further work using the recordkeeping functional requirements represents a shift in what archivists do, where they work and their strategies and tactics, allies and partners. Archivists need to ally with policy makers, business analysts and related groups, information technology standards setters, information technology designers and software engineers, the information brokers establishing themselves in the wild new world of deregulated information resources management and accountability agents. Records professionals have something to say, and it is important.