In any company, the day-to-day management of activities requires organisation, and that includes the organisation of documents. The archive is an indispensable tool for recording, tracking and retrieving data, information and documents. Indeed, to generate coherence between documents with the same purpose - correlated with each other and linked physically or logically, depending on whether they are in paper or digital form - requires the application of precise methodologies.
Ordered according to pre-determined rules, the archive makes it possible to reconstruct the phases of the decision-making process, to understand the way in which activities were conducted. Even after the passing of time, it allows us to grasp the purpose and meaning of what was said and done by the various parties involved, providing evidence of all the initiatives undertaken and the quality of the end result. Moreover, it serves as custodian of the historical memory of those who formed it, of the actions carried out by individuals, of the research, discoveries, and products delivered, which have led to a tangible process of cultural and social growth and progress, and the construction of customs and traditions, handed down from generation to generation. All this is possible, in part, thanks to documentary sources.
Harnessing all this information for cultural purposes, through communication and dissemination initiatives, makes it possible to preserve the history of public and private institutions and prevent them from being forgotten. It is for this very reason that, on the occasion of "International Archives Day", we asked Elena Lisi, who deals with Document Archiving, Management and Preservation Services at Leonardo Global Solutions (LGS), to accompany us on an in-depth journey around document preservation in companies and how technology can help in document management and preservation processes.
What tasks does the document management and preservation service perform?
As part of the service, we have created a centre of expertise for the management and storage of computerised documents, which handles the drafting of guidelines and manuals, the analysis of document types and the definition of functional requirements for digitalising and implementing system flows.
With the physical archiving service, a process has also been initiated to centralise all of Leonardo's paper archives, within the various Group sites and at third-party suppliers, so as to ensure they can be consulted within standardised timescales. This makes the process of safeguarding and retrieving documentation more efficient and at the same time frees up space in the various sites to dedicate to business activities.
The objective is to create a hybrid archive that can be consulted by users via a single computer access point, enabling the organised management of scanned paper documents, tracing the logical connections between the original in the archive and the corresponding computer copy generated and filed in the digital archive, which is handled the same way as any born digital document.
How is the document management and preservation service evolving in LGS?
We have implemented an organisational structure made up of specific roles (Document Management Manager and Preservation Manager) in line with the relevant regulatory provisions. The technological target is to adopt a single platform, integrated with intelligent tools, to support the effectiveness and efficiency of processes related to the creation, management and preservation of computer documents, through automation, in order to facilitate and speed up the process of conducting activities and retrieval of data and information. Furthermore, making documents secure by adhering to procedures - particularly those related to cyber security and data protection - as well as the system requirements dictated by national regulations, ensures their reliability, readability and retrievability over time.
Can the application of technology to document processes be seen as an opportunity?
We start from the assumption that process innovation requires individuals to revise the way they work, involving foresight and strategic vision and the assignment of new roles and responsibilities. The adoption of technological tools for document processing is changing traditional filing procedures and, the context of production. In fact, today the document is no longer seen as a merely analogue object, in physical paper form, but as a more dynamic computer document (a sequence of bits), the use of which requires adopting infrastructures, formats and programmes that entail a significant risk of obsolescence and, therefore, of lack of intelligibility of the contents over time. The objective is to move towards the drafting of native computerised documents and the use of a document management application for archiving, equipped with efficient description and search systems, so as to be able to track and monitor the operations performed in the system and facilitate the retrieval, preservation and use of documents over time. All this would lead to considerable progress in terms of sustainability because the gradual elimination of paper production will avoid the excessive duplication of files, which on the one hand complicates selection activities, monitoring preservation times and applying procedures for the elimination of documents and files, and on the other hand, makes document searching more chaotic.
Spanning past and future, created to preserve the memory of knowledge, practices, social actions, human lives and, at the same time, endowed with the power to unveil what they preserve, archives have evolved over time in line with changes in law, communication and technological innovation, and are still in constant flux, affected by a broad and complex interdisciplinary debate.
In our own case, the archives preserve our corporate cultural memory and the many people who have contributed to it and, at the same time, they also preserve important operational information, projecting us into the future with the construction and definition of new practices and processes and through research and the use of increasingly innovative technologies.