Engaging with change: Information and communication technology professionals’ perspectives on change at the mid-point in the UK/EU Brexit process

Background Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been a key agent of change in the 21st century. Given the role of ICT in changing society, this research explores the responses and attitudes to change over time from ICT professionals and ICT academics in dealing with the potentially far reaching political challenge triggered by the UK’s 2016 European Union Referendum and its decision to leave the European Union (Brexit). Whilst the vote was a UK based decision its ramifications have global implications and as such the research was not confined to the UK. This article presents the second phase of the research at the mid-point in the UK/European Union (EU) Brexit process, thus complementing the findings gathered immediately after the Referendum decision. The fundamental question being researched was: What are ICT professionals’ personal and professional perspectives on the change triggered by Brexit in terms of opportunities and threats? Methods and findings Data was collected through a survey launched in March 2018, one year on from the UK’s triggering of Article 50 and marking the mid-point in the two-year Brexit process. The survey replicated the one delivered at the point of the Referendum decision in 2016 with some developments. In addition, two appreciative inquiry focus groups were conducted. The research sought to understand any shifting perspectives on the opportunities and threats that would exist post-Brexit for ICT professionals and academics. 59% of survey participants were negative regarding the Brexit decision. Participants noted the position post-Brexit for the UK, and the remaining 27 EU Member States (EU27), was still very uncertain at this stage. They observed that planned change versus uncertainty provides for very different responses. In spite of the uncertainty, the participants were able to consider and advocate for potential opportunities although these were framed from national perspectives. The opportunities identified within the appreciative inquiry focus groups aligned to those recorded by survey participants with similar themes highlighted. However, the optimum conditions for change have yet to be reached as there is still not an informed position, message and clear leadership with detailed information for the ICT context. Further data will be gathered after the UK exit from the EU, assuming this occurs

Information Governance: Are we there yet and … if not where are we heading?

Information Governance has provided strategic frameworks for maximizing information value in line with regulatory requirements and taking into account security risks. However, to date, it has largely harvested and merged traditional models to achieve these balances. The real possibilities for co-creating, managing, sharing and reusing information/data to enhance societal delivery in ethical ways have yet to be realized. This paper will consider new ways of framing and managing information/data considering wide ranging stakeholder needs, social justice agendas and technological realities and possible futures. Data has been described as the “new oil” ” that drives society and certainly has a recognized commoditized/asset value. In addition, it is being understood as a more fundamental resource such as water, with clean, good quality data driving decision making. As it increasingly links to new technological innovations and possibilities the full impact of where we are heading in terms of information governance has not yet been fully understood and considered. Within this context there are a number of challenges and opportunities for recordkeeping and auditing. These need to be considered in a range of technological contexts considering but not limited to algorithms, blockchain and Artificial Intelligence. It is estimated by PwC, that the latter will grow global GDP by 14% in the next decade changing many interactions between citizens, industry and government. However, the policies and frameworks needed to agree the governance requirements are still emerging. Information governance has the potential to place citizens back at the heart of this agenda and to deliver ethical frameworks and public policy delivery for society. This is a moment for the information and records management to focus in order to be part of, if not centre stage, in this critical agenda and longer term delivery. Let us hope that Records and Information Professionals are there when we arrive at a destination of ethical information delivery. This paper will discuss ways we can get to this destination

An autoethnography exploring the engagement of records management through a computer mediated communication focused co-operative inquiry

This thesis is an autoethnography exploring the engagement of records management (RM) through the vehicle of a computer mediated communication (CMC) focused co-operative inquiry. CMC is defined as, “communication that takes place between human beings via the instrumentality of computers” (Herring, 1996, p.81). The PhD stance was that with the advent of new technologies, such as CMC, the role and place of RM has been challenged. RM practitioners needed to evaluate their principles and practice in order to discover why RM is not uniformly understood and also why it fails to engage many CMC users and information professionals. The majority of today’s information is generated as the result of unstructured communications (AIIM, 2005 and 2006) that no longer have a fixed reality but exist across fragmented globalised spaces through the Cloud, Web 2.0 and software virtualisation. Organisational boundaries are permanently perforated and the division between public and private spaces are blurred. Traditional RM has evolved in highly structured organisational information environments. Nevertheless, RM could lie at the heart of the processes required for dealing with this splintered data. RM takes a holistic approach to information management, establishing the legislative requirements, technical requirements and the training and support for individuals to communicate effectively, simultaneously transmitting and processing the communications for maximum current and ongoing organisational benefits. However RM is not uniformly understood or practiced. The focus of the thesis was to understand how RM engagement can and should be achieved. The research was conducted by establishing a co-operative inquiry consisting of 82 international co-researchers, from a range of disciplines, investigating the question, ‘How do organisations maximise the information potential of CMC for organisational benefit, taking into account the impact of the individual?” The PhD established a novel approach to co-operative inquiry by separating, managing and merging three groups of co-researchers (UK Records Managers, UK CMC users, international Records Managers and CMC users). I was embedded as a co-researcher within this wider inquiry personally exploring as an autoethnography the relevance of RM to the wider research question, the ability of RM practitioners to advocate for RM and the co-researchers’ responses to the place of RM within this context. The thesis makes several contributions to the research field. It examines how records managers and RM principles and practice engaged through the inquiry, articulating the reasons why users sometimes failed to engage with RM principles and practice, and what assists users to successfully engage with RM. It was found that national perspectives and drivers were more significant as to whether or not individuals engaged with RM concepts than age, gender or professional experience. In addition, users engaged with RM when it was naturally embedded within processes. In addition, as a result of the inquiry’s discussions and actions, the thesis suggests that RM principles and practice need to be refined, for example in regards to the characteristics that define a record. In this respect it concludes that there is rarely likely to be an original archival record surviving through time given the need for migration. The research delivered a novel approach to co-operative inquiry whereby merging groups through time produced new learning at each merger point. The thesis recommends further research to build upon its findings

An autoethnography exploring the engagement of records management (RM) through a computer mediated communication co-operative inquiry (CMC)

This thesis is an autoethnography exploring the engagement of records management (RM) through the vehicle of a computer mediated communication (CMC) focused co-operative inquiry. CMC is defined as, “communication that takes place between human beings via the instrumentality of computers” (Herring, 1996, p.81). The PhD stance was that with the advent of new technologies, such as CMC, the role and place of RM has been challenged. RM practitioners needed to evaluate their principles and practice in order to discover why RM is not uniformly understood and also why it fails to engage many CMC users and information professionals. The majority of today’s information is generated as the result of unstructured communications (AIIM, 2005 and 2006) that no longer have a fixed reality but exist across fragmented globalised spaces through the Cloud, Web 2.0 and software virtualisation. Organisational boundaries are permanently perforated and the division between public and private spaces are blurred. Traditional RM has evolved in highly structured organisational information environments. Nevertheless, RM could lie at the heart of the processes required for dealing with this splintered data. RM takes a holistic approach to information management, establishing the legislative requirements, technical requirements and the training and support for individuals to communicate effectively, simultaneously transmitting and processing the communications for maximum current and ongoing organisational benefits. However RM is not uniformly understood or practiced. The focus of the thesis was to understand how RM engagement can and should be achieved. The research was conducted by establishing a co-operative inquiry consisting of 82 international co-researchers, from a range of disciplines, investigating the question, ‘How do organisations maximise the information potential of CMC for organisational benefit, taking into account the impact of the individual?” The PhD established a novel approach to co-operative inquiry by separating, managing and merging three groups of co-researchers (UK Records Managers, UK CMC users, international Records Managers and CMC users). I was embedded as a co-researcher within this wider inquiry personally exploring as an autoethnography the relevance of RM to the wider research question, the ability of RM practitioners to advocate for RM and the co-researchers’ responses to the place of RM within this context. The thesis makes several contributions to the research field. It examines how records managers and RM principles and practice engaged through the inquiry, articulating the reasons why users sometimes failed to engage with RM principles and practice, and what assists users to successfully engage with RM. It was found that national perspectives and drivers were more significant as to whether or not individuals engaged with RM concepts than age, gender or professional experience. In addition, users engaged with RM when it was naturally embedded within processes. In addition, as a result of the inquiry’s discussions and actions, the thesis suggests that RM principles and practice need to be refined, for example in regards to the characteristics that define a record. In this respect it concludes that there is rarely likely to be an original archival record surviving through time given the need for migration. The research delivered a novel approach to co-operative inquiry whereby merging groups through time produced new learning at each merger point. The thesis recommends further research to build upon its findings

Risk and risk management through an immersive participatory and literate information lens: Empowering ethical delivery

For decades, risk management has been developed as a set of systematic tools enabling seemingly logical navigation through uncertainty. Often these tools have sought to aid the mitigation of negative outcomes, as in the health and safety field or regulatory spaces. However, in their more holistic forms, these tools have also created risk frameworks that allow for the seizing of opportunities in other words ‘to dare’ (risicare in Italian). The route to systems that offer a better controlled state of known outcomes has been mapped through lenses that link into organisational, societal, cultural, professional, communities of practice and personality states (Hillson, 2016). The seeming roadmaps to success have often been deemed to have similarities to those lenses adopted in the change management literature whereby steps are modelled, as in Hiatt’s ADKAR model, or organisational and emotional journeys are traced as in Bridge’s, Kessler’s, Kotter’s and Kubler-Ross’ models respectively (Lomas, 2020). Within each of these models are beliefs in the inherent benefits of change. Within contexts of change, uncertainty and crisis the key component to these mappings has been the construction of shared narratives around the importance of the right risk choices. However, it is to be noted that there are often central powerful actors that lead the discourse and rarely are bottom-up approaches seen. These ideas have been seen most recently in the fight for public opinion and action during shifting pandemic restrictions (Lloyd & Hicks, 2021). Whilst risk management is understood to contain complex networks of factors and events, there has been limited learning from disciplines that have sought to build immersive and participatory frameworks to mediate uncertainty and risk, thereby rethinking how we build risk knowledge. These approaches have the potential to reframe risk management and to ensure better outcomes for a wide range of actors, stakeholders, organisational and ultimately societal benefits. This paper employs an information lens to extend current risk and risk management discourse, considering how concepts of immersion, participation, and risk information literacies open and reframe understandings of ethical decision making. Working from the premise that immersion within both the lived experiences and consequences of choice will empower stakeholders by extending the critical actors, this paper also argues that a sociocultural understanding of risk literacy, including related to the role that information plays in shaping risk perception, understanding and management, will facilitate more useful understandings of how risk is informed. These ideas will be explored through discussion of work that each author has undertaken navigating macro uncertainties from an information and technological perspective during Brexit shifts, COVID-19 lockdowns, and the advancement of AI. The presentation will also introduce work focusing on micro contexts such as the use of risk immersion techniques to facilitate information rights and subject access requests for care experienced people and those experiencing wider legal marginalisation through digital inequalities

Treatment integrity failures matched to behavioral function

Prior research on treatment integrity has focused on either the lack of measurement of the independent variable (Peterson, Homer & Wonderlich, 1982; Gresham, Gansle & Noel, 1993; Wheeler, Baggett, Fox & Blevins, 2006; McIntyre, Gresham, DiGennaro & Reed, 2007; Sanetti, Gritter & Dobey, 2011) or on methods to increase overall levels of treatment integrity(Witt, Noell, LaFleur & Mortenson, 1997; Noell, Witt, Gilbertson, Ranier & Freeland,1997; Noell et al., 2005). Yet little research has been devoted to understanding the effectiveness of common interventions when those interventions are implemented with less than perfect integrity. The current investigation evaluated the effectiveness of using reinforcement and prompting to increase correct item completion on math worksheets for kindergarten and first graders. Treatment was evaluated when both components were implemented, when only reinforcement was implemented, when only prompting was implemented and when neither was implemented. In addition preferences for either attention or escape were evaluated as moderator variables to understand how individual differences impact treatment effectiveness. Results indicated treatment was effective at all levels of implementation when moderator variables were not accounted for. However when moderator variables were evaluated individuals who preferred escape responded best when both treatment components were implemented whereas, for individuals who preferred attention all treatment conditions were equally effective

Examining the issues & challenges of email & e-communications. 2nd Northumbria Witness Seminar Conference, 24-25 Oct 2007 Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne.

These proceedings capture the content of the second Witness Seminar hosted by Northumbria University’s School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences. It followed the success of the first witness seminar in terms of its format and style but differed in that it focused on one topic - managing email and other electronic communications technologies from a records perspective. As before the witnesses were invited to share their views and opinions on a specific aspect taking as their starting point a pertinent published article(s). Three seminars explored the business, people and technology perspectives of email and e-communications, asking the following questions: What are the records management implications and challenges of doing business electronically? Are people the problem and the solution? Is technology the problem or panacea? The final seminar, 'Futurewatch', focused on moving forward, exploring new ways of working, potential new technologies and what records professionals and others need to keep on their radar screens

Working with care leavers and young people still in care: ethical issues in the co-development of a participatory recordkeeping app

An important element of social research is the ethical treatment of research participants. This paper outlines the ethical issues pertaining to a study (MIRRA: Memory-Identity-Rights in Records-Access) that developed a ‘participatory recordkeeping system specification’ for young people in care. The research team worked with members of the cohort themselves (aged 13–17 years) and care-experienced adults. It discusses in general terms the various elements that require ethical consideration, such as informed consent, anonymity, avoiding harm, and needing to benefit the participants and their peers. It goes on to describe how such issues were approached by the team. The particular ethical measures required for the young and ‘cared-for’ participants are explored. These included the need to work through, first, an adult gatekeeper—a representative of each care organisation approached—and then, within the organisation, a social worker or care-giver. This greatly limited recruitment, as these adults often vetoed contact with the young people themselves. A checklist is outlined, derived from the ‘Gillick Test of Competence’ to assess capacity to give ‘informed consent’, for willing gatekeepers/carers to consider. The article then addresses how the Participant Information Sheets were developed for the young cohort, emphasising the need to do this by consulting appropriate professionals, published guidelines and the potential participants themselves. After considering the possible risks and benefits to participants, the paper concludes by suggesting that ethical issues around recruitment and participation of this cohort are complex and require much additional bureaucracy, patience and flexibility—but can be immensely rewarding

Child Social-Care Recording and the Information Rights of Care-Experienced People : A Recordkeeping Perspective

Recent reports by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) emphasised the critical importance of records throughout the lives of care-experienced people. Records not only contain information about what happened to a person in their past, but also have long-term effects on memory and identity. Research emerging in the context of analogous national inquiries into the systemic abuse and neglect of children in care—particularly the Royal Commission in Australia and the Shaw Report in Scotland—have highlighted the significance of records to campaigns for reparative justice. This article introduces MIRRA: Memory—Identity—Rights in Records—Access, which is a participatory action research project co-produced with care-leavers and researchers based at University College London (UCL). This ongoing study seeks to deepen our understanding of the creation, use and management of care records and protocols to access them. In this article, we consider the practice of social work recording with children and families in England since the 1970s from a ‘recordkeeping perspective’, importing theory from the information studies field to provide a new perspective on the information rights of care-leavers

Continued communication – maximising the business potential of communications through Web 2.0

This paper is concerned with Continued Communication, a Northumbria University led co-operative inquiry, critically evaluating a central research question: how can organisations maximise the potential of their communications, taking into account the impact of the individual. This paper provides a high level discussion of the research and outputs of the Continued Communication’s UK group. It discusses the complex dimensions of communication; organisational requirements, individual agendas, and communication channels/tools