Modular Approach First to Address Diverse International Requirements of Public and Private Sectors, Backed by EU Commission and National Archives of All 27 Member States

17th November 2010, Brussels, Belgium – The DLM Forum, a European Commission sponsored body, today announced the availability of the final draft of the MoReq2010 specification for electronic records management systems (ERMS), following extensive public consultation. There will now be a final public consultation and expert review of the draft, with the final specification being published in December 2010.

With the growing demand for records management, across a broad spectrum of commercial, not for profit and government organisations, MoReq2010 provides the first practical specification against which all organisations can take control of their corporate information. IT software and services vendors are also able to have their products tested and certified that they meet the MoReq2010 specification.

MoReq (Model Requirements for the Management of Electronic Records), supersedes its predecessor MoReq2 and has the continued support and backing of the European Commission. 

Jef Schram, the representative and observer for the European Commission on the DLM Forum Executive Committee, commented, “On behalf of the European Commission, which provided the initial financing for the development of the MoReq specification, we are delighted with the milestone reached with the new specification. The European Commission continues to support MoReq2010, along with the Expert Review Group, with its international representatives from Europe, the USA, Canada and Australia. We look forward to further involvement with the DLM Forum in this crucial part of the EU’s overall plans to advance best practice in electronic information.”

MoReq2010’s manageable, modular and flexible architecture for the management of electronic records enables diverse industry sector and application compliance requirements to be addressed.

Lucie Verachten, Chair of the DLM Forum’s Executive Committee, and Head of Section of Digitisation and Digital Preservation at the Belgian National Archives commented, “The DLM Forum is both pleased and proud to make this announcement, which is the result of the hard work and input of numerous stakeholders.  Constructive comments and input from the twenty-seven National Archives of EU member states,  non-member states, leading records management system vendors, major end user organisations, testing companies, consultancies and both European and international records management bodies, have made MoReq2010 the most relevant and practical specification available today.”

Following the final public consultation, IT software and services vendors will be putting their products forward for formal testing, by accredited testing bodies throughout Europe and certification by the DLM Forum. End user organisations will then have confidence that vendor products, certified against the MoReq2010 specification, will meet their needs.

The DLM Forum welcomes the announcement today by Automated Intelligence, which has committed to gaining certification for compliance with MoReq2010 for its new Microsoft SharePoint-based product. Mr Simon Cole, Chief Technical Officer, Automated Intelligence, commented, “Microsoft SharePoint is the fasted growing content management and collaboration product in Europe. We are pleased to be the first vendor to commit to being able to deliver a MoReq2010 compliant product and one that embraces and extends SharePoint 2010. We plan to submit our product for testing once the MoReq 2010 specification is published and the testing centres have been accredited.  We are planning to implement a MoReq 2010 certified system to a UK Government department in early 2011.”

Additional Information and Support for MoReq2010

Specification Development
The DLM Forum invited tenders in December 2009 from interested parties to develop the specification. The DLM  have been extremely satisfied with the work undertaken by their selected provider, JournalIT.

Jon Garde, Managing Director, JournalIT, said, “We are delighted to have completed this important task for the DLM Forum. MoReq2010 is built using a modular consumer-oriented approach that reflects the experience of experts, so non-expert users can speed their purchasing process. They can then expect to save money on the cost of implementing compliant systems, whilst being confident of implanting best practice faster than with previous approaches.”

The DLM Forum has also developed a roadmap to maintain and develop MoReq2010.  This will extend its technical and operational capabilities and interoperability into major IT middleware industry standards such as CMIS.  MoReq2010 will also be further extended to guarantee the probity of systems that address the specific requirements of Information Governance in the government, finance, life sciences and other regulated industries.

National Archive Support for MoReq2010
Representatives of the National Archives of the twenty-seven European Union member states have been involved from the outset of the MoReq project. In welcoming this announcement, Richard Blake, Senior Manager Public Sector Team, National Archives of the UK commented: “We welcome this announcement, resulting in an updated specification that will encourage wider adoption of electronic records management throughout the UK. We support the use of standards and MoReq2010 is a valuable addition to the family of standards referenced by the information and record management community within the UK. We would recommend that as a relevant record management standard MoReq2010 should be used by organisations to inform the development of specifications for new systems required for the management of records.”

Hans Fredrik Berg, Senior Advisor of the Norwegian National Archive commented, “We welcome the announcement of MoReq2010, and encourage the adoption of the new specification. The modular approach of MoReq2010 seems better suited for a diversity of implementations and the possibility of adaptation to national requirements. This is of particular importance for Norway, having its own well established standard for records management, mandatory for public sector according to national legislation.”

Jože Škofljanec, Deputy Director of the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia commented, “MoReq has been successfully incorporated into the Slovenian archival and records management legislation for over five years. MoReq2010 defines requirements for ERMS in a way that enables even wider implementation of best practices into Slovenian records management.”

Testing, Certification, Education and Training
The MoReq2010 Testing and Certification Process, will be undertaken by organisations to be approved by the DLM Forum including imbus of Germany, the UK’s NCC, MATRIX of Hungary and Strategy Partners, based in the UK and The Netherlands.

DLM Forum approved education and training courses are also planned, with organisations such as University of Northumbria, ARMA International, AIIM, Inform Consult and Strategy Partners . The  DLM will also be providing MoReq2010 Presentation packs and speakers for organisations wishing to run courses, workshops and academic programmes .

The DLM Forum also welcomes the support of the following IT software and services vendors who have indicated that MoReq2010 will play a part in their future product and service development: EMC, Fabasoft, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Objective, Open Text and Oracle.