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Something to Get Excited About: ARMA International Releases New RIM Core Competencies
Leaders help create visions and goals for their organizations and departments. They also create visions and goals for their own careers. ARMA International’s core RIM competencies are a foundation for planning your career by providing an exhaustive list of tasks and activities performed by a records manager. The competencies are your opportunity to plan what you need to learn to move ahead in your career.
The RIM Core Competencies map all the different aspect of records management including every phase of the life-cycle and every medium (i.e., electronic records management). ARMA International’s competencies are truly the records management body of knowledge. Our Education Development Committee (EDC), ably led by Roberta Shaefer and Deb Marshall, guided a survey team of hundreds to first create a list of tasks performed by RIM professionals, the accompanying knowledge and skills required to perform those duties, and then to validate the tasks, knowledge, and skills with hundreds of subject matter experts. The EDC worked tirelessly to ensure each task, knowledge, and skill statement was worded properly and impartially. Because of their careful work, the competencies document has been through nearly the same type of process a standard would go through. ARMA International contracted with a company to help us through this lengthy and remarkable process. From inception to completion, the process took three years! The result is a guide to the records management body of knowledge.
I am struck by the depth and breadth of our knowledge evidenced in the competencies. We are not lawyers, yet we must have knowledge of the law. We are not CEOs, yet we must maintain a very high level of knowledge of how businesses run and how our own organization’s function. We are not IT directors, yet we must have sufficient knowledge of technology to advise our organizations where information technology is creating unacceptable risks and non-compliance by end users – as well as offer potential solutions. We are not librarians and information scientists, yet we must organize information and create appropriate finding aids to ensure successful information seeking by users. We are not archivists, yet we must preserve information in appropriate formats to retrieve it for as long as our organizations require.
No single class with an examination at the end or even a master’s degree devoted solely to records management could adequately cover the records management body of knowledge. ARMA International’s RIM Core Competencies represent many years of study and experience.
To help our RIM professionals navigate their career path, ARMA International also is creating a self-assessment tool so that individuals can determine the level of their current abilities and what abilities they need to advance. That self-assessment tool should be ready in early 2008. We also are mapping the competencies to our current educational offerings and determining what education must be created to ensure our members have the education they need when they take the self-assessment. The next activity for our EDC is to map the competencies with major industry-specific jobs. For example, no industry other than legal records managers perform conflicts checks, so sometime next year you should be able to review the competencies with your industry specialty in mind and refine what education you need within your industry. This will be validated by industry and the competencies will be refined accordingly. Finally, the competencies will be validated internationally in late 2008 or early 2009.
ARMA International has always been the source of education in records management. Now it is the knowledge base as well.
— Carol Choksy, Ph.D., CRM, CMP
ARMA International IP, October 2007
