Professionals vs practitioners in records and information

I've been puzzling over how we separate the professionals from the practitioners in records management.

I've come to the conclusion that it has to start with measurement.

I think that fundamentally, all professionalism has to start with measurement because practice standards without some form of measurement are just as likely to entrench ineffective practice - which I think is one of the challenges that archival institutions are inflicting on the organisations they regulate today.

The bottom line, is that we can't know whether we're effective without measurement.

I think this is an important thing to draw a line under.

The reason is simple, we have an effectiveness challenge in records management.

We have lots of people working really hard to produce very low levels of effectiveness.

This presents many challenges.

One, is that within certain segments of the economy, records is seen as something that organisations have to do because there's legislation. Its effectiveness doesn't matter because having the team in place means the head of agency can sign the compliance statement, whether they're effective doesn't matter at all.

Because it doesn't matter, the organisation doesn't feel like it has to give us the kind of support that would make it possible for us to be effective.

So we can't be.

There's also the challenge that this makes effective practice impossible to separate from ineffective practice.

If practitioners are learning from each other, and there's been no measurement of whether that practice was effective, we're most likely to just learn from the people who tell a good story - whether it's effective or not.

We're also likely to perpetuate our own practices in the belief that they're better - when what we're doing may be absolutely incapable of producing effective results, or reasonably effective, but not as effective as something we could easily change to.

Without measurement - how do we know?

Without knowing whether our practice is effective relative to another, can we consider ourselves professionals?