Recordkeeping and Information Architecture - a Study of the Swedish Financial Sector

The study focused on problems, drivers and priorities for information architecture and management of electronic information, especially records, in the Swedish financial sector. In the theoretical framework it is stressed that in order to develop effective eservices in any type of organisation it is necessary to not only to focus on business and technological infrastructure, but also to develop efficient forms of information infrastructure and information architecture, in which the management and access of electronic records forms an essential part. Further it is asserted, in accordance with the records continuum model, that in order to efficiently be able to access and manage electronic records in any organisation or organisations, electronic recordkeeping requires a pro-active and continuous iterative approach. Sixteen semi-structured interviews with five Swedish banks and one insurance company show that in recent years managing and accessing electronic records have become important strategic and economic factors, which is more now than before considered to be an essential part the enterprise information architecture and information infrastructure. One important driver for developing electronic recordkeeping is the increased need to be able to access customer records from any part of the organisation, nationally and internationally. Today, however, electronic records are sometimes scattered in different processes and systems with different structure and technology, a problem that these organisations now are beginning to solve in different kinds of development projects dealing with information architecture and digital archives.