The document revolution. Work- or document-flow? The document revolution? Archival documents as trigger for process improvement

This paper is resulting from a research project at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, in which the fields of organization, information and archival studies have been integrated. We argue that the archivistic concept of the record keeping system, in information-intensive organizations, can be used as an instrument for improving the performance of the document-flow in a business process, and, as a result, on the process. Archival documents must not only contain the information related to the result of an activity, but also information both on the circumstances of their creation and organization and business processes. We think this can be realized by using a record keeping system, with as essential elements: context, quality, appraisal, warehousing and logistics. The instrument we have developed as a translation of the conceptual model is the process-specific archival document-file, a meta-file that, after translation, operates as an engine managing document management. The approach that was developed was tested in a casestudy in the city of Veldhoven. From the case-study, it became clear that our approach leads to considerable improvements in the flow of documents and thus in the primary processes supported by these documents.