On June 9, 2016 the Society of Catalan Archivists and Records Managers presented the first version of the Maturity Model on Records Management for Open Government (AAC-MM), developed by Alan Capellades, Anahí Casadesús, Aniol Maria, Carla Meinhardt and Santi Lopera, under the coordination of Vicenç Ruiz and Joan Soler. Currently integrated by a set of thirty-seven indicators, grouped into four progressive maturity levels (conscious, active, advanced and optimized), its aim is to build trust between government and citizens by ensuring traceability and authenticity in information governance. It has been developed according to the Catalan and Spanish legal frameworks, especially the first one that clearly ties records management requirements with transparency and access of information obligations. But it can be useful for organizations, wherever settled, aiming to succeed with their open government policies, since it provides a self-audit checklist inspired by international standards on records management, digital preservation, civic participation and quality.
The AAC-MM enables an internal and external assessment that is compatible with other transparency and open government systems of evaluation. However, we place particular emphasis on the fact that it is a product that highlights the type of contribution that professional associations can make in the field of information governance quality.
The first audits according to the AAC-MM are currently being carried out. We have signed two agreements: one, with the Government of Catalonia for audits at the ministry level of the entire Catalan autonomous regional government, and the other with the Municipal Council of Sant Cugat del Vallès, a town near Barcelona with almost 90,000 inhabitants. We hope that these first two practical cases will be a turning point for raising the profile of the AAC-MM among Catalan public organisations.
For those interested, you can download the Catalan or Spanish first version of the Model or you can read an English written chapter about it in the recently published book Diverse Applications and Transferability of Maturity Models.