Sponsor: AIIM International (Association for Information and Image Management)

Description: DMA is a comprehensive standard for interoperability among electronic document management systems (EDMSs).

Relationship to Records Management: Failing to use an EDMS is tantamount to deciding not to manage E-records as public assets. Failing to use DMA-compliant EDMSs is tantamount to using proprietary software that may not be interoperable with other EDMSs.

Problems/Issues/Weaknesses: Vendors have incentives to market proprietary products. The standard is complex and relatively few vendors have produced DMA-compliant EDMSs. Agency decision-makers are insensitive to the need for interoperability among EDMSs.

Closely Related Standards: ODMA, DoD 5015.2, WebDAV, and DASL

Links to More Information:

AIIM Standards http://www.aiim.org/industry/standards/index.html

A White Paper for Federal Agency CIOs and IT Architects, by Dan Schneider of the Department of Justice (DOJ), February 1998 http://users.erols.com/ambur/DMA.html

Dan Schneider's Notes from AIIM '99 Conference and Exposition http://users.erols.com/ambur/AIIMshow.html

Freedom's Just Another Word ... for Metadata: Knowledge Management and Discovery via DASL, Z39.50, X.500, and the DMA, introduction to panel at the IEEE Metadata Conference, April 6, 1999 http://computer.org/conferen/proceed/meta/1999/papers/85/oambur.html or http://users.erols.com/ambur/freedom.html

Please convey corrections, updates, or suggested enhancements in this summary to: Owen_Ambur@fws.gov