A Glossary of Important Electronic Management Terms

DoD 5015.2-STD11 - A Department of Defense (DoD) and NARA approved set of minimum functional requirements for ERM applications. It specifies design criteria needed to identify, mark, store, and dispose of electronic records. It does not define how the product is to provide these capabilities. It does not define how an agency manages electronic records or how an ERM program is to be implemented.

E-FOIA - Electronic processing of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, determination of fee charges and waivers, workflow, redaction, and response.

Electronic Content Management (ECM) - the technologies used to capture, manage, store, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes; also called Enterprise Content Management.

Electronic Document Management (EDM) - Computerized management of electronic and paper-based documents. EDM includes a system to convert paper documents to electronic form, a mechanism to capture documents from authoring tools, a database to organize the storage of documents, and a search mechanism to locate the documents.

Electronic Records Management (ERM) - Using automated techniques to manage records, regardless of format. It supports records collection, organization, categorization, storage of electronic records, metadata, and location of physical records, retrieval, use, and disposition.

Enterprise and Enterprise-wide - Implementation of a single software application suite throughout all levels and components of an agency or organization.

Metadata - A term that describes or specifies characteristics that need to be known about data in order to build information resources such as electronic recordkeeping systems and support records creators and users.

Records Management Application (RMA) - A software application to manage records. Its primary management functions are categorizing and locating records and identifying records that are due for disposition. RMA software also stores, retrieves, and disposes of the electronic records that are maintained in its depository. DoD5015.2-STD requires that RMAs be able to manage records regardless of their media.