22nd July 09:35 – 10:05
Speaker: Dr James Lappin
Abstract: An organisation’s records retention regime has to scale up to cover the entirety of the content it holds. That content will come in many different forms, will be held on many different systems, and will exist at many different stages of the lifecycle.
One of the great attractions of AI and of data science techniques more generally is their potential to scale. We have seen how general-purpose AI, in the form of large language models, has reached a global scale and can be applied to enhance the productivity of individuals engaged in almost any task that involves digital text, code or images.
The scaling of AI for decision making is a little more complex. Not only does the AI service have to scale – the human in the loop controls and accompanying explanations have to scale too.
Scaling up AI and data science techniques for the management of the digital heap will require a combination of intuitions from both records management and data science. This presentation explores what those intuitions might be and how they might work together.
Bio: Dr James Lappin is a senior policy advisor in the digital knowledge and information management team within the Government Digital Service. He has worked for thirty years in the field of records and archives in many different roles, including as a practitioner, consultant, policy advisor, researcher, trainer, blogger, podcaster and cartoonist. He is the author of the Thinking Records blog. In 2024 he was awarded a PhD by Loughborough University for his thesis ‘The science of recordkeeping systems – a realist perspective’.