In mid-June 2014, Norks Arkivråd invited me to Oslo (Norway) for a series of events directed to the professional community of archivists and records managers for a better understanding the ISO 30300 series of standards

It was a great experience. In Norway the standards are being translated and, as always, they are finding difficulties in trying to adapt terms of the records management language, starting by the always difficult translation of "records".

The first activity was a small seminar with 12 people, records managers in private sector companies in Norway. In addition to explaining the standard, we focus on how to use it as a tool to convince senior management of the importance of controlling organization’s information, documents and records. The most interesting issue for many participants was the complementarity with other MSS (Management system standards), especially with the ISO 9000 and the possibility of seeking allies on responsible for these systems.

Ciber, a consultant company working on records management related projects in Norway. Focus was on how to include the requirements of the standard in their consulting projects and marketing strategies.

Finally, a breakfast conference was held.  Apart from my conference, there were presentations by  Martin Bould from Ciber and Harvard Hjustald from Standards Norway, with whom I had met previously in ISO TMB-JTCG on Management System Standards. I was surprised by the number of attendees, more than sixty people who were very interested in the standard and the Norwegian translation process.

NOARK, which focuses on system requirements for electronic records management, and the first edition was from 1984! The fact of the perfect compatibility and complementarity of an operational standard as NOARK standard with an strategic standard as ISO 30301 is a very interesting point for the Norwegian market.