The DLM Forum is a European membership community of public archives and parties interested in

archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials, in any medium, or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organ ...

s, records and

information management Information management (IM) is the appropriate and optimized capture, storage, retrieval, and use of information. It may be personal information management or organizational. Information management for organizations concerns a cycle of organiz ...

throughout the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

. Membership is open to all. The Forum is known for its creation of the MoReq series of records management standards.

History

The DLM Forum was established in 1994 by the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

. It is based on the conclusions of the

European Council The European Council (informally EUCO) is a collegiate body (directorial system) and a symbolic collective head of state, that defines the overall political direction and general priorities of the European Union (EU). It is composed of the he ...

of 17 June 1994 concerning greater cooperation in the field of archives.

Meaning of the DLM acronym

Originally DLM was an acronym for 'Données Lisibles par Machine' (

machine-readable data In communications and computing, a machine-readable medium (or computer-readable medium) is a medium capable of storing data in a format easily readable by a digital computer or a sensor. It contrasts with ''human-readable'' medium and data ...

). At its 2002 conference in

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

(

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

) a resolution was passed changing this, so DLM now stands for ' Document Lifecycle Management'.

Objectives

According to its constitution (paragraph 3c), one of the DLM Forum's goals is: 'to provide technology and knowledge transfer and information services, appropriate practice guidelines, benchmark indicators and information, educational, skills development and research opportunities.' The constitution also defines (in paragraph 4) other objectives: '(a) To provide for information services (on-line information portal, list-serv, publications, discussions forum, news, dynamic document archive); (b) To provide for technology & knowledge transfer (technology watch, standards, legislation and policy monitoring, consultancy, connecting technology providers with users, partnership development); (c) To provide for education & skills development (conferences, seminars and exhibitions, workshops and training sessions, managed learning environments); (d) To provide for research (user needs analysis, economic modeling, ontology development, knowledge engineering, classification, information retrieval).'

Achievements

The most visible achievement of the DLM Forum is the creation of a series of European records management standards, collectively known as "MoReq". The abbreviation 'MoReq' is a contraction of 'Model Requirements for the management of electronic records'. The first MoReq requirements document, formally titled MoReq but today widely known (unofficially) as MoReq1, was published in 2001. MoReq rapidly gained acceptance across Europe and beyond. It has been translated into at least twelve languages, some of which are from outside the European Union. The enhanced successor document MoReq2 was published in 2008. Both documents have achieved the status of de facto standards, without the backing of any formal standards body. MoReq2 was enhanced by a test framework, a records management software certification programme, and an

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

schema. In March 2010, the DLM Forum announced it had signed a contract with Journal IT for a major update to MoReq, to result in a version that will be called MoReq2010. Other publications of the DLM Forum include 'Guidelines on best practices for using electronic information', seven DLM Whitepapers and Proceedings of the DLM-Forum Conferences.

Membership and administration

Any person or organisation can apply to join the DLM Forum; membership is subject to payment of an annual fee. In 2015 there are 56 members, including national archives, consultancies, academic institutions, records management software vendors and end-user organisations. Until 2010, the legal entity of the DLM Forum was the DLM Network EEIG. In early 2010, the DLM Forum formed the DLM Forum Foundation, a limited company registered in England and Wales, to replace the EEIG as its legal entity. The DLM Forum is governed by its executive committee, which consists of 7 to 9 elected members. The current chair of the DLM Forum executive committee is Jan Dalsten Sørensen from the

Danish National Archives The Danish National Archives () is the national archive system of Denmark. Its primary purpose is to collect, preserve and archive historically valuable records from central authorities, such as ministries, agencies and national organisations and ...

. The DLM Forum established in 2008 a MoReq Governance Board for the maintenance and control of the MoReq2 standard and certification process. The DLM Forum usually holds member meetings twice a year; generally these meetings are held in the country then holding the

Presidency of the Council of the European Union The presidency of the Council of the European Union is responsible for the functioning of the Council of the European Union, which is the co-legislator of the EU legislature alongside the European Parliament. It rotates among the member state ...

. It also organises a major conference every three years; these conferences generally attract about 300 to 400 delegates from

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

and elsewhere. Recent conferences have been held in

(

), 2002,

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

(

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

), 2005,

Toulouse Toulouse (, ; ; ) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Haute-Garonne department and of the Occitania (administrative region), Occitania region. The city is on the banks of the Garonne, River Garonne, from ...

(

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

), 2008,

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

(

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

), 2011 and

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

(

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

), 2014. Numerous papers such as the constitution, presentations from conferences and member meetings, translations and products are published on the DLM Forum website.
DLM Forum website

References

External links

*
DLM Forum archives
at the European Commission website. {{DEFAULTSORT:Dlm Forum Public records