User:MarcMFresko/DLM Forum

The DLM Forum is a European membership community of Public Archives and parties interested in archive, records and information management throughout the European Union. Membership is open to all.

History
The DLM Forum was established in 1994 by the European Commission. It is based on the conclusions of the European Council (94/C 235/03) 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', French for 'machine-readable data'. At its 2003 conference in Barcelona (Spain) a resolution was passed changing this, so DLM now stands for 'Document Lifecycle Management'.

Objectives
According to its consitution (paragraph 3c), on 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 achievements of the DLM Forum are the creation of MoReq and its successor MoReq2. MoReq, a contraction of Model Requirements for the management of electronic records. Both documents have achieved the status of de facto standards, without the backing of any formal standards body. MoReq, published in 2001, rapidly gained acceptance across Europe and beyond; it has been translated into at least ten languages, some of which are from outside the European Union. MoReq2 was published in 2008 and has also been rapidly adopted internationally.

Operation of the DLM Forum
Any person or organisation can apply to join the DLM Forum; membership is subject to payment of an annual fee.

The Forum is governed by its Executive Committee, which consists of 7 - 9 elected members. The assets of the Forum are managed, legally, by a European Economic Interest Grouping; in practice this EEIG does not play an active part in the operation of the Forum.

The Forum usually holds Member Meetings twice a year; generally these meetings are held in the country then holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. It also organises a major conference every three years; these conferences generally attract about 300 delegates from Europe and elsewhere. Recent conferences have been held in:
 * Barcelona (Spain), 2002
 * Budapest (Hungary), 2005
 * Toulouse (France), 2008