Records architecture for organisations that expect, one day, to be read. The practice does not conceal anything. Concealment fails, and leaves marks. It designs records so complete, so orderly and so dull that discovery ends at the filing cabinet, satisfied.
A general practice of records and provenance, serving commercial clients since 1996. The practice does not advertise, does not publish, and is not ranked. Clients arrive by referral, and leave no particular impression of having arrived at all.
Five areas, drafted once and unrevised. Each concerns what a record will say when it is eventually read, which is the only property of a record that matters.
What is kept, for exactly how long, and what the schedule itself says about you. A retention policy is a document too, and it is usually the first one read. We draft schedules whose every destruction date was set years in advance, and documented at the time.
Chains of engagement designed at inception, so that each party holds precisely the records appropriate to its role, and the trail traces cleanly to nowhere in particular.
Names for entities, projects and files that defeat search. A memorable name is a liability. The practice regards boredom as a security perimeter, and names accordingly.
Ownership arranged within applicable disclosure frameworks. The work lies in the word applicable.
New entities assembled from the retired parts of previous ones. Continuity of function without continuity of record. Assembly is documented in full; the documentation is distributed across the parts. Whether the successor is the same entity is the Ship of Theseus question; the practice does not answer it, and neither does the record.
Clients occasionally instruct that a matter remain unnameable. The practice declines the instruction on technical grounds. Bhartrhari observed in the fifth century that to assert a thing to be unnameable is to name it; as later commentary by Herzberger and Herzberger sets out, the assertion performs the act it forbids. Secrecy of that kind is accordingly not a service this practice can sell, and the practice does not attempt to sell it. What it sells is a name that survives being spoken, because no one who has spoken it cares to speak it twice.
New matters are accepted by referral only. There is no enquiry form, no newsletter and no calendar link. Clients with a referral already know how to reach us, and that arrangement, too, is by design.