How Amtrak Is Using INFO Students to Get Its Electronic Records On Track
A partnership with INFO’s iConsultancy is helping the railroad tackle a growing information governance challenge
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For a national railroad that carries millions of passengers across 46 states, keeping train schedules running is only part of the challenge. Keeping track of the documents that keep the organization running is another story.
That is the issue Rebecca Conner has been working to solve since joining Amtrak as a records and information management professional in 2018. While the railroad has a strong system for managing paper records, its electronic records—contracts, communications, and data that now make up the vast majority of modern organizational information—largely exist outside a formal governance structure.
“We just have a lot of systems that are not categorized,” Conner says. “We need to be able to manage records and apply retention rules and be in compliance with our own policies.”
From Conversation to Collaboration
A conversation with staff at the University of Maryland College of Information (INFO) helped point the way forward. Initially seeking an intern, Conner instead learned about iConsultancy, a program that places graduate and undergraduate student teams inside organizations to help solve complex information challenges.
What began as a single project in spring 2025 has since grown into an ongoing partnership spanning three semesters. The records management architecture from the first student team is now being implemented within Amtrak’s systems. A later team developed a tool to track emerging privacy regulations—state by state and country by country—and identify those with implications for Amtrak customers. Amtrak is working to implement that tool as well, navigating internal processes to bring it online.
“It was a huge amount of work and a huge amount of research,” Conner says. “We were incredibly impressed with the final product.”
Perhaps the clearest sign of the partnership’s value is the response from within Amtrak itself. Colleagues across the company have begun approaching Conner to ask how they can bring iConsultancy teams into their own areas.
“I think that speaks a lot for the professionalism of the work and the caliber of what we’re getting,” she says.
What Students Bring
Conner, who is herself a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Information, entered the partnership thinking not only about solving a business problem, but also about mentoring students and helping them see the range of careers an information degree can support.
What surprised her was how much the students’ perspective strengthened the work. “The students haven’t been jaded by working for decades where you just feel like, ‘Oh, you can’t do that,’” she says. “They don’t have that mentality.”
That openness, combined with fluency in current technologies and approaches, led to work that Conner says would have cost significantly more through a traditional consulting firm.
The benefits go both ways. For students, the partnership provides something the classroom alone cannot: experience managing a real client relationship, working under real expectations, and seeing recommendations move toward implementation. “I feel like any one of those students could get a job as a consultant,” Conner says.
Ready to Partner?
Information governance is only one example of what iConsultancy teams can do. From privacy compliance and data architecture to user research, digital strategy, and accessibility, INFO students bring current knowledge and fresh perspective to complex organizational challenges.
To start the conversation, contact iConsultancy@umd.edu.