The Business Classification Scheme

Understanding the Business Classification Scheme

See separate sidebar for links to webpages about Business Classification Schemes

The Business Classification Scheme is another name for the corporate file plan which is our shared file structure in the Electronic Records Management (ERM) System. The Business Classification Scheme determines how records are organised within the ERM system. Records are grouped together for the following reasons:
• to keep documents of a similar theme together
• to make it easier to find the information we are looking for
• to provide a context for individual documents
• to identify the ownership or management responsibility for a group of records
• to ensure documents are destroyed at the correct time

The Business Classification Scheme is hierarchical. At the highest level are what we call Information Series, which represents the high-level business functions of the Agency, next comes Themes, which correspond to the activities which make up the high level functions. These top levels are fixed by the Records Management team and will very rarely be changed.

Naming of files and folders

Folders and files must be given meaningful, relevant and specific titles so that they can be easily found and their contents identified without too much trouble. It is important that the names of folders and files accurately reflect their contents.

For more information see the guidance on Naming Conventions.

Everyone is encouraged to make sure they follow a common filing system across the organisation.

This filing struture must be pre-defined and, popular wisdom has it,'functional'. This means that the file-plan should not be based on the structure of the organisation or on directorates but on functions, the things your organisation does.

This, it is claimed, will make your file-plan more future-proof. The argument is that your organisation may regularly change the way it is structured but is less likely to change the things it does.

I am not entirely convinced by this argument.

A lot of organisations spend a great deal of time and money making sure it has a functional file-plan. Is it really necessary? Well, at the highest of levels the answer is probably a qualified 'yes'. At lower levels the argument is less convincing. The reason being that your users will undoutedly leave their mark on the file-plan. They won't necessarily want to work in a functional way. They are more concerned with the organisation's 'social relationships'; their teams and the people they work with.

As soon as you publish your functional file-plan and let your users loose on it, they will change it into a 'social' file-plan. The old adage about no plan surviving first contact with the enemy applies very well to your Business Classification Scheme.

I must stress that I am not arguing for the aboliton of the functional file-plan but the tempering of it in the 'real-life' world of the way your organisation works. Above all else you must be pragmatic and not insist on fighting battles your users will help you to lose.

Be realistic; your users will work in a way that suits them. You may not be able to change the way they want to save their work. At least not in the short term. And, unless you want to spend the rest of your life creating folders for your users and directly intervening in their day-to-day filing, there's not much you can do about it.