Managing an Electronic Records Management (ERM) project

Below is a copy of an article I wrote for the Records Management Journal. The views expressed in it are mine and do not necessarily represent the views of my employers.

Bringing in an electronic records management (ERM) system is a long and complex process. Each organisation that undertakes an ERM programme will reach the same milestones but each journey is unique to each organisation. This is because each organisation has a different set of wants and needs and a different set of cultures on which these wants and needs are acting.

There are four clear stages each organisation must go through. The Pre-award stage characterised by everything you need to do before the award of the contract; the Development stage is about the work you have to do behind the scenes once you have the software; the Roll out phase is when the system is being first used by pilot groups and the Evaluation phase is the work you have to do to establish how successful the project has been once everyone is using the ERM system. It’s a complicated tale of learning new skills, frustration and intellectual struggle.

It is a never ending process, even when the whole system is up and running you never stop learning. Learning about the system itself, learning about users’ preferences and learning about how the culture of the organisation works on both the users and the system.

Before we consider the stages of an ERM system I want to look briefly at the culture of my organisation and the tradition of records management that existed at the time.

Culture of record-keeping

The NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (the Agency) is an executive agency of the Department of Health. It was formed in April 2000 from an old NHS body (the NHS Supplies Authority). The most important thing to note is that there was no culture of corporate record keeping in the Agency. We negotiate contracts on behalf of the NHS. We are responsible for negotiating some of the most important contracts in the NHS. From drugs to medical equipment and MRI scanners, sandwiches, gas and electricity, to stationery and wheelchairs we have usually negotiated the contract. Because we can take advantage of the economies of scale, using the vast buying power of the NHS, we can usually negotiate better deals for the NHS.

We have around 350 staff on four different sites (Reading, Chester, Normanton and Sheffield) including almost sixty home-workers . We have our own Human Resources, Finance and IT sections. Any ERM system we devised had to encompass all of these functions.

A lot of people in the Agency are absolute experts in their chosen field. Unfortunately, what has also happened is that this specialisation and a lack of a records management culture has led to a ‘silo mentality’ where everyone has evolved their own ways of working and there has been little sharing of knowledge and ideas.

This was brought into very sharp relief when we did an information audit. This was my very first task as project manager of the ERM project and it was a chastening experience. Not only did I find that each section worked differently but also that every section believed that their way of working was the best way of doing things and it was everyone else who had the problems.

This was even true of one section where people confessed to not being able to find any of their work so they saved all of their documents in three or four different files; just to be on the safe side. And there was one section who found it difficult to keep track of all the files they’d created so they had a file called “Where is everything?” which was not a very promising beginning.
But it helped to concentrate our minds. We knew that to meet the targets set out in the Modernising Government white paper and to prepare for the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act would be involve a huge cultural change for the Agency. We also knew that if we carried on using the same unstructured systems we had always used it would be virtually impossible to search for and find what we were looking for when we were asked for information under the Freedom of Information Act. We could not afford to let that happen.

So we needed a corporate, structured system that enabled us to search for and find information quickly and effectively; an ERM system that helped us become ‘a centre of knowledge, expertise and excellence on behalf of the purchasing function in the NHS.’ The NHS looks to us for advice and guidance on purchasing matters and so we need to be at the cutting edge of best practice not just in purchasing but in every aspect of what we do. And that also includes records management.

We had to devise something that was our first faltering steps towards being a knowledge sharing organisation instead of tacitly encouraging knowledge ‘silos’ where each section roughly knows what it is doing but no-one else does. The big problem in working in silos is that no-one can see the whole picture; the Agency does not know what the Agency knows. An ERM system helps to break down these artificial but very powerful barriers to change. An ERM system is, therefore, much more than a piece of software – it’s also about cultural change. When you embark on this journey you are inevitably going to change completely the way that people work, think and act. This is by far the biggest challenge and it’s something for which you never stop apologising. People are often very conservative. They don’t like change and they don’t like new computer systems and, more than that, they hate having to think about how they work.

The Pre-award process

The beginning of your project is where the hard work starts. It is the time when you learn the most about what implementing an ERM system is all about. There is much to learn and, for those, like us, who are completely new to ERM the best place to start is The National Archives website which has a great deal of help and advice about where to start and how to proceed.

We devised a complex implementation plan to which we returned every month to score how we’d progressed and check we’d done the right things. And every month we had to change it to reflect the work we had actually done and to incorporate the new work we needed to do. This is the most difficult part of the process because at the start of your project it’s very difficult to know exactly where you are going. It’s almost like having a script you can’t read in the darkness and you can’t switch on the light because you can’t get your blindfold off.

It is important you draw your project group from all functions and specialisms within your organisation. You will also need a range of grades and experience. This will ensure that you get maximum buy-in from your users. It is important that your project group are willing to travel with you. However, you must be prepared to make changes to your project group if they are necessary. The project may take anything up to three years to complete so it is entirely possible that the project group that starts the project won’t be the one that ends it. Do not underestimate the amount of work involved nor the amount of time it will take you. Be prepared to change the group if the dynamic is not working or if people genuinely cannot afford to spend the time doing the necessary work. People have real jobs to do and it would be foolish to believe that everyone can spare the time to work on a very time-consuming project. It may be better, for the long term health of the project, to have a small, dedicated team who do the hard work and a higher level strategy group who rubber stamp key decisions. This method of working may be more effective but balanced against this is the fact that it is much less representative.

Perhaps the most important task at this first stage of the project is to develop the ‘Functional Requirements’ – a document listing everything you want (and need) the ERM system to do.

This can be a slow process as the requirements of such a system are many and complex. The document we drafted ended up being over a hundred pages long with hundreds and hundreds of different criteria drawn from three main sources; TNA, MoReq (the EU standards) and our own particular, idiosyncratic needs. At this stage of the project you may not understand the importance of each of the requirements and you will most certainly have no concept of what they all look like or how they operate in practice but you need to know that your potential suppliers address each and every one of them and tell you how they will work.

You will have to revisit the functional requirements document at regular stages throughout the project to check that the system you get is the one you thought you’d ordered. Information architecture relies on good design and the functional requirements document is your blueprint.

The Development phase

The hard work really starts once you get the software. This is the time when you learn the most about implementing an ERM system. It is where your blueprint

You have to get to know the system, understand its quirks and foibles and learn how everything you put down in your hundred page document actually works. If, like us, you don’t have a budget that accommodates having loads of consultants in to teach you how it works then you’ve got a lot of learning to do. And it’s a very steep learning curve. Before you’re ready for everyone else to be let loose on the system you must know it inside out and back to front yourself. It is no good people coming to you with problems if you don’t know the solutions. It is probably not necessary for IT specialists to become records managers but it is absolutely vital that records managers learn some IT skills.

One of the key building blocks of the ERM system is the corporate file plan (otherwise known as a business classification scheme). This will be difficult to design and even more difficult to implement. It will be very complicated to get people to work more corporately. It becomes even more complex because you may have to challenge their ways of thinking. All the text books tell you the best design for a corporate file plan is based on function rather than individual or team working. This is because functions are less likely to change over time. Moreover, a functional file plan may give you a head start if you need to design and implement a thesaurus. The name of each of your files will form part of the thesaurus.

It will, nevertheless, be easier said than done to get sections to agree on a file plan. For example, one section may tell you they need, for example, administration files. Another section may tell you they definitely don’t want administration files. So, do you put them in or not? There are no easy answers. It’s an extremely difficult job. But, I have to say, the corporate file plan is one of our major successes. Since we brought in we’ve had a major reorganisation and, because we’d done it by function rather than by team or section, I’ve had virtually no work to do on restructuring it.

Nothing sums up our experience of the ERM project better than our retention and disposal schedules. Prior to ERM each section worked to their own disposal principles – but it was not co-ordinated on an Agency–wide basis. Individual areas like HR, finance and purchasing sections had their own individual retention and disposal schedules; the ERM project brought them all together in a single policy for the first time. And now when anyone wants to open up a new file, the system automatically picks up the retention and disposal schedule from its parent. It’s a masterpiece of design because people only have to decide where the file will go and the system automatically picks up the relevant disposal schedule.

Once you have built your system you’ll finally be ready for other people to start using it. This is where your pilot groups come into play. And the old saying that no battle plan survives longer than first contact with the enemy is absolutely true as far as an ERM system is concerned. Once the system leaves the project group and starts being used by other people is where the hard work really starts.

The Roll-out phase

You may find it difficult to get enough teams to volunteer to be in your pilot group. This is partly because they’ll be far too busy to take on a new project and partly because of the fear of the new. In fact it may even be difficult to get some teams fully on board. You will always get people who ask if it is mandatory; if it affects them. Don’t you know that their section is different to the others? It has special requirements and so they cannot use the system like everyone else. Wherever you go the question will always be the same. And so will the answer, of course.

Unfortunately, there has to be an element of compulsion when you bring in an ERM system. If you give people the option of using it or carrying on the way they have always worked they will definitely never, ever choose to work differently. They will always prefer to carry on the way they have always worked. You need to be able to use a mixture of persuasion and compulsion to get people to use the system. You need both carrots and sticks. Or if you’re really clever you can have sticks that look like carrots because, unfortunately, it’s the sticks that work best. You may find that your biggest most effective stick is disabling their old ways of working completely. We tried this and, funnily enough, usage of ERM shot up in the build up to turning of their old drives.

You never know what questions people are going to ask or in what ways they will get themselves into a muddle until they start using the system for themselves. What you think is easy and straightforward, could well be difficult and complicated for everyone else. If you are building an ERM system, you are going to need to write an idiot’s guide to everything. And it’s no good just writing the guides and putting them on an intranet site; you have to tell people they are there. There is absolutely no substitute for communication and quite often the best way to do this is by email. There’s no guarantee, however, that even if you do send them an email they will read it. Your communications plan needs to be sophisticated and wide ranging. One method of communication just won’t be satisfactory.

Email is a very interesting and emotive issue for the records manager. More than any other system, people feel that email systems belong to them. Even if their email folders are full of work-related documents, decisions etc getting them to move email into the ERM system is a big issue. My line has always been consistent; email is a method of communication; not a method of storage – but it’s a message that’s only slowly seeping through. Many decisions are made by email and people’s inboxes often hold more information than their shared drives. Slowly I am getting the message through that the correct place for storing work is ERM not email inboxes. But people are less willing to give up their email folders than they are their shared drives. So you have to try carrot and stick again. We are having an email amnesty day and we intend to start reducing the size of everyone’s email folders. It’s a good way of concentrating people’s minds.

When you’re building the ERM system, one of the most time consuming jobs is making sure that people can work in the areas they need to work but can’t access areas they don’t need. For example, you may not want everyone to be able to see and read all HR, finance or emergency planning files. So you have to take the time to make sure each component part can be accessed by whichever team needs to access it. There are hundreds of files in hundreds of folders so this is not an easy job. But when you do it and you get it right it is as rewarding as the best music or poetry. It’s both a science and an art form.

There is always more to an ERM system than you possibly train people to use. You will, therefore, need to consider what level of training you will give to everyone. A full day’s basic training will be enough. Quite frankly, it was more than enough for some people. You may need to consider having super-users in each section. If you give these people, say, an extra training day’s training they will be able to help out their colleagues. More than that, you will have a champion in each section. Training is, of course, the biggest ongoing commitment and it is where the hard work really begins.

The Evaluation stage

We have now successfully, I think, rolled out our ERM system and everyone is to a greater or lesser extent using it.

We’re just beginning to look at the lessons we have learned from it.

All the text books tell you that it is vital you get senior management buy in to your ERM project. Although it is important, you can implement an ERM without it. It doesn’t pay to have their hostility but you can achieve the desired results if they empower you to produce the results but don’t get personally involved.

The biggest challenge you will undoubtedly face is the massive cultural shift needed to bring in an ERM system. Make no mistake about it, any ERM system is a massive intellectual challenge you need to understand how a new piece of software works , you have to be able to explain this to others and you have to get people to think, act and work differently. You develop skills and knowledge sets you never believed possible.

You will never have enough, or the right, resources, in terms of both money and staff. But if you do it the way we did it, with a small dedicated team, they have to be highly motivated and keep each other going because they’re not going to get much help or thanks from anywhere else.

The installation of an ERM system is always a much bigger task than you ever thought possible. It will take all the time, money and people you can throw at it. It’s a never ending, thankless task and I have loved every single minute of it.