RMS conference 2008

Details of how to book for the RMS 2008 conference in Edinburgh are available.

Click on the title of this post and book early!!

See you there.

Harry Potter talks about ERM

This is quality...hahaha...well done to AIIM.

Please let me know if you see any other gems like this and we'll get the link posted straightaway.

Season's greetings

Season's greetings to everyone. Best wishes for 2008.

This year has been an exciting year for records managers. 2008 promises to be even livelier.

I'm looking forward to grappling with the challenge of Web2.0 technologies. There's lots to do, learn and share. And it's all very exciting. But I think those who predict the rise and rise of Web2.0 and the demise of EDRM systems are a little premature. Having said that, EDRM systems have to evolve to take Web2.0 technologies on board. I'm really looking for seamless integration in my intelligent office.

There is absolutely no way that government departments (whether central, local or NHS) can glibly allow the mass availability of sensitive data. We've got to think about how best we can share information with each other where we can, but keep information confidential where we must.

There's probably a growing need for a shared services initiative. Rather than have a series of independent, isolated EDRM systems we ought to look at how we can share data easily across the web but keep the personal and the sensitive protected. This is more likely to be achieved through the access rights protections of an EDRM system than the free-for-all of Web2.0.

I hate seeing headlines like these...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7158688.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7127951.stm

...so what can we do? Well, as records managers we undoubtedly have a duty of care and that necessarily includes looking at new ways of doing things. We have a lot to consider and 2008 should be the year we all get together to examine how we can best solve the problems we face.

The answer is likely to include new technology; whether it is Web2.0 or interlinked yet independent EDRM systems is debateable. But we also need to get good Information Governance on the agendas of our senior managers.

Yes, 2008 promises to be a lively year.

Best wishes for a healthy, happy and successful year to you all.

Red Kite in Chester.

Stuff is miscellaneous

Click on the title of this post to go to a groovy link from youtube about the ideas in Everything is Miscellaneous.

I spent an hour and a half the other day trying to persuade one of my users not to create a folder called ''Communications". He wanted somewhere to put all of his emails. I tried to explain that they would be filed better in a relevant subject file...for example the emails about widgets should live in a Widgets file.

Well, we discussed it for a while and then I got to thinking..."does it really matter?" I mean he's the one who works with the information, not me. He's the one who has to find it and use it again, not me.

Should I just let users build whatever file structure they want to build, so long as they can find the stuff they're working on?

Ah, if only it was as simple as that...I don't really think my users can always find the stuff they're working on. Some of them don't like using the Search facilities either...so they email links to each other...the dialogue goes...Hey, where's that document you wrote about "Left-handed widgets"?...Here's the link to it.

They call stuff 'Doc1' and put it in a folder called General which is in a folder called Miscellaneous...and then they tell me my system's garbage cos they can never find stuff.

They aren't ready for everything being miscellaneous yet. They can't even cope with everything being where they left it...or where they want it to be...

Records managers in the 21st Century

I'm often asked what skills a records manager in the 21st Century needs. I've come up with the following list...it's not exhaustive...I'll probably add to it so keep checking back...and I'd welcome your feedback.

IT literacy

Records managers are increasingly having to deal with EDRM systems, databases, spreadsheets, webpages, Web 2.0 applications etc and so they must have a basic IT literacy at the very least. I would actually recommend that if you want to embark on a records management career that you make sure you understand IT enough to converse with your IT department on equal terms.

Can you get away with not having a basic IT literacy? Well yes, you probably could but do you want to leave the field clear for your IT team?

Information architect

This is particularly relevant if you have an EDRM system. You will need to be able to design and build your business classification scheme (file plan)with all the necessary privileges and access rights.

Managing and maintaining an ERM file plan can be a full-time job.

Project management

Bringing in an ERM system will involve all manner of project management skills. You must be organised, methodical, flexible, determined and ruthless. A basic PRINCE2 qualification isn't absolutely necessary - yet - but it wouldn't do any harm.

My team tell me that I'm a bit of a control freak too... Me? Surely not. I just need to know that everything's perfect. Not too much to ask, is it?

Team player

You are going to have to get your team onside. You'll build confidence, smooth furrowed brows, be a pal, confidante and defender of the faith.

You will develop relationships with suppliers, colleagues and people in other organisations.

Negotiation skills

As a 21st Century records manager you are undoubtedly going to have to discuss and negotiate with every team in your organisation...you must be a good listener but know when to say 'No'!

You will probably also need to persuade your senior management team of the brilliance of your ideas...so shrinking violets need not apply.

Drafting

Be prepared to polish your drafting abilities. Policies, procedures, training manuals, retention schedules, annual reports, recommendations, business plans, risk management assessments etc etc don't write themselves.

Training

Since we went live on our EDRM system over three years ago I have been, almost constantly, a training officer. EDRM systems are being updated regularly so you never have a shortage of material.

We've had to test the updates, figure out what they do differently, draft training manuals and deliver the training on a very regular basis.

It's been a rewarding but surprising part of what I've had to do.

IG expert

You are going to have to manage your organisation's response to the emerging Information Governance agenda.

Auditor

You're going to have to be able to audit your organisation's records, your file plan, your IG framework, your compliance with standards, guidance and legal requirements.

Horizon scanner

To keep up with all the latest developments you're going to have to keep an eye on what everyone else is doing, you will need to be able to spot the trends and decide what will work for you and what won't.

Records manager...

Ooops, what was I thinking??? I nearly forgot...you're going to have to manage your organisations records too!!

The records management industry is one of the fastest paced, volatile industries you could join. There are intellectual challenges every day...if you can't handle it why not try something more sedate...lion-taming for example.

Information governance framework

More and more organisations are looking at systematic ways in which they can manage their information. One way that can make a real difference is by adopting an Information Governance Framework.

Information governance is the way in which an organisation handles, uses and manages its information in an efficient, effective and secure manner to all the approporiate ethical, legal and quality standards.

An Information Governance Framework brings together all the requirements, standards and best practice that apply to the management of information. It can help you assess how well your organisation manages the information it creates.


An Information Governance Framework normally covers the people, processes, policies and systems you need and assesses your attainment levels in each category. The topics covered include:

information governance

information security

information strategy

business continuity

lifecycle management (including retention and disposal scheduling)

staff induction and training

creating and filing paper and electronic records ( in line with ISO 15489)

compliance with legal requirements (e.g. the Data Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act)

conducting regular audits


Your organisation can establish how well (or how badly!) it is managing its records through the application of this simple framework. A regular 'health-check' and commitment to an 'improvement plan' can help your organisation to track its progress.

Serendipity searching

Someone said to me today, " I can't find anything on the internet about information searching preferences."

Hmmm...

Perhaps we should have a Serendipity Search Engine. A search engine that finds what you're looking for despite the fact you've not tagged it or given it a name you can remember; a search engine that finds important stuff you didn't even know you were looking for.

Everything is miscellaneous

I've been rather charmed, challenged and inspired by "Everything is Miscellaneous", David Weinberger's excellent book about classification.

I thoroughly recommend it to records managers everywhere. Although not specifically about records management, it is a fascinating tale about classification in the past, present and, the rapidly approaching, future. I particularly enjoyed the stuff about tagging which could well turn out to be the new classification.

Is this where we are all going? I will return to this topic in the very near future. It offers us a 21st Century way of managing the vast amount of unstructured data we all have lying around the place.

Click on the title of this piece to link to Weinberger's hour long presentation on the subject. Give it a go when you have the time. It's well worth it.

Accelerating the pace of positive change in Electronic Records Management

Accelerating the pace of positive change in Electronic Records Management is the name of a 3 year research project being conducted by Northumbria University.

They are going to develop practical strategies to support ERM. The project team is using a blog to disseminate information and provide a discussion forum about the project.

You can access the blog here : http://www.acerm.blogspot.com/

The first ever IT Helpdesk

This is pure genius. The first ever IT Helpdesk. Does it seem familiar?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=cKh0cKTbhBg

The Life of Information

An interesting article on the proliferation of information.

How will we manage it?

Do we need to?

Answers on a postcard, please...

Social Computing versus Records management : let the debate begin

Social computing is fast becoming the significant cultural experience of the early 21st Century. It consists of Web 2.0 networking tools like bulletin boards, forums, portals, wikis and weblogs. Millions of people use these technologies every day on the internet to keep in touch with friends, interest groups etc all over the world, in the blink of an eye.

These informal on-line networks are gradually (but with increasing pace) being introduced into the working environment to help organisations share knowledge and information. Whisper it softly but these social computing technologies are doing knowledge management far better than we ever could have dreamt possible. (Who said that technology wasn't the answer :-) ???!!)

The challenge for records managers is how we identify and manage the recordness of these new technologies. This is part of the crucial debate about what records management is in the 21st Century. Social computing technologies are challenging our orthodoxies in the work environment and our assumptions about what records are and how we should manage them. In my organisation we are making our first tentative steps towards using social computing technologies. So it's pertinent that we start asking questions about how we should manage the work they create.

First of all, it's probably true to say that we don't know for certain whether staff are ready for it. So we have to create an atmosphere where staff are encouraged to say what they think openly and honestly and where they can find connections and collaborative working spaces with their colleagues. I suppose we have to 'put it out there' and see what happens but we also have to be ready to manage the records that fall out of these new initiatives.

I want to look at these technologies separately and examine what I think are the main issues. Feel free to let me know what you think.

Forums / Bulletin boards / Newsgroups

These are extremely popular and quite simple technologies that give users a place where they can post questions or statements and get responses (and discussions) from anyone else who has access to the system.

There are hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of these forums on the internet and they are usually managed by 'moderators' (a.k.a. 'mods') who police the site to make sure there is no offensive content, swearing or abusive behaviours.

In the workplace, I think that there should always be a records manager helping out with the moderating. Then, we can keep an eye on anything that needs to be kept as a record. That's certainly going to be my approach. We will need to write detailed procedures to make sure that any decisions reached, agreements made or significant documents drafted are moved to our ERM systems for storage.

This, of course, raises questions about whether this can be done; whether we have the technology to transfer it seamlessly from the social environment into the records space; or the staff time and energy to do it.

But, of course, this is what might happen in an ideal records management view of the world. The reality is likely to be different. Would we have the staff resources? Do we even want to develop complex infospaces for people to work in, encourage participation and then micro-manage them?

Wikis

A wiki is a website that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. The ease of interaction and operation make wikis ideal for mass collaboration and authoring. Perhaps the most famous wiki is Wikipedia a massively influential, online, collaborative encyclopaedia. I'm really looking forward to starting one in my organisation. But what do we need to do to make sure we capture the records?

We will have to decide on clear procedures. For example, when does something become a record?Is it X number of days after an amendment? Or every time there's an amendment? On reflection it might be best to treat wikis exactly like you'd treat a website. See the attached link for details of TNA guidance on managing websites.

Blogs

Blogs (or, more accurately, weblogs) are websites where entries are written in chronological order and displayed in reverse chronological order.

Blogs can provide commentary or news on a particular subject and some function as more personal online diairies. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.

The problem of what to capture (and when) is even more difficult for blogs than it is for wikis. Wikis tend to be collaborative efforts, whereas blogs can be highly personal offerings. So a wiki is, on the whole, more likely to contain records.

We need to establish how much of any blog can be saved as a record. Take this blog, for example, does any of it have the status of a record? Or is just the ramblings of a bonkers mind??? Perhaps it's both, I hear you cry. I've not tried to save this into our ERM system...but I bet I couldn't do it very easily. I could draft out the documents first and upload from the ERM system - but that would take away the immediacy of it.

Let me know if you've been through this already...what did you decide?

I think I need to look again at the National Archives stuff on the management of websites.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/website_toolkit.pdf

Number crunching : is our ERM system being used?

We have approximately 350 staff.

We have been live on our ERM system since November 2004.

There are currently over 1,750,000 objects saved on our ERM system.

Over 830,000 of these objects are documents, spreadsheets and other records
Over 830,000 of these objects are emails

There's only about a difference of 10 between the number of documents and the number of emails.

There are over 110,000 folders and files.

Approximately 6,000 objects are added each month.
Approximately 300 objects are added each working day.

Quite frankly, I'm amazed...and delighted, too.

Let me know how much stuff you have on your ERM system. Are the figures comparable?

Red Kite

The Records Management Society Conference 2007: A Personal View

The 2007 Records Management Society (RMS) Conference was held in sunny Brighton at the beginning of May. The hotel was superb and we only had to walk out of the front door to be on the seafront. I hesitate to use the word 'beach'; this is Brighton after all. Anyway, we couldn't have wished for a better setting - or better weather.

And it was gratifying to see so many delegates there! Long may it continue.

Conference kicked off with an inspirational presentation from Euan Semple on the use of bulletin boards / forums, blogs, wikis, RSS and tagging. Quite simply, this was the most exciting talk I've witnessed at an RMS Conference.

Euan pointed out that the internet enables "globally distributed, near instant, person to person conversations". He noted that using these technologies we can help people find and learn from each other and to use these connections to improve efficiency and increase our ability to innovate. Social tools for networking, for Euan, transform our ability to get things done in the 21st Century.

I believe that Euan has shown us the way ahead and I shall return in more depth to the topics he raised in future posts. I am, of course, particularly keen to examine how all of this affects records management, today and in the future. Watch this space.

Next up was Jeremy Stimsonwho gave us a fascinating insight into the Microsoft contribution to records management in Microsoft Office 2007. We looked at why MS is moving into records management and the capabilities of Office 2007.

To my mind, it's great that MS is finally moving into the world of ERM.

The product, unfortunately, isn't up to the mark. MS are about three years behind everyone else and the system they've developed doesn't really do records management. It's clunky and old fashioned. It is, in my humble opinion, a long way off being the finished article. Anyone thinking of adopting it should be aware that there is a lot of configuration that needs to be done beforehand. What's more, there is currently no way of getting emails into the records center!!! This is a serious omission on Microsft's behalf.

Email is the way most business is carried out these days. Any records management system worth its salt has to interact seamlessly with email. This is a bit of a gaffe, to be honest. Shift happens. Why doesn't Microsoft consider emails to be corporate records???

Microsoft ought to get a records manager on the case straightaway!!!

I've asked this question before and I'll probably ask it again,

"How does Microsoft manage its own records?"

The afternoon session on Classification was also superb. Split into four mini-seminar sessions we heard the whole range of opinions on Classification; from classification isn't important if your documents are tagged all the way to the traditional line of classification by function is vital. It was an exciting way to run a seminar session. Hats off to RMS for organising for instigating it (do I also detect Julie McLeod's influence?) and a big thank you to Bob Bater, James Lappin, Clare Cowling and Euan Semple (again).

Richard Blake from The National Archives (TNA) gave, as usual, an intelligent and articulate presentation. He spoke about the achievements made over the last three years in records management in the public sector. Richard noted that records management is a discipline whose time has arrived; it is incresingly recognised as a core component underpinning corporate governance. We all say 'Hallelujah!' to that, Richard.

Many of you will know Richard from his work on developing TNA guidelines for ERM systems. This led us nicely into Mark Fresco's session on the forthcoming requirements in MoReq2. MoReq2 (The Model Requirements for the management of electronic records) is the only international standard for ERM.

It was a thoroughly stimulating and enjoyable conference. And, as usual, the networking was fantastic! Greetings to all of you out there who I was networking with on an epic session on Monday evening / Tuesday morning!!! Hahaha. Red Kite rocks.

Next year I'd like to see...

More interactive sessions, please.

Fewer 'Death-by Powerpoint' presentations and much more use of video presentations.

RMS developing blogs and wikis of our own. And yes, I'd be willing to help! You only have to ask, guys!

Red Kite

My intelligent office : The future direction of Electronic Records Management systems

My intelligent office : The future direction of Electronic Records Management systems.

When they were first developed, Electronic Records Management systems were a bit clunky and very definitely stuck in the 20th Century. Developments are moving on apace and ERM systems are slowly developing into 21st Century technologies. They are still a bit invasive though. They still rely on users consciously and actively participating in the process. I would like to see more emphasis on the intuitive; things happening without direct user intervention. I like to call this my 'intelligent office'. My 'intelligent office' automates processes and makes them more or less invisible to the user. The user still saves work to the ERM system but the interfaces look and feel more intuitive. My intelligent office works on my behalf by learning about my preferences, understanding what I'm working on and pointing me at similar stuff whether it's in my organisation's systems or on the internet.

ERM systems also need to catch up with the developments that are being made in the 'social computing' revolution. Technology is advancing rapidly; more quickly than we, as records managers, can keep up with. So, to give us what we want, new generation EDRM systems have to provide us with the following features:

A single point of access across all systems in an organisation. So that each system is connected to all the others.

Automated classification prompting users to save / name something in a specific way. Helping users to locate the correct file / folder to store their work.

Automatic indexing of all documents based on file-plan or on previous precedent. Intuitive ‘Save As’ features – once the system knows who you are and where you work it can save your documents and name them for you. The system will index everything making it easier to identify which documents are not being used.

Automatic tagging of all documents so their metadata and meaning is preserved and made accessible. This metadata tagging will also help make our work searchable across the organisation and, eventually, across the internet.

All of the above features will lead us to Automatic taxonomy (and metadata) generation

Concept matching dynamically links documents etc with similar content / context allowing automatic hyperlinking between objects

Agent alerting lets you know of all other similar / linked documents ranked by conceptual similarity. Agent alerting can help you find stuff but will eventually help to identify experts; particularly if you are constantly alerted to stuff created by a few different users.

Federated (or Enterprise) searching gives seamless connectivity across all programs / applications / email systems / websites / drives etc. It enables you to search across the whole of the organisation’s systems (whilst maintaining the relevant privileges). Future iterations will also search across the internet. For example, if I searched for widgets I'd find everything my organisation had created on widgets wherever it was stored - not just in the ERM system. This technology will ultimately give you a browser-based search and navigation gateway.

Interest profiling tracks the content with which the user interacts and maintains a profile of the user’s interests. So, if I search for widgets, my system will alert me to any future documents about widgets. Not only that but if, for example, I only ever look at stuff about, say, left handed widgets, my systems will learn from this and present me with stuff about left handed widgets.

Collaboration the end result of matching and profiling is the formation of virtual expert knowledge groups. Finding and sharing information with others is an essential component of my 'intelligent office'

Social computing gives us the ability to link and interact with wikis, blogs, content management systems and to recognise ‘collaborative space’ from ‘records space’. How records managers make use of, and sense of, social computing technologies.

Meaning based computing enables computers to understand the relationships that exist between disparate pieces of information and perform sophisticated analysis operations with real business value, automatically and in real-time.

My intelligent office will also engage with collaborative technologies. I'm looking for

• The ability to integrate with or capture information from new technology direct into EDRM systems (if people want to) e.g. from Blackberrys, PDAs, Instant messaging services and all collaborative tools on the internet.
• The ability to capture new formats (including internet formats), as they are developed, as well as existing formats which are not Microsoft e.g. PDF, JPEG, HTML, mindmap software etc.
• The ability to capture documents from other software systems (HR and finance systems, for example).
• The ability to capture direct from the Internet e.g. portals, wikis, blogs etc
• The ability to replicate the file-plan (the Business Classification Scheme) or parts of it in other systems if required for example Outlook (and other email systems).
• The ability to surmount the problems of software coming from different companies or being hosted by others which do not allow systems to "talk to each other"
• The ability to restrict saving documents to other systems (which becomes even more important if there is no enterprise search engine.

Email management in my intelligent office

Email management is becoming increasingly important in today's corporate environment. It is absolutely vital that my ERM system helps me manage my email account. Likely features of the way my 'intelligent office' interracts with email are

• Full integration with the file-plan (email folders are ERM folders or links to them).
• The ability to transfer email in bulk and rename it
• The ability to capture as records all designated email.

Seamless transfer

My intelligent office will enable me to transfer documents seamlessly from my organisation to others whilst maintaining both their metadata and their integrity.

We need

• Bulk/single transfer between government departments / organisations during the life of a document as well as at the end of it
• Bulk/single transfer between different systems as systems are updated to ensure that documents can still be read, even if they have not been used for several years.
• Import / Export tools are robust
  

Shared services

I'm looking for future systems to help government departments share information more easily. I'd like to see

• One system for all government departments which can be adapted to an individual government departments needs
• A Government departments' thesaurus (not just the IPSV) or at least one that people can customise themselves e.g. shared library catalogues and Dewey classification.
• One centrally hosted ERM/ Information management system for all government departments

Offline working

My intelligent office needs to have the ability to have or to access the file-plan on hard drives, PDAs or laptops and then synchronise and capture updated information from them (and vice versa) when the user synchronises with the corporate system.

Records Management

My intelligent office system will perform many 'normal' RM functions. I'd like to see the following added as standard.

• The ability to change ownership of documents easily en masse
• Spellchecking naming of folders / files / documents, able to restrict words which are not English or are in the dictionary which you can build up.
• Creating folders and files - give suggestions for naming them.
• Creating folders and files - templates for naming styles which records managers can develop
• Global checking of privileges on folders
• Mass updating of privileges
• Automation of audit and appraisal functions

Monitoring

My intelligent office has to

• provide an alert either via email or some other means when a new document on a particular subject or particular keywords in it is added to the system.
• provide an alert when a specific document or folder is updated.

The vast majority of this technology already exists. EDRM software must catch up with it as soon as possible.

RK

Taming the email monster : devising a system for managing emails effectively

Introduction


This is a transcription of a presentation I gave to a recent conference on email management. The views expressed in it are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my organisation.

In January 2006 we introduced an email management policy to try to manage emails better within our ERM system. The loud noise you may be able to hear during this presentation is possibly the sound of the stable door slamming after the horse has bolted.

At the risk of mangling my metaphors, we called our email management project ‘Taming the email monster’ but I often wonder whether we should have called it, ‘Flogging a dead horse’.

I don’t think records managers have covered themselves in glory over the management of emails. As a profession we didn’t decide on our approach until it was far too late. We neither knew nor understood the impact email would have on all of our working lives; so now we are playing catch-up. And to be honest, I sometimes wonder if it may be too little too late. We are only now trying to change habits and working practices that people have developed over the last ten years or more. And it is an extremely difficult to thing to do. We may well be fighting a losing battle.

As records managers we were very slow to develop policies and procedures for managing email. We did not address the problem. And so everyone has now developed their own ways of working with email and may be extremely resistant to any changes we now wish to impose. One of our biggest problems is that most people now believe their email accounts belong to them and not to the organisation they work for.

The answer may well lie in using technology to help us rather than expending an incredible amount of time and energy trying to change people’s deeply ingrained working practices. We will undoubtedly have to keep our eyes fixed firmly on the horizon so that we don’t make the same mistake with future technologies as we did with email management. But, of course we don’t know what the IT / records management world will look like in three, four or five years time.

The organisations we work for need to be able to manage their records to understand the corporate memory but we have people working solely from their own email folders. And this information, saved in individual email accounts, is not accessible to the rest of the organisation. This means that there are often holes in an organisation’s knowledge bank. Individual members of staff know what is going on but the organisation may not. You end up with a lack of corporate memory; what I call Corporate Alzheimer’s Disease. The organisation’s corporate memory is sporadic, patchy and inconsistent. And this is not acceptable.

We need to bring in a corporate email policy addressing everything we need to do to manage email within our organisations. This policy has to include what to save as a record, retention scheduling, controlled access to data, protection of private information and how to manage your own email account. Done properly a corporate email policy will help your users to manage their email effectively and the inevitable result of this will be that your corporate memory will improve and your Outlook servers will not get overloaded.

When you devise your email management policy you will need to think about your strategy and how you will go about it. What are the possible solutions?

We identified three.


Limiting the mailbox size

One of the most effective ways of getting people to manage their email accounts is by limiting their mailbox size. You can force compliance by stopping them from being able to send or receive email if their mailboxes are above a certain limit. This will concentrate their minds.

Clean slate policy

The second option is to auto-archive everyone’s email accounts and give them all new, blank account which you expect them to manage properly from that point onwards.

Archiving emails after x months

The third option is to archive / delete emails that are over a certain age (usually 3 or 6 months).

With the last two options you have to make sure that your users have absolutely clear guidance on what they should save into your ERM system and what they should do with ephemeral emails. You must remind them regularly of their obligations.

As soon as you bring in any kind of email management policy you run the risk of people deleting stuff they are not supposed to delete. And anyway, you are absolving your users of their responsibility to manage their manage their records properly. They don’t have an incentive to do it if you are going to come along and do it for them. If you automatically archive email you still need to apply retention and disposal schedules to it. You won’t be able to spend the rest of your life going through every email you have archived so you would have to give your archived emails a very long retention schedule…which kind of defeats the object.

We decided on a policy of limiting the mailbox size as it seemed to be the best solution for us. Even with this solution you must educate and frequently reiterate what you expect people to do.

Our policy began in January 2006 and ran for six months until 06/06/06. D-day; or e-day as we called it. 666 is also the number the beast so we called it ‘taming the email monster’.

We had a clear programme of events with regular updates, information and newsletters. Each month we reminded people what they should do and by when. We wanted a people to get into the habit of managing their emails regularly. And a lot of people did it. And they were the ones who have subsequently told me that they now feel that they are in control of their emails – not the other way around. But, of course, not everyone did what we wanted them to do. If I say, ‘you’ll never guess what happened’, I think perhaps you will.

A high proportion of people left it until the last minute. And we had hundreds of people trying to move hundreds of thousands of emails on the last two days. No surprises then that our systems overloaded and fell over. Our marvellous IT staff gave us lots more server space in ERM and we were only down for about half an hour.

You must make sure you have rules for everything and that you communicate these rules regularly. You cannot afford to assume that everyone will suddenly change the way have been working for the last five or ten years just because you ask them to. You have to persuade, educate, cajole and, in some cases, be prepared to use the efficiency carrot and the compliance stick to get your users to do what you want.

We decided on a 200MB mailbox limit and agreed that everyone above this limit could receive but not send email after 06/06/06.

I think the policy has, by and large, been a success. The vast majority of people are managing their email accounts better. Some people have even thanked me because they are now in charge of their emails rather than the other way around. And some people have said, ’200MB is far too many you should get it down to 100MB’. Maybe I will.

We also managed to clear up a vast amount of space from the email servers. Our IT section thanked me for doing something they had been trying to do - but not succeeding - for years.

I’m sure that our corporate memory is much healthier than it was as we’ve got thousands and thousands more emails in our ERM system.

Conclusions

This is not the end of the story. Far from it. Managing emails effectively is, and it has to be, a process. One exercise won’t get people acting, thinking and working differently. It has to be an ongoing process of education, cajoling and re-enforcement.

There are other weapons in our armoury too. We need to be able to enshrine everything in our information management policy. This needs to seen as a set of instructions rather than as a series of guidelines. And the more you can automate these instructions the better.

But we also need our ERM systems to work smarter too. At the moment it is very ‘clunky’ to save emails into our ERM system. Drag and drop is OK but it is really a stop-gap solution, in my opinion. Ideally, the next generation ERM systems will link seamlessly to Outlook folders. Staff will put emails into their Outlook folders like they do now but they’ll really link back to the ERM system. And they really must be able to handle bulk drag and drop, because some people may want to put thousands of emails into the system...particularly if you bring in an email management system.

So we must be able to engage with the ERM suppliers and make sure they deliver what we need. We must not be passive recipients of their changes / upgrades etc; we need to let them know what we want and get them to deliver it without charging us an arm and a leg. There’s a commercial dichotomy that we have to get control of; our job is to manage our organisation’s records, their job is to sell you stuff. Somehow we have to get them to provide us with the tools we need when we need them at much more affordable prices.

We need to be alive to the challenges of the new technologies that are being developed at what seems to be breath-taking speed. We must develop strategies for managing instant messaging / Blackberrys etc. And the new Sharepoint technologies will give us ‘collaborative space’ and ‘records space.’ How will we manage these technologies? We need to get our strategies and solutions in place now - before we lose these battles too.

We must engage with the new ‘social computing initiatives’ like wikis and blogs. How will we treat them? As collaborative spaces or as record spaces?

Records managers in the 21st Century have to have a number of strings to their bow. And one of them has to be a greater understanding of IT. If we don’t we’ll be left trying to manage systems we don’t understand; trying to get to grips with systems, tools and processes that have evolved without us.

Which is exactly what happened with email management.

Our organisation has come a long way – but we still have to go a lot further before I will be happy that we’ve come to terms with managing the email monster. And we have to be constantly vigilant because other monsters lurk in the shadows.

Blogroll : Where can I get help and advice?

Looking for help and advice on records management issues?

The National Archives has a great deal of information and guidance on records management on its websites.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/services/


You also may find a lot of useful stuff on here... from records management to naming conventions to email management. The list is endless...as is the link...oops.
http://www.pasa.nhs.uk/PASAWeb/NHSprocurement/AboutNHSPASA/Electronicrecordsmanagement/LandingPage.htm

If you are interested in records management you really ought to check out the Records Management Society website... http://www.rms-gb.org.uk/

This new blog (Records management futurewatch) promises great things: http://rmfuturewatch.blogspot.com/

A very interesting and useful view from across the pond
http://aiimknowledgecenter.typepad.com/weblog/

Let me know if you want a link to your website...

Records management jokes

Yes, there are some...

If I save an MP3 file into my ERM system, does it become a record?

There are 10 different types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

We are thinking of hosting an annual PICNIC awards ceremony. PICNIC is my acronym for Problem In Chair Not In Computer. All those wonderful things that users say are priceless, aren't they? Here's my current favourite:

RM Right, I've made the changes you just need to press any key to activate them.
PAUSE
RM Ok have you done that?
User Not yet.
RM Why not?
User I can't find the ANY key!











Of course it's well known that computers are hardware and programs are software...but what about humans? A: Wetware.

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.

Naming conventions

See separate sidebar for links to wepages about Naming conventions

One of the most difficult things to get across to your users is the need to name their documents and folders correctly. No matter how often you explain this to them, users will insist on naming their work idiosyncratically, erratically, eccentrically and in ways that ensure neither they nor their colleagues can find their work.

It's not rocket science to name your documents and folders properly. Yet I have heard of some classic howlers both in my organisation and outside. My favourites include a series of folders beginning with a person's name (which is always a big no-no). The one we looked in was called Fred. The next level was 'Miscellaneous' inside which was 'General'. The document the user complained he couldn't find was called 'doc1'. And he was complaining to me that he could never find his stuff!!! Aaargh!!! How he decided on which documents should be filed in 'Miscellaneous' and which in 'General' is a complete mystery to me!! And don't get me started on words like 'New' (which is soon out of date) and 'Stuff'!!!

I cannot stress too highly the importance of good naming disciplines. You and all your colleagues will need to find your work at a later date. If you can't remember what you called it, or you put in folders that are obscurely titled, it will be extremely difficult to find.

We use the following guidelines when helping people create their folder and document names.

How to name your folders, files and documents

These are the rules and conventions for naming folders and files, documents and records in the Electronic Records Management (ERM) system.

It is important to think carefully about how you name your documents, records, folders and files because you must be able to search for, and find them, quickly and easily. If you follow these simple rules you will find it easier to name your work and find it when you need it.

General

• always make the name of a folder or record descriptive of its content or purpose
• always ensure the title contains enough information for anyone else to identify it
• always use natural language and spell out words in full – do not use obscure abbreviations, or ‘MSDOS’ style compacted eight letter titles
• always make the name of a file or record descriptive of the whole content. A title should act as a summary of the file or record’s contents.
• do not use abbreviations or acronyms. They often become obsolete over a period of time and can often have more than one meaning. Always write the names of organisations in full and only use an abbreviation when absolutely necessary
• do not put the name of person in the title of a folder, file, document or record. If you must refer to someone always use their job title rather than their name
• never use initials in the title of a folder, file, document or record – always use the role or job title, for example, Chief Executive not CE
• if you want to use a date in a title you must put it at the beginning, using the YYMMDD convention to ensure that documents are stored in date order. For example, a document saved on 24 November 2006 should be saved as 061124 followed by the document name.

Folders and files

• folders and files bring together a set of records about the same activity, topic or transaction. The title must clearly identify this single activity, topic or transaction
• when naming folders, do not duplicate titles from elsewhere in the file plan – search first to see if the title you want to use already exists. If it does exist, this may be the right home for your work otherwise you should think of an alternative name for the file you wish to create

Documents and records

• always ensure the record title is
- specific
- consistent and sensible
- understandable and helpful to others
• always balance helpful description with being concise and formal
• always use formal structured language, rather than informal or ‘funny’ names
• do not include the format of a document in the title (for example, don’t use Word document, or Excel spreadsheet)
• do not include status or version information in the title (the metadata will tell you which version it is.)
• do not include terms that may become obscure or will not help you find it later (for example don’t use terms such as ‘letter1’ or ‘doc1’)
• do not include symbols e.g. %, £, /,\,@ in the title of the document

Naming email

All the comments that apply to documents apply equally to naming email, but there are other things that should be considered. Email titles must accurately describe their content.

• you must change the title of the email if it does not accurately reflect the content
• all instances of ‘FW’ and ‘RE’ should be removed from the title of an email