Hi Catherine,
I sympathise with your position.
One idea for "getting the message across" is:
Invite comment or meeting with your solicitor or other legal adviser to
raise the costs/risks of not controlling the records in terms of legal and
regulatory compliance - when they hear the risk to the organization in these
terms they will hopefully sit up and take notice.
Bullet point case study of a similar org who may have come a cropper in this
area will help.
Address this to the senior mgmt team and come to the meeting armed with your
"solution" to manage the risks - policies and procedures backing the actions
you mention in your email as well as a monitoring and auditing programme to
"police" it
Hopefully you will then get their buy in and backing (real backing including
funding for additional resources that you may need etc..) for the actions
you need to take to make it happen.
Another (and you may already have undertaken internal research on this) is
to provide real stats of how long it is taking people to find records due to
poor file naming, record duplication etc... Also ridiculous examples of
current naming eg variety of ways people may be labeling the various
versions of a document - I have seen some wonderful examples myself in my
time!
If you can quantify what this wasted time actually means in costs to the
organization this again should strike a chord with your colleagues. It would
be great if you can get any anecdotes where a lost record caused serious
knock on effects operationally or in service delivery.
Final idea is undertake some Windows Explorer search training (or equivalent
based on your own IT infrastructure) to let staff see why consistent file
naming, set folder structures and document property population is important
- once you have shown them how to use the search facility, give them two
training exercises:
1. Search for an item in a typically uncontrolled area of your electronic
record collection
2. Search for the same item in test set up area where you have created a
formal folder structure and applied a naming convention etc...
The lightbulb will hopefully then come on when they see why it is in their
interest to play ball with you on this - they will see that your goal is to
save them time and frustration and they will also see why their ownership of
this is key to its success, a success from which they are the ones who will
profit.
Hope this helps - good luck!
Heather
Heather Jack
Director
HJBS Ltd
Unlocking the Value of Your Information
07753740109
0141 423 6555
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-----Original Message-----
From: The UK Records Management mailing list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Catherine
Iosson-Cops
Sent: 12 October 2005 10:33
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Electronic Records Management
I am looking to introduce a 'Best Practice' for managing records
electronically in light of my organisation's decision not to procure e-DRM
software. I have mainly been looking into methods for protecting our e-
records which do not cost very much! ie converting to PDF, 'read-only'
status, file naming conventions, completing document properties, business
related file plans, protective markings etc. My problem comes in trying to
convince people that it is important to use the naming conventions or to
convert to PDF/read-only, and how we can police this across the
organisation.
It would be really helpful to receive help/guidance from people who are in
a similar position and any tips that they may have!
Many thanks
Catherine Iosson-Cops
Corporate Records Manager
Legal Services Commission
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