Our EDRMS provides individual workspaces for all users that sit outside the
managed folders. They're hidden to everyone except the user and the system
administrators (which include the records managers) and provide an area
where users can draft documents until they are ready to be stored in the
managed folders. They still use the system version functionality, but are
not managed by our retention schedule and can be deleted at the users'
discretion. The main problem comes with trying to stop users storing
documents that we do consider records in their own areas, but at least the
system-wide search conducted by someone at administrator level will include
all those documents in case of an FOI request.
Spreadsheets do come under our version control, so every new save is
captured. With something being continually updated, we would normally have
a retention period that allows us to delete the old edition once it has
been superseded by a newer version. In our case this can either be managed
by purging previous versions, which isn't all that practical in our case,
or by recommending that the document is routinely saved as a new document
altogether so that the old edition can be removed either immediately, or
after such time as satisfies audit requirements.
Iain Gibson
Records Consultant
British Broadcasting Corporation
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