Claire,
Further to Sonya's helpful advice, I wonder if regarding the notion of vital
records as arising solely from the risk of physical damage or destruction
might be too narrow a view of business risk? Granted, the project I worked
on a few years ago for a European banking institution talked about 'vital
documents' rather than records, but I think they intended much the same
meaning.
In their case, they defined a 'vital document' as one which, if missing or
damaged, would either prevent a key business process from operating
properly, or might expose the organization to an unacceptable legal or
financial risk. You could argue that legal or financial risk are in a
separate league from physical disasters and are unlikely to stop an
organization operating - but they did in the case of Barings bank, Enron and
the rest.
The problem you are left with of course, is identifying what your key
business processes are and which documents and records are 'vital' to each
one such that their absence or unreliability would generate unacceptable
risk, and what is the threshold above which you regard risk as
'unacceptable'. It is always easier to make such judgements if you already
have your key business processes mapped and each document or record linked
to the process activities which generate or use it. If you have linked your
records to a Business Classification Scheme, then you are already largely
there, and it's a matter of asking those who know how the processes operate,
which documents or records are vital in the sense we are concerned with.
Hope that helps.
Regards,
Bob Bater
Principal Associate
InfoPlex Associates, UK
www.infoplex-uk.com
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-----Original Message-----
From: The UK Records Management mailing list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Claire Park
Sent: 25 January 2007 13:10
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Vital Records - How do you identify them in the first place?
Hello all - Happy New Year! I can't believe it's taken me this long to
log back on....
To the point in hand! We have been constructing our retention
schedules/guidance for almost three years now and and we have a number one
recurring question (except when can we chuck this out): What exactly is a
vital record?
This is a good question. It's all very well in my opinion having a policy
document that says "thou shalt be aware that some records are vital". The
other thing that is oft said is "the records deemed to be vital to assist
the Council to continue to operate in the event of a disaster".
This is a general statement that appears everywhere from Risk Management,
Insurance to the Corporate Strategy BUT how do you define what they are
and is it possible to define what they are? We talk about 'asset
management' all the time but that does not include information.
Essentially I am considering writing a "Preservation Policy" (different
from Archive considerations) to draw attention to the types of document
that the user needs to retain - instead of chucking it out!
I was wondering if anyone had attempted a similar sort of work and would
be prepared to discuss or share documents?
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