Hello,

In my experience no-one buys just for FOI. (Well, I haven't seen anyone yet for whom FOI was the sole driver.) However, 'Better compliance with FOI' or 'More efficient compliance with FOI' is often cited as one of the drivers, with or without some accompanying financial metrics. 

FOI compliance is quite possible without an EDRM system, it's just all a bit more onerous, as Stephen originally pointed out. The notion is that an EDRM system will give you a magical one-click-and-it's-found type solution, which would make compliance much, much easier. (In practice, of course, it is somewhat less simple, but EDRM can be a genuinely useful tool in complying.)


Oli.
 

O.G.Parker

Director
DeepGreen Consulting LTD
Mobile Tel 07879 820967

Registered in England and Wales, company number 4365891.

Please treat the information contained in this Email with the same respect you would expect us to show to your corporate information

-----Original Message-----
From: The UK Records Management mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Dodgson
Sent: 12 June 2007 15:40
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Effectively dealing with FOI requests using EDRM

Hi
 
We did not purchase EDRMs for FOI.
 
Our purchase was a strategic business decision surrounding the management of our information.  A by product will be better compliance though.
 
If anyone purchased purely for FOI I would be concerned, the return on investment would never yield.  Purchase for improvements in services is another matter.  We now have 1200 users on our Electornic Social Care Reocrd system and are now rolling out EDRMs via our CRM and CMS, following which we will make it avaialble to staff as a document/records managemernt system.
 
Did anyone buy EDRMs just for FOI?
 
Paul

From: The UK Records Management mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stephen Howard
Sent: 12 June 2007 14:43
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Effectively dealing with FOI requests using EDRM

Dear fellow listservers,

I would be very interested to hear success stories or otherwise of dealing with FOI requests using EDRM - now that we are 2.5 years down the line. Has EDRM proved invaluable for compliance? Has FOI compliance been satisfactory without EDRM? On or off-list, I will summarise anonymously as appropriate.

For the record, Suffolk County Council has been managing relatively well without EDRM supporting our FOI compliance activities.  However this has involved a number of workarounds e.g. searches delegated to service areas; electronic filing systems to maintain audit trails supported by a simple database to monitor deadlines; the manual creation of a disclosure log that is onerous to keep up to date.

I look forward to your response,

Stephen Howard
Head of Corporate Information & Records
Suffolk County Council
Endeavour House
Russell Road
Ipswich
IP1 2BX
Tel:+44 (0) 1473 264620
email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.suffolk.gov.uk






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