Hi Phil, Rest assured that my previous emails were not part of any 'turf war' with the RMS. I too welcome any work done by any organisation or individual which adds to the corpus of reliable and credible information that we have at our disposal. I hope to see many more contributions to this important area in the near future. Regards Steve Sent via my Blackberry ________________________________ From: The UK Records Management mailing list <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Thu Sep 24 12:38:34 2009 Subject: Re: RM and IM facts and figures - help please Hello Steve and Matt It appears to me that the JISC project is based on developing hard evidence in defence of RM and as such is an invaluable piece of work that is highly anticipated and appreciated. Matt's collection of anecdotal stories also has a value because it is human nature to be interested in what actions other people (institutions) have taken and the gossip that surrounds it. I wouldn't by any means suggest that anecdotes would carry the same weight as a pounds and pence type calculation but a first step in a decision to act is sometimes based on someone else saying they've done it first. Anything that helps get the RM message across to people in my organisation is fine by me and I'm not particularly bothered if help for this gets produced by JISC or RMS or Billy Bob Scratchings as long as what is presented can be useful and defensible. Thanks to both for your efforts, much appreciated here. cheers Phil Oakman Sent via my clunky old computer ________________________________ From: The UK Records Management mailing list on behalf of Steve Bailey - JISC infoNet Sent: Thu 24/09/2009 11:52 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: RM and IM facts and figures - help please Hi Nick, I have no problem with anecdote whatsoever. My concern is where we start confusing it with fact and (ab)using it accordingly: Something RM does have rather a history of alas as our literature review concluded. Best wishes Steve Sent via my Blackberry ________________________________ From: The UK Records Management mailing list <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Thu Sep 24 11:02:18 2009 Subject: Re: RM and IM facts and figures - help please Matthew, Steve I find that anecdote can be more useful than question/answer - where people fall into role or position within their organization. Where people converse, and tell anecdote, then comes the real story - where they tell how they had to step out of role and process to make things/people work effectively. There is a large body of evidence to show that anecdote is more productive than 'interrogation' - and the two used together are extremely powerful in finding the truth. Regards, Nick Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange ________________________________ From: Matthew Stephenson <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:59:34 +0100 To: <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: RM and IM facts and figures - help please Steve, The RMS wasn’t advocating anything but personally speaking, sometimes it’s the anecdotal stuff that gets noticed more than the figures. I wouldn’t think that anecdotal evidence is suitable for a business case (and that’s where the data that you will be collecting comes into its own of course) but it’s certainly nice to have good anecdotal material to use in presentations and training. Use of verifiable “stories” and examples will certainly be better than quoting from a report that never existed! Regards Matt ________________________________ From: The UK Records Management mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Steve Bailey - JISC infoNet Sent: 24 September 2009 09:25 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: RM and IM facts and figures - help please Thanks for the clarification Matt. I was a little confused about the nature of your intended work from your original email, which seems to imply that the RMS would be advocating using 'anecdotal' evidence to support business cases for investment in RM - a rather dangerous combination. Look forward to seeing the piece in due course. Regards Steve -----Original Message----- From: The UK Records Management mailing list on behalf of Matthew Stephenson Sent: Wed 9/23/2009 4:46 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: RM and IM facts and figures - help please Dear Steve, I have seen you emails although I have to confess that I had not read the literature review. I see what I am looking for and what you are doing as complementary but not quite the same. You are looking to capture and measure three distinct sets of data on: before, after and costs in order to be able to give people a more complete picture of the impact of RM. I am also seeking to be able to talk about the impact of RM but I am seeking a bit of everything and anything in order to be able to write a chatty, anecdotal and hopefully entertaining article for the RMS Bulletin using stories and examples from across the records and information management sector. Regards Matt ________________________________ From: Steve Bailey - JISC infoNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: 23 September 2009 16:18 To: Stephenson Matthew; RECORDS-MANAGEMENT-UK Subject: RE: RM and IM facts and figures - help please Hi Matt, I'm a little surprised that you haven't seen our various emails over the past 6 months or so regarding a JISC funded project designed to confirm and address exactly the dearth in reliable evidence to support the benefit of RM that you mention. The first output from this project, a literature review entitled An assessment of the current evidence base demonstrating the benefits of investing in the improvement of records management http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/records-management/measuring-impact/literature-review was published last month. The second, and major, output from this work: an Impact Calculator tool will be a means by which any organisation considering or currently engaged in an initiative to improve businesses processes through the management of records and information can capture and measure three distinct sets of data: performance information before and after completion of the initiative and the costs of implementing it. A comparison of the three sets of data will enable a more complete picture of the impact of implementing records management solutions to be derived through looking at its results in the immediate, short and medium term. This tool will be freely available from the JISC infoNet website from November 2009. Although primarily intended for the FE/HE sector we have already received significant interest in this tool from various sectors and from overseas and are more than happy for this tool to be used wherever there is a need. The great advantage of this tool will be that it will enable organisations to derive their own reliable, empirical and quantifiable evidence of the impact of records management but all based on the same common underpinning framework. We hope (but will not insist) that organisations will wish to share the data they produce in order to provide a corpus of professional impact data that the literature review suggests is currently missing. We are also hopeful that we will receive the funds from JISC to support a range of pilot projects in January 2010 (FE/HE sector only) which will test the tool, report back on their findings of using it and share the data produced. Further information about this will follow in due course. Further information about all this is available from http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/records-management/measuring-impact/index_html and I believe that a paper and a commentary referencing this work is scheduled to appear in the next RMS Bulletin. Happy to provide further details if required With best wishes Steve Steve Bailey Senior Adviser (Records Management) JISC infoNet Northumbria University Room 303, Hadrian House Higham Place, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8AF Tel: 07092 302850 Fax: + 44 (0) 191 243 8469 Email: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> Web: http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk <http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/> <http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/> Blog: http://rmfuturewatch.blogspot.com/ <http://rmfuturewatch.blogspot.com/> Linkedin profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/sjbailey <http://www.linkedin.com/in/sjbailey> Twitter ID: @sjbailey From: The UK Records Management mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Matthew Stephenson Sent: 23 September 2009 15:27 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: RM and IM facts and figures - help please Dear All , Many of you will have heard of the infamous Coopers and Lybrand report which is referred to very often but doesn't seem ever to have been identified and whose existence is extremely doubtful. Well I would like to create something similar only this time based on real figures (with references to real cases) that will help us to do our jobs and sell RM and IM to our masters. Such a report will only work with a great deal of collaboration and so I am asking for your help. I would be grateful if you could send me any facts, figures, statistics, anecdotal information or money spent/saved which could be used in such a report. All I ask is that it is all real information so that the report actually carries some weight and is believed. I don't propose to name every institution or organisation but I will have correspondence in my records to support each number or fact that I quote. If you know people who have good stories/numbers/information, please pass this email on. I propose to publish my report in the RMS Bulletin, if you provide me with some information and are not a member of the RMS, please let me know and I will ensure that you receive a copy when it is published. Many thanks for your help and cooperation. Regards Matt Stephenson Matthew Stephenson Chairman Records Management Society Benchmark Communications 14 Blandford Square Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 4HZ United Kingdom Phone: 0191 244 2839 Fax: 0191 245 3802 Email: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> Web: http://www.rms-gb.org.uk <http://www.rms-gb.org.uk/> <http://www.rms-gb.org.uk/> and . 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