Dear All,
I know the title sounds like a Friday question, but it is a serious one. I realize that this is a very basic question, but I have not found a way to research it because it is so basic. We almost take it for granted.
The reason it has emerged is that we recently (3 years ago) merged 8 Councils into 1 council. We are getting better each year and the overall change has been successful.
From a records management perspective, it was an eye opening experience. What realized in theory (everyone has a different culture and that leads to different practices) we saw in practice (everyone does the same task differently). J At the same time, it revealed a generational issue relating to ICT and records management. Staff who had experience with consistent and agreed filing systems maintained them. Staff who had less (or no experience with filing systems) but used PCs more frequently, were less likely to use a consistent and agreed filing system.
What I wanted to ask the list is whether (and how) people in your organisation are taught to create, name, and file documents. Do you use technology to constrain the service users choices in creating a document? That is a software package that limits how any document can be created and maintained within the system. Or, do you have general guidelines to instruct staff and let each service or section develop their service or section specific systems? Or, do you just let them do what they want in the way they want and just try to develop better search systems?
My apologies if this is an obvious question that has been discussed and developed elsewhere. I would be interested. Moreover, I would be interested in how this is rolled out in your organisation. Is it part of the induction programme? Is it just something that is done ad hoc by the manager or team leader?
Here are some references that proved interesting as they addressed the file naming issues, but not necessarily about how staff are taught to file and the methods that are used.
http://www.mnhs.org/preserve/records/electronicrecords/erfnaming.html
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/naming-rules.pdf
http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/productivity/files.aspx#fbid=c9UIk6gpeQR
Any answers on and off the list gratefully received
Best,
Lawrence
P.S. I am purposefully avoiding the larger question of whether staff need to be taught to file at all and let search engines do it all. This is a topic for a forthcoming blog post I am writing. J