Dear list,
Am re-posting this as it may have got buried in the large volume of
(fascinating) traffic generated over the last couple of days. It also
touches slightly on Patrick's recent point about dispersed records
management. Apologies to those who have already replied.
Original posting:
I am currently developing a corporate retention schedule, which I will
apply to our paper and electronic records. Paper is relatively
straightforward to deal with (I said relatively) as our users tend to send
it to us as soon as it gets in their way in their offices. This means we
have a trace record on our RM database (CALM RM currently) fairly early in
the life of the record, and can manage disposal via CALM RM.
My question is, how do I apply retention periods to records held in
databases eg Raisers Edge; HR database; Finance Database etc? I can see how
one could “break in” to the database and add a few fields for retention
code; disposal date etc, but this would essentially be managing records
remotely ie not centrally on CALM RM. Given we have a number of databases
like this, this method would tend to disperse the records management
function all over the organisation.
The only way I can think of managing this centrally is to upload batches of
trace records eg monthly, so we get a constant update into CALM RM of what
we have on our remote databases, and can apply retention periods via CALM
RM.
There seem to be pros and cons with both these methods, and we cannot
afford a full EDRMS solution (salespeople please take note); does anyone
have any experience of this? All advice gratefully received,
Kind regards
Neil Conduit
Records Manager
The Children's Society
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