There are about 15 places left on the next Local Government Group meeting 
on July 18th. If you haven't already booked and would like to attend please 
contact me off-list on [log in to unmask]


The next Local Government Group meeting will take place on Friday July 18th 
at Westminster Archives Centre.
The day will start at 10am but people are welcome to arrive from 9:30am 
when coffee will be provided and there will be a chance to catch up with 
people.

Having been inspired by the discussions concerning "Communities of 
Practice" at the RMS conference the sessions today will be more informal 
and will give those who attend a chance to discuss issues in smaller groups 
and to develop good practice which can be documented and (once approved by 
the Executive) be placed on the RMS web site.

These sessions will include:

Organising a clear-out day using the retention schedule 
Risk analysis to help decide whether or not to store records externally 
(based on work done at Kent County Council) 
Some things to think about when deciding whether to provide an in-house 
records management service 
Benefits and dis-benefits of in-house versus external storage 
Looking at microfilm and digital media (with a passing glance at BIP0008) 
Each discussion group will be provided with some ideas to start the 
discussion off and the groups will be expected to come up with some form of 
result from the discussion which can be used as the basis for good practice 
to be posted via the RMS web site.

A sandwich lunch will be provided at about 12:30 and the discussions will 
continue after lunch with feedback to the whole group at about 15:00.

In order to assist with the process of recording the discussions, if anyone 
would be prepared to bring a laptop (if they have one) to record the 
discussions and feedback and to develop any documents as they go along this 
would be most useful. I will provide a data stick for each group so that I 
can take away the results at the end of the day to formulate them into a 
usable format.

The day will end at 15:30 with the LGG meeting – update on current 
projects, feedback from some of the suggestions made at the last meeting. I 
would like the group members to consider what use we could make of the RMS 
blog for communication purposes and sharing best practice.

The agenda can be found at http://www.rms-gb.org.uk/sigs/local-
government/meetings/860 which includes a link to the directions to the 
Westminster Archives Centre.