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From: Alison Drew - Archivist, City Museums and Records Office M *** Resending note of 12/07/00 12:28 E To: 141MLPR --PCC Alison Drew From: Paul Gibbons Subject: FOI,DPA Survey cc. 727plpr Alison, I wonder if you could forward the following to the NRA list. Many thank s, Paul I have been asked to provide a summary of the responses to the mini-survey that Alison kindly posted to the list on my behalf a couple of weeks ago. The resul ts are interesting, if perhaps a little worrying. I received responses from 10 people. 1. Staffing. In local government, staffing for RM ranged from 1 (2 part time po sts) to 5. Those with more staff have been better placed to take advantage of c urrent developments. In 2 cases, a records or document manager had been employe d corporately to oversee RM throughout the organisation. They were independent of the existing archives/RM set up. The respondents appeared to see this as a p ositive thing - one said "Archives will at long last break free of RM, knowing that there will be a responsible person in charge." 2. FOI and DPA. One service was taking a proactive approach (notably a fairly w ell resourced RM service), sending out questionnaires to departments and planni ng follow-up surveys for depts who didn't respond. A few others were liaising w ith the corporate Data Protection Officer to greater or lesser degrees. Most we re "monitoring developments" - or waiting to be told what they needed to do. 3. E-government & EDMS. The authority mentioned as taking a proactive approach to FOI and DPA was equally active on this issue. They have set up a working par ty, chaired by the Modern Records Archivist, with 3 main aims: i. replace paper records with electronic ii. promote and train for better use of existing software iii. meet govt. targets (aiming for original 2008 target) They have set up 4 pilot schemes, one for each dept. In other authorities, departments are working independently, and don't appear t o be involving archivists or records managers. Some saw Best Value and similar schemes as providing a basis for this work in the future. 4. Best Value. Most have not been assessed as yet, archives and RM being left u ntil last in most local authorities (no surprise there then). One which had bee n assessed reported that they were undergoing market testing (though with the l evel of staffing that they had, it seems difficult to envisage a cheaper option !). Susan Healy also reminded me that the Lord Chancellors code of practice, when p ublished, should strengthen our case for improved RM. Interesting reading I'm sure you'll agree. Though the sample was small, I think it supports my own belief that local government is extremely unprepared for cu rrent government initiatives and legislation, and that we as a profession are i n danger of missing out on the best opportunity we have had to improve our serv ices. I hope this will provoke some discussion amongst the profession - I don't believe that these issues are being discussed enough at present. Thanks again to those who responded to my survey. Paul Gibbons, Modern Records Archivist, Portsmouth City Council %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%