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The Business Side - Overview of RM Policy and Implementation Challenges

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Creating a successful Records Management system starts with mapping out your organization’s RM goals, anticipating the challenges that you will face in making that vision a reality within your organization, and developing a policy and implementation that fits these needs. Since planning is key to both the policy development and solution implementation phases, it is important to outline the challenges faced at each stage so these can be kept top of mind when working out both your policy plan and your implementation strategy.

At the policy planning stage, the major challenge is to devise a system that encompasses your current records-keeping needs: content types, media types, storage requirements, business processes, and policies. It also needs to meet present legal and audit requirements, and be extensible and flexible enough to accommodate future content types and retention requirements. Another important goal is to enhance information retrieval, which will help employees do their jobs more efficiently and give your organization a competitive advantage.

In developing the policy for your organization, the challenge is to create an overarching policy document that is comprehensive but short, easy to read, and accompanied by actionable retention schedules that can then be put into practical use. Furthermore the policy needs to be integrated with the organization’s other enterprise content management policies, and be able to absorb and integrate previous record keeping efforts.

At the implementation stage, the major challenge is to create a system that suits your organization’s workflow, one that will actually be adopted by users and integrated into their daily activities. The implementation must be simple enough for employees to grasp quickly, easy enough to require only few extra steps (or clicks), but rigorous enough to meet the policy’s overall need for records keeping within the organization. Furthermore, any technology rollout must be manageable for the organization as a whole – not bring the business to its knees.

An RM solution that is scalable, easy to use, integrated and interoperable with existing applications ultimately has the best chance of succeeding. Ideally, the right records management system should also integrate with the organization’s overall electronic content management (ECM) system and be accessible and usable from within the employees day-to-day work space – whether this is Outlook, SharePoint or a custom work portal.

Key to a Successful RM Policy : If you’re going to ask your organization to stick to a records management policy, you want to make sure that it’s a policy worth sticking to from the start.

Tina Torres, Corporate Records Manager

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 05, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 09, 2006
    Even the simplist and/or most comprehensive RM policy will fail if you do not first create a common understanding and knowledge area for corporate records. What is a Record? When is information to be classed as a Record? Very often records managers expect the general user to understand these fundamental terms, which they dont. This can  influence the successfull roll out and subsequent "uptake" of the system. You can include this as part of the training needs analysis to get maximum results.

  • Anonymous
    July 12, 2006
    In the post by Dezo - IPS Pty Ltd the question is raised - What is a Record? When is information to be classed as a Record?

    The following information may be of value in making that decision.

    Laurie Varendorff ARMA

    Five criteria for practical decision making to capture information.

    from

    THE DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRY & RESOURCES - DOIR



    There are at least five practical criteria for deciding whether or not to retain any physical or electronic record including fax and E-mail records. Meeting any one of the five criteria means the record should be kept. The criterion applies to Facsimile and E-mail messages as well as other records as indicated above.

    Underpinning the criterion is the fact that at any given point the organisation may be required, while discharging its statutory duties, to provide legally acceptable proof of what course of action was taken, and why the decision was made to take it and to provide proof of its actions.

    This proof will require that the evidence in question has not, or could not be altered from the time of its receipt or creation. In effect this situation requires that no record or any version of the record can be altered after it is capture on creation, and or receipt.


    The criteria are:

    1. Does the document or object, [physical or electronic] convey information considered essential or relevant in making a decision?

    2. Does the document or object, [physical or electronic] convey information upon which others (including the organisation) will be, or are likely to be, making decisions affecting their business operations, or rights and obligations under legislation?

    3. Does the document or object, [physical or electronic] commit the organisation or its officers to certain courses of action or the commitment of resources or provision of services?

    4. Does the document or object, [physical or electronic] convey information about matters of public safety or public interest, or involve information upon which contractual undertakings are entered into?

    5. Is the information likely to be needed for future use, or is it of historical value or interest?

    It is therefore essential that great care is exercised to ensure the decision-making trail, which includes any of the documents or objects, [physical or electronic], E-mail or electronic transaction which meets any of the above five criteria, is recorded and placed on the relevant corporate file.


    This document is an updated version of the DOIR wording from their
    June 1998 Release 1 document by Laurie Varendorff ARMA 2003-09-10.

  • Anonymous
    July 12, 2006
    @ Rammell Consulting, Dezo - IPS Pty Ltd , DLV:

    Thanks all for your contributions. This is exactly the kind of conversation we wanted to help facilitate about the "business side" of RM, in addition to discussing the software tools provided in Office 2007.

    Please keep the comments/feedback coming. :)

    - Ethan Gur-esh, Program Manager

  • Anonymous
    August 04, 2006
    We have 50 Million records/files that we would like to move to SharePoint. But I understand that the performance of SharePoint decreases when huge volume of files are added to a single document repository.

    1) What is the best practice to adopt for such scenarios?
    2) Do I have to create many buckets (based on content types) across multiple site collections/sites/document repository or should I have a single bucket in a single site?
    3) Is there any limitations/best practice on the number of records in a single document repository/folder or per site/collection/site ?
    4) How do I implement policies, search etc., if I have multiple site collections.
    5) How do I implement polices for multiple file upload or for explorer view based drag & drop.

  • Anonymous
    August 08, 2006
    @ SJ:

    It's great to hear that you're evaluating the Office 2007 system features to see how well they meet your needs. However you should direct these questions to the newsgroups & discussion forums that are part of the Office 2007 Beta program. These forums are specifically intended for providing technical support at the level of detail you're asking for.

    That said, we’re absolutely planning on supporting scenarios at that level of content in Office SharePoint Server 2007, and there will be best practices for how to think about structuring your servers & sites to best support that load. Included in the current beta are already some help topics and guidance about planning & deploying Records Management sites, and there’ll be even more content as we approach release.

    We're trying to keep this blog at the level of conceptual / business requirements discussion, rather than being another tech support forum.

    Thanks for understanding,
    - Ethan Gur-esh.

  • Anonymous
    August 30, 2006
    Planning Plan document management Chapter overview: Plan document management What is document management?

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2007
    Document and Records Management Definition Document Management According to Wikipedia : "A document

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2008
    Document and Records Management Definition Document Management According to Wikipedia : "A document

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