Dear Colleagues,
In response to the question raised by Douglas M. Hojnacki on this subject, I
have to state my agreement with my fellow countryman Glenn Sanders and that
I too am a decentralists. I place one, two or three caveats on my
decentralised position and like Glenn I question what is there to
decentralise with born electronic records? If we live in the real world
there will always be physical records to manage but at the same time
physical paper legacy records systems (or the lack thereof) in some
jurisdictions are still the norm rather then the exception.
Irrespective of the environment I believe the system in whatever format must
be managed via a centralised overall control. The Records Management GOD
lives at the centre of an organisation, be that one floor, a building with
100 floors or an organisation with 100 or 1,000 locations.
CAVEAT #1 - Decentralisation can only occur effectively if there is the
opposite, CENTRALISATION for the creation and management of Strategy,
Policy, and Procedures and the centralised management control of Controlled
Vocabularies (CV's), Thesauri, Business Classification Schemes (BCS) and
Retention and Disposition Schedules.
CAVEAT #2 - Irrespective of the type of operational characteristics that
exists in an organisation, be it centralised or decentralised the following
is a truism: Any organisation employee who receives, creates, or handles
records in their day to day activity is in effect a records officer and is
responsible for the capture of those records related to their daily business
activity into the organisations Record Management System, be it fully
electronic, a mix of electronic and physical or totally physical and that
they are personally accountable for their involvement or lack of same in the
process.
CAVEAT #3 - If an organisation does not have, or provide its employees with
the appropriate tools to fulfil their obligations as defined in CAVEAT #2
all bets are off and the organisation bears the full responsibility for non
compliance (or at least it should).
End of my soap box oratory.
Happy decentralising!
Regards, Laurie
Mr Daniel Lawrance [Laurie] Varendorff, ARMA
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