I find myself somewhere in between what seem like two poles on this issue.

My agency's Records Retention and Disposition Schedules were designed in the
"traditional" manner. As a result, we have 783 schedules, perhaps 25% of
which are duplicates (same record series, different part of what is a large
and geographically-dispersed agency). Once we eliminate the duplicates,
we'll still have over five hundred schedules.

IMHO, this is an excessive number of schedules when you're dealing with
traditional paper records. Once you start dealing with electronic records
and, in particular, email, the system is COMPLETELY unmanageable. We simply
cannot expect users to go through five hundred schedules to properly
classify every email message they declare as a record (and even a good
hierarchical structure isn't sufficient to deal with this number of
schedules).

We're planning a New York City-wide project to reduce the number of
schedules, beginning with HR records. The hope is to combine multiple record
series under a "functional classification" into fewer schedules, and to make
them more accessible by creating a thesaurus-based hierarchy.

We have no idea how many HR schedules we'll end up having, but I fervently
hope it'll be fewer than we have now!

And sure enough, the current IT practice with respect to email is to keep
everything. "Storage is cheap", they say. I guess they haven't hit the wall
yet.

Best regards.

Fred Grevin
Director, Records and Archives Management
The City of New York
Department of Environmental Protection


-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thu Apr 26 01:15:29 2007
Subject: Re: [RM] RAINdrip: SNIA and the IT Community has an epiphany!!!

We (ARMA) are continuing to work with SNIA and will have involvement in
their Enterprise Information World....including some outstanding speakers.
 
One of the items with which we continue to struggle is SNIA's view that
Records and Information Managers classify records into categories that are
far too numerous and far too narrow.  Their view (NOT mine), is that we need
to find some way to minimize the categories to .... say five (5).  I cannot
imagine that could possibly work, given regulatory concerns, and the need to
dispose of information that is no longer required, because my belief is that
a very small number of categories takes us right back to the "old
philosophy" of retaining everything forever.  Perhaps some who sell storage
might see that as something desirable for THEM, but I don't believe that it
will work for our employers.  The challenge as I see it, and as I have
articulated it with the "ILM crowd" (if there is one identifiable such
group)....is that Records Managers do not classify records into
exceptionally narrow categories because they "want to" or because they are
obsessive/compulsive when it comes to detail, but that we are responding to
two things: (1) the understanding of such categories by our end-users, and
(2) the regulatory needs that exist at local, state, national and
international levels.
 
I'd be interested in additional thoughts and comments!!!!  
 
Doug Allen, CRM, CDIA+

 

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