Hi, Larry.

The situation is, unfortunately, more complicated than I described in my
first posting.

Yes, the existing design philosophy is based on a combination of the
organisational structure and the file plan. The same RRDS exists in
duplicate form across many of the 55 "mayoral" agencies and all too often,
within the same agency.

In New York City, mayoral agencies do not have the right to create, amend or
eliminate RRD schedules. The NYC Department of Records and Information
Services (DORIS) is charged with that task, and another agency, the NYC
Department of Law, has the responsibility to review and approve the
schedules. Making changes is an uncertain and very time-consuming process.

So yes, the "new design philosophy" is to use functional classifications, to
ensure the same RRDS is applied across all City agencies when applicable
(which is the case with HR records) and is also applied uniformly within all
parts of the agency. Most of the reduction in the sheer number of schedules
should come out of this part of the project.

But the existing schedules are not efficiently organised: to find a
particular schedule, you have to go through the list of "short titles",
sorted in alphabetical order. So a another desired result of our upcoming
project is to create a hierarchical structure that will make it easier --
MUCH easier, we hope -- to quickly locate the applicable schedule.

Thanks very much for your comments.

Hope you're well.

Fred
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Larry Medina
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 9:02 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [RM] RAINdrip: SNIA and the IT Community has an epiphany!!!

Fred-

The first question I'd have to ask is how is the Agency's RRS designed?  Is
it organizational or functional?

Based on what you stated, it sounds as if it's organizational, and if so,
the first thing you may want to consider is eliminating much of the
duplication by realigning the schedule on a functional basis.  Every record
(and record series) supports a purpose, or function.  If the function is HR,
and there are a set number of series/types of records in HR, and EVERY
department in the Agency has these same records, you could potentially
eliminate one series from each department by establishing a functional
schedule and assigning a single series to each HR record type that all
departments commonly use.

One major benefit to this model is as/if/when there is a reorganization
within the Agency, there is no need to "shuffle" schedules to accommodate
it, whatever the new organization is, they will still be using the same
records and they will still serve to document the the same function.
Granted, they may begin to generate NEW record types, but that's evolution.

Larry
--
Larry Medina
Danville, CA
RIM Professional since 1972

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