Full text search doesn't always work the way you think it will,
particularly if you haven't taught it anything. It's not really "full
text search" anyway.  It's a 2 step process, and the biggest one you
don't see.  First the search engine crawls around the web or its
organizational environment and finds documents, web sites, objects and
so forth, and makes its own index from that document or object.  Unless
either you taught the search engine what to look for or it's learned a
great deal over time about its environment, it's going to pick what it
thinks seems important, and what it likes, and not necessarily what
makes sense to your organization.  

Second, when it does a "full text search", it doesn't search the web or
the environment; it searches its own index of documents and objects that
it has already built. It's searching its own database, not anything
else.  

It's better to have some controlled vocabulary or pre-determined
structure in the first place, to teach the search engine - or you are
going to have some extremely frustrated searchers and an IT team that is
working overtime trying to solve search problems instead of
optimization.   

Susan Fitch Brown
202-493-6142


-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of McAdam, Pilar C
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 4:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Are file plans necessary?

 
Nolene Sherman wrote:
 
"Our company has traditionally been very decentralized. Our corporate
office does not tell the divisions how to go about building houses or
how they should set up their systems, accounting, records or otherwise.
We have no set file plan; each department in each division pretty much
sets up their own system, and I doubt any of them have actually
documented their file structure. Because of this our retention schedule
is more towards the functional, "big bucket" style so it can more easily
accommodate 18 different ways of doing business.  What I am noticing is
that some employees just can't figure out where their files fit into the
retention schedule. When they ask me, even I sometimes have difficulty
because I don't have a thorough grasp of the purpose of each document
that may be produced. I'm thinking that IF we had a file plan, I could
easily relate each item on the file plan to a particular record series.
I'm also thinking that once we actually start managing our e-docs, we
must have a file plan. I don't think ERMS or EDMS systems can work
without one ... or can they? There seem to be those that believe we can
just full-text search everything, therefore not needing any kind of
pre-determined structure. 
 
So here's my question ... Are file plans the only way to go or do many
companies manage records just fine without a formal file plan? Are file
plans "old school"? For those that have them and have more than one
location, do you have one single structure for the whole company or a
separate file plan for each location? Pros and cons of each approach?
 
A secondary issue is that because we don't mandate what each division
does, we don't have a standard picture of what constitutes a "complete"
file. I'm thinking that I need to create a guideline that tells users
what, at the minimum, MUST be captured. Right now our retention schedule
describes typical documents to give people an idea of what belongs to
each series. I could have the descriptions of record series in the
retention schedule delineate minimum required documentation, but
wouldn't it be easier to do in a file plan?"

 =======================================================================
 =======================================================================

My company operates without a file plan, too, and it's resulted in a
great many problems, including the inability to find information (even
recent information) when needed.  If the definition of "file plan" is
broadened to included standardized nomenclature, I've become
increasingly convinced that records management simply isn't possible
without one.  Certainly implementation of any ERMS can't be done in the
absence of a file plan, and there are already enough challenges in
trying to grapple with electronic records; having to design and
implement a file plan at the same time is too much for me to envision!
The larger the company, the higher the likelihood that regional and/or
specialty terms for the same records will be developed and become
entrenched.  Without agreed-to standards (the file plan), proper
categorization of records and application of retention becomes more and
more difficult. 

Regarding your secondary issue, while I agree that there should be
guidance for your users on minimum information capture, I don't
necessarily agree that the file plan is where such guidance belongs.
I'd recommend including that information in the operating procedures
that direct employees to perform their functions/processes.

My thoughts on this, anyway.

Pilar C. McAdam, CRM
Records and Information Management
Shared Services Group
The Boeing Company
[log in to unmask]

 

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