The more layers that are imposed, the more resistance you'll get from the 
end-users. Gary makes excellent points about the inherent differences in 
arranging electronic records versus paper records. E-recs have more 
potential for better arrangement and access. Looking through cabinets does 
not really reveal a structure they way electronic can. While paper is 
nearly flat, electronic has the depth - and in some hands that depth can 
be overdeveloped and wreak havoc on an organization.

A project I worked on recently was focused almost entirely on their 
e-recs. The few paper/hard records they had were so few that they hardly 
merited any arrangement - and most were copies of e-recs. I developed a 
big bucket functional arrangement that I developed based on insights from 
end-users and broad guidelines from top leadership. I proposed 4 big 
buckets, with three of them going down 1-3 levels. The fourth, which 
included the revenue generating work-product went down to 5-6 levels. 
Then, top leadership got the idea that everything (and I mean everything) 
in the 4th bucket had to be defined down to the nth degree to reveal 
provenance and context at the directory level down to the document level. 
What resulted was a 10+ layer deep structure on the fourth bucket. 
Leadership was also under the impression that folders and documents could 
not reside together in a directory -- either all folders or all documents; 
this added even more layers for a total in some directories of 20+. I 
tried to persuade him to flatten the structure for the obvious reasons 
(Documents become difficult to locate, uncertainties about where to save a 
doc, and what to do with a doc that does not fit the structure), as well 
as technological ones. (You can save a document about 10 or more levels 
down in Windows, but cannot always open it due to the long length of the 
file path. To access these records, I would have to map halfway down the 
drive, open the file and email it to the user who would probably save it 
to the desktop or elsewhere and not use that directory again.) Leadership 
wanted full and detailed control with a place for every and any document 
that could be conceived. The end-users (mostly designers and artists - 
mostly creative thinkers who don't want to be boxed in) and me were not 
happy with this straitjacketed result and tried and tried to get 
leadership to back down on his idea that everything has its place - which 
he did reluctantly and in small measures.

While I understood leadership's desire to be able to locate any record 
quickly, I think he was applying concepts associated with paper files in 
terms of description and detail and then adding the depth of electronic 
whenever possible, resulting in a bureaucratic nightmare that benefited 
neither. While 
more layers can provide greater organization to records, it is not always 
practical. (And is never practical when dealing with 10+ layers.) Big 
buckets allows end-users more freedom to organize records as they need to 
use them. It also allows paper files to mirror their counterparts.

I'm not sure if I said anything new or worthwhile, but it was certainly 
cathartic to spew that middle paragraph.

Stephen Cohen
Records Manager
MetLife \ Legal Affairs
27-01 Queens Plaza North
Long Island City NY 11101
212-578-2373




"Link, Gary M." <[log in to unmask]> 
Sent by: "Records Management Program" <[log in to unmask]>
02/20/2008 08:02 AM
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"Records Management Program" <[log in to unmask]>


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Subject
Re: Paper & Electronic Filing






Snip >
-----Original Message-----
From: John James O'Brien [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 9:03 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [RM] Paper & Electronic Filing

Further to the discussion,  some observations on "Big Bucket" versus the
generally undefined alternatives ;-)

<  Snip


I'm glad this topic is getting some traction. I thought I was going to
have to mention the NFL or politics to get more people to respond.

I think one of the many reasons users think differently when  being
asked to help develop a file plan in paper vs. electronic is that a
paper file plan is linear: you go down the page and put things in some
logical order IAW the process you are documenting and the documents that
process shakes out. But the screens in a network folder setup are two
dimensional, having both breadth and depth, and give more opportunities
to more closely represent to project or process. And consequently, more
choices (and opinions/preferences) on what the arrangement should be.

In our projects we could arrange by document type or by department or by
phase of the project. Other elements include "subject" and potential
outside participants, whether consultants, contractors, or regulatory
agencies. My first problem with our current network folder is that there
is often a mixture of many of these types on the same screen. You might
see folders for document types, departments, and subject on the same
screen, which I believe causes confusion.  I would at least like to make
every screen uniform in terms of the types of selections, i.e., all
document types (meeting minutes, contracts, etc.) on one screen, phases
on the next, etc.

In my observation, the more layers of screens you give people, the less
likely they are to take the time to file their document in the correct
folder if it is in one of the deeper layers.

Agreements? Disagreements? Observations? (Don't make me put a comment
about the NFL or politics in here.)

Gary Link
Pittsburgh, PA

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