Fred

I think that such statistics should only be used when you are aware of the methodology and have trust in the reliability of the principal investigator responsible for the research.  I suspect that these numbers originated in one or two proprietary studies done many years ago and that the numbers were subsequently increased by various individuals who exaggerated to make a better story. This is a common phenomena which is why graduate students often learn the importance of "sourcing" particular data or claims.  Sometimes false information from a century ago gets perpetuated in fields literature simply from being used over and over again by various authors.

I would expect that most of these studies are based on surveys of how much time people within an organization spend looking for a misfiled record which are then multiplied by a wage rate with a few extra costs added in for good measure.  Such studies probably group misfiled and poorly filed records together.  A poorly filed record is a record that is correctly filed but still does not meet retrieval needs in a particular set of circumstances.  Suppose accounts payable organizes their records by vendor name and I need to see all the vendor files that have sold a particular class of products.  The documents may be correctly filed but they still may not be that easy to find.

The answer of course is to conduct your own study.


-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Grevin, Fred
Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2008 11:53 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Q: cost per mis-filed record

On behalf of a colleague in the New York State Archives, I'm posting this question of general interest.

"I am giving the Files Management workshop on Thursday and in reviewing the information provided, the $125 per misfiled record cost is shown.
That was the figure I used over 20 years ago and I am trying to see if a more current one is available. Google search gave $125, $150 and $200 but no real sources were provided. Are you aware of anything?"

Searching the RM listserv archive produced little in the way of dollar-specific results.

Many thanks in advance.


Fred
===================================================================
Frederic J. Grevin
Deputy Commissioner and Chief Information Officer The City of New York, Department of Records
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