Speaking of starting from scratch, I am also starting a program from  
nothing. However, in my case, I am not government and I do not have to  
get management buy in. They realized they needed something done and  
hired me specifically for that purpose. A few people mentioned they'd  
be interested in my progress, so I thought I'd post an update.

When I started, the litigation department was already in the process  
of implementing an email management / eDiscovery program. About a  
month before I started, they had hired an IT guy to manage all  
eDiscovery -- he had done that kind of work extensively at his prior  
company. They invited me into that group and wanted advice on  
retention. One of things I have to do is develop a retention schedule,  
so all I can do at this point is teach the end users how to determine  
which emails need to be kept and which are junk, tell them to group  
the record emails in logical subfolders in the managed folders, and  
get them to reclassify the subfolders once I finally finish the  
retention schedule. I am working on two training programs for this.  
One is a general RIM 101/How to use the software program and another  
specifically on managing your inbox. For the second one, I have used a  
lot of information from Jesse Wilkins (Thanks Jesse!), and from the 43  
Folders (Inbox Zero), Zen to Done, Getting Things Done (GTD),  
Lifehacker and Each Day Empty websites. We're expecting to roll this  
out to the pilot group in August.

I have started the records inventory process in the Corporate Legal  
Department (the department I am in).  It is really from scratch. They  
had no sense of record series or logical groupings of documents. They  
had been filing all original signed documents in a category called  
"Originals" regardless of what type of document it was. They had  
amendments to contracts filed separately from the original contract.  
They had chron files going back to the 1990's.  There was no rhyme or  
reason to the system.

I needed to figure out exactly what they did. The department is  
divided into a few groups -- Insurance, General Legal, Compliance,  
Mergers & Acquisitions, and Litigation. In speaking to them, they each  
thought that they had very little cross over, so I took each group  
separately. I got all the attorney's, their assistants and paralegals  
in a conference room and started by passing out pads of large post-it  
notes and black markers. I told them to just start writing down every  
type of document that they touch -- one per post-it. Then when they  
had run out of steam on that one, I asked them "what do you DO?" --  
broadly, what functions do they perform for the company -- and wrote  
each function on the top of a large post-it flip chart sheet and  
started sticking each sheet up on the wall. Then I told them to take  
their document type post-its and start sticking them under the  
function they belong to. This was very interesting and generated quite  
a bit of discussion. Some functions were added, others were modified.  
Then when they were satisfied with that, I asked them to group the  
documents into logical groupings (series). They got up again and  
started switching around the documents, eliminating duplicates and  
adding missed ones. This generated even more discussion. From this,  
some of the functions were modified again, some were eliminated or  
combined. Then I asked them to give a name to each series. I wrote the  
series name with another color marker over each group of post-its.   
The general counsel and the associate general counsel commented on  
what a great exercise this was and really got them excited and looking  
forward to a more organized system. The only thing I would have done  
differently is that it would have been better to have the entire  
department do it together. It turns out there's a lot more crossover  
than they realized.

What I ended up with was the functions, record series and document  
types, which I used to build a draft file plan. This is now being  
reviewed for comments.

I had also developed a records inventory form, which asks questions  
about departmental usage, other departments or outside parties usage,  
security levels and PII, volume, storage, indexing, and if and how  
electronic versions are maintained. I set up a form for each series  
and identified the custodian for that series. Rather than doing a  
personal interview for each one, I'm going to train all the custodians  
on how to complete the form, then just follow-up on those questions  
they had difficulty answering or that weren't answered to my  
satisfaction.

Once this is done, I'll move on to the other corporate departments -  
Accounting, HR, etc. One question --- for records purposes, is IT a  
"function" or is everything they do pretty much show up in other  
functions, for example they would keep a register of hardware and  
software, but that could be under accounting/fixed assets; the network  
structure could be under general admin/facilities.

I am really enjoying the $%#@!* out of this. But then again, we'll see  
how it goes when I have to identify those 5,000 boxes in storage with  
absolutely no indexing.


Nolene Sherman
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Tracking where records are kept is what Tiggers and Records Managers  
do best!

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