Ginny Jones wrote: As Dwight said - once the lawyers got involved,
interpretation of the laws have made our RM lives more and more complex.

PeterK wrote: and they are getting even more complex

And the problem, Peter and Ginny, is that as these legal issues increase
in complexity, the point that John made in a previous posting about
diminishing returns becomes more serious. The gap between establishing a
system of controls to serve a business purpose and control costs, and
the establishment of controls purely to meet increasingly complex legal
demands begins to widen. This makes the cost justification of such
control systems more difficult, and tends to lead to an understandable
unwillingness to fund such systems with the idea that "it will never
happen to us". Then "it" happens and we have the kind of "gotcha"
moments we increasingly see occurring. Note that I have very little
sympathy for many of the figures caught in such issues - like I said, if
you can't stand the heat etc... In fact, if there is any justification
for any of this, it is that it has uncovered real cases of malfeasance.
However, I have a lot of sympathy for taxpayers. I have a lot of
sympathy for our disadvantaged clients who may be seeing one less nurse
or receiving one less vaccination because we had to fund an expensive
system of controls. My sense is that this will ultimately be resolved
not through legal change, but through technological means - the controls
will become more sophisticated, and the costs will drop. However, this
has not yet occurred, and trends are not encouraging in this regard,
particularly when we consider that just when we get a handle on e-mail
(for example), it may become obsolete. Its possible that the only real
solution may lie in better defining and driving home the distinction
between "evidence" and "records" and incorporating that into our control
systems, perhaps even engaging in some advocacy on this with our
respective legislatures. This would at least better focus costs, and, in
my opinion, actually improve transparency.

Dwight Wallis, CRM
Records Administrator
Multnomah County Fleet, Records, Electronics, Distribution and Stores
(FREDS)
1620 S.E. 190th Avenue
Portland, OR 97233
Phone: (503)988-3741
Fax: (503)988-3754
[log in to unmask]

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance
To unsubscribe from this list, click the below link. If not already present, place UNSUBSCRIBE RECMGMT-L or UNSUB RECMGMT-L in the body of the message.
mailto:[log in to unmask]