On the subject of recordkeeping systems versus network drives, US
colleagues may be interested in a report titled 'Note for File'
written in 2007 by the Management Advisory Committee (MAC) of the
Australian Public Service Commission (APSC).

Although written with an Australian Federal Government context in
mind, the report contains some practical statements in Chapter 2 about
managing records and other information.

Chapter 2 describes the distinction between records that should be
corporately managed, and those that don't.  Corporately managed means
managing the records in an official corporate recordkeeping systems
that 'typically have higher levels of records management functionality
... than devolved storage systems controlled by individuals (including
personal email folders and network drives).'  Judgment and commonsense
(and good end user education and awareness) should drive what needs to
be corporately managed.

The report notes that it was never possible to manage every type of
record 'even when all records were in hard copy' and so no agency can
reasonably expect to try to do so in the electronic world.  Employees
are always likely to have a degree of discretion about what goes into
the recordkeeping system - agencies should therefore '... focus their
corporate attention on what is valuable and high risk' and trust the
professionalism of government employees 'to responsibly assume custody
of the rest, subject to appropriate guidance and direction'.

This approach, the report states, allows agencies to '... focus their
limited resources on those records they must manage'.

The full report can be accessed here:
http://www.apsc.gov.au/mac/noteforfile.htm

My views entirely.

Andrew Warland
Sydney, Australia

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