We have two primary RM initiatives going on here, and both enjoy tremendous support from our City Manager and Department Heads.
Email archiving, which began on 10/15:  To show support for this program, our City Manager and City Attorney did a 5-min video to outline the reasons they support email archiving and why City employees should accept/embrace our newest software tool.  This video is available on our intranet and was used at the beginning of our previously-mandatory informational sessions for all 675 employees last Fall.  The City Manager allowed me to provide my 30-minute informational overview to the City Council as well, and both the CM and CA firmly endorsed the program during the session.  Throughout the past 15 months I drafted maybe three memos "From the City Manager" which, with my bosses' and her edits, were published on her page in our printed newsletters (and archived on the intranet); these provided updates and endorsements at critical points.  I also drafted an email for her to send to all the supervisors, managers, and above.  Lastly, we have several webpages dedicated to our eMessaging policy and procedures, and there is a message from the CM on the front page (at the top) of our intranet with an endorsement and link to those pages.  So far it's going pretty good.  We suffered several mis-steps and delays for various reasons, and we learned that the CM does NOT mandates (policy or otherwise), but things are smooth at this point!
City-wide EDRMS, which we hope to begin by calendar year end:  This project has, of course, been subject to repeated budget sniping as City tax revenues continue to dwindle and employees receive pay cuts and the like.  Our City Manager and City Attorney understand the importance of an electronic solution for growing electronic records.  They consistently and whole-heartedly endorse the program.  When the EDRMS comes up in budget discussions, the CM has typically said something like "We all know this is a top priority, so let's go on to the next item."  (I know, sometimes I have to pinch myself!)  Most of the credit for this understanding and endorsement goes to my bosses, the City Clerk and IT Manager, who worked long and hard before I was hired.  Both bosses give regular updates at management team meetings, which are frequently attended by our CM and CA.  It also helps that we get complex Open Records Requests that will benefit from an EDRMS.  It also helps that we have drastically scaled down our initial implementation plans, and drawn out the implementation plan and roll-out.  Lastly, we have an active Records Management Task Force with representatives from every department; we ask them to keep their bosses and Department Heads abreast of what we're planing or doing and why, and we don't hesitate to ask them to "sell our plans and benefits" to the entire management team.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but it looks like we may just end up with a city-wide solution!
Hope this helps.  I'd be happy to talk with you or send you samples of what we've done.  Good luck with obtaining support from your senior managers!
 

Melinda Catapano, ECMm, IOAp
City Records Manager
City of Grand Junction
Office of the City Clerk
250 N. 5th Street
Grand Junction, CO  81501
(970) 244-1497, direct
(970) 244-1599, fax
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Visit us at www.gjcity.org ( http://www.gjcity.org/ )!

>>> On 10/26/2009 at  6:44 AM, <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
It is an axiom of records management that when starting a records
program at an organization you must get buy-in/backing from senior
management, preferably via a management directive or some form of
management communication.

I am looking for people WHO HAVE OBTAINED said management communication
who might share with us the format that it came in: was it a published
directive?In what format? A memo? Distributed how? Paper? Email?
Intranet?

Please, I am not interested in theory or musings from people who haven't
obtained these, as I have theory and musings already.

Thanks,
Gary Link, CRM
Pittsburgh, PA



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