Sharon -

Off the top of my head (which gets more sunburned every year), I would
suggest that you are looking at between $50 and $100 per hour for each
person involved in an outsourced RM project.  This ranges from project
support through analysts undertaking the actual work to project
management. Oh yes, and don't forget to factor in consultant expenses.
It then becomes necessary to estimate how many hours you wish to devote
to particular projects (inventorying, schedule writing, implementation,
etc).  If this is replacing a FTE, You have approximately 2,000 hours
minus stat holidays observed in CO.  So, assuming 50 forty hour weeks
minus ten stat holidays and 2 weeks' vacation (80 hours not paid), your
outsourced replacement will work 1,840 hours per year.  At the lower end
of the scale given above, you START at $92,000 for ONE professional -
not including project support, project management or expenses.  You
would do well to contact individual contractors - and be sure to ask if
they have a government rate!

Accessing the Colorado State Archives website through the COSHRC online
directory (I cannot emphasize enough how useful this site is), I had a
look at the Colorado Municipal Records Management Manual.  I noted with
interest that CO municipalities have to apply to the State Archives to
use the general schedules provided in this manual - and that Lakewood is
not on the list of approved users.  One of the best arguments against
outsourcing is being an approved user of this manual - a large
percentage of your municipality's records would then be authorized for
disposition, and the need to have outside contractors write schedules
drops dramatically.

Now you may know this already, but said manual can be viewed at
http://www.colorado.gov/dpa/doit/archives/rm/MunicipalRMM/ and - for
anyone else interested - the COSHRC Directory of State Archives and
Records Programs is available at http://www.coshrc.org/arc/states.htm.

Not the definitive statement on outsourcing, but I hope this helps.

Cheers!

Mark


G. Mark Walsh, C.A.
Records & Information Analyst
Records Management and Imaging Services
Library of Virginia
(804) 692-3650

-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Sharon Blackstock
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 2:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Help I need estimates for outsourcing!

Hello friends,

We're going through a pretty ugly time here in my city. After several
years of budget cuts, the council is faced with pretty major reductions
in basic services over the next two years, or going to the voters to ask
for a sales tax increase.  So far, records management has survived, but
my boss (the City Clerk) has asked for an estimate of what it might cost
to contract out portions of our services. This comes from comments
during public hearings along the line of "the city could save a lot of
money if it just contracted everything out".

So, I'm looking for some average consulting rates for basic records
management services: retention schedule development and monitoring,
records inventorying, etc. I know there will be regional differences, so
if you'll through some numbers at me, I'll take some averages and make
some estimates.

Naturally, I need this yesterday.

Thanks for your help!

Sharon G. Blackstock, CRM
Central Records Administrator
Lakewood City Clerk's Office
480 South Allison Parkway
Lakewood CO 80226-3127
303-987-7091 (office)
303-987-7088 (fax)
[log in to unmask]
www.lakewood.org

Lakewood's records management objectives: 1) Information is available
when needed; 2) Records of permanent value are preserved; 3)
Non-permanent records are destroyed per approved retention schedules; 4)
Discarded paper is recycled.




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