Snips from Deanna and Bruce:

> On May 6, 2015, at 12:02 AM, RECMGMT-L automatic digest system <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> From: Deanna Brouillette <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Subject: Re: Records in basements
> Date: May 5, 2015 at 8:53:23 AM EDT
> 
> I've been following this thread with interest (because of course we're in the basement), but I'm wondering about the offset of risk when you're in tornado alley?  Anyone have any thoughts on that?  Is being in the basement preferable?  I don't know...


I have built several vaults in Tornado prone areas and we build them so the vault can withstand the expected wind loads and forces.  We installed a vault in a Butler Steel Building some years ago and it was rated for 185 mile per hour winds. The extra costs to mount it fast to the concrete floor added a few hundred dollars to the cost but it was worth it when various damage occurred to the overall building but our vault stayed in place.

Engineers can design again wind loads and the cost affect is minimal.  Beams become larger, special strapping is required, the fasteners in the concrete need to be deeper and the vault is designed to raise the floor so the rain that will come in the recently removed roof of the building does not impact the vault interior.

Those are just design issues. You design around them and have an Engineer confirm that it meets local building codes for tornado force winds.

But basements are continually a problem for so many reasons as you have all discussed.

Vaults end up in basements or attics because the case is not made as to the critical nature of these records in future litigation and the liability that their spoliation represents.


> From: Bruce White <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Subject: Re: Records in basements
> Date: May 5, 2015 at 9:39:36 AM EDT
> 
> I think everyone agrees that the basement is one of the worst
> locations to store records.   Too many bad things can happen.
>  
> So county officials have very few options except storing the records in a basement …..

My experience tells me that most buildings in Texas do not have basements.  I lived there for 23 years. Tarzan probably would be afraid to go in a Texas basement.  Scorpions, Fire Ants, poisonous snakes, tarantulas and roaches so big you mistake them for mice. And then the other nuisance bugs. I have seen tarantulas the size of a baseball walking on my bedroom wall.  My wife slept with the lights on for a few nights, I can tell you!

I think that records managers have changed in the last 20 years and you have lost the ability to make the case for a vault in your control.  As Steve says “I hate paper!”  But paper had an authenticity to it and management understood the value of original documents with notary seals, contracts with signature pages and the complete understanding that certain records were more important and were deemed “Vital Records” and they must be protected.

Records Managers walked away from their vaults and the innate authority that came from being the King or Queen of the records empire.  You gave up that authority with a meek surrender. 

Steve you say you hate paper but give a lesson here in how you gained control of the media and the electronic records?

Gary Link and I composed a white paper on Electronic Records and it was published. But when the NFPA 232 Committee had a request to add a Chapter in the NFPA 232 Protection of Records on Electronic Records, it was the records managers on the Committee that declined to enter that Chapter into the next edition.

Instead it was sent back to the IT people running the NFPA 75 Standard for the Protection of Information Technology Equipment and the whole issue of “Electronic Records” is outside the jurisdiction of “Protection of Records”.  I have to tell you that ceding this authority of electronic records back to the IT folks when they did not even see protection of records as part of their core mission is a loss for those wanting records management to survive.

In my mind this was the most strategic failure that records managers could make in the real world. 

Sure in the fantasy world of information governance you can state that spinning disks, disk drives and disaster recovery tapes are not records. Equating that data in production or in modification or updating is not a record; but if I take that disk drive and print a document from that disk drive it is now a record. This is a distinction without a difference.  And upper management loses respect for records management when you believe that.  

If I put your records in a box and then load it on a truck and the truck moves at 60 mph is it no longer a record.  It’s moving, you temporarily don’t have control of it.  So it is no longer a record? To me that is how asinine viewing a disk drive or a back up tape that restores all of your records as “Not a record.”  Electronic Records exist.  Management totally views them as existing.

Steve wants paper to go away. Records Managers want electronic records to go away. Vaults are definitely going away in some arenas. A new trend is to vault the Server Room or some call it Server Vaulting.  What does that say to you??

Management sees the value in protecting the back up tapes and now they think they can vault the servers so then the records are vaulted. 

ARMA wants to move to Information Governance because they think it will give them the authority they desire.  But management does not see linkage from records management to information governance.  The Ferry with the electronic records and the records has left the dock and no one is really on board.

Clearly there is some strategic thinking needed if records management is to survive. If Peter ran one of his Survey Monkey polls and asked C-Level management their opinions on where records existed and then ran a poll with IT Managers on where records existed, there would be different answers.  But records managers might not agree with either of them. 

As we were taught in Catechism:  The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and yet they were all one.  Paper records, microfilm records, electronic records, disk drives, back up tapes, flash drives, DVD, CD  …..all are records.  Embrace it. The C-Level Managers already have.  There can be no E-Discovery without E-Records.  There can be no spoliation of electronic records if they are not records.


Hugh Smith
FIRELOCK Fireproof Modular Vaults
[log in to unmask]
(610)  756-4440    Fax (610)  756-4134
WWW.FIRELOCK.COM
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]