Sharing best practice in managing info

9:50am Wednesday 20th August 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

A MAJOR programme carried out by Worcestershire County Council to improve the way it manages its paper and electronic documents and records will be further shared with other organisations next month.

Making Information Manageable (MIM) is a three-year programme the county council has been delivering across the authority since 2005.

Representatives from other organisations, including county councils, regional councils, central Government, universities and primary care will be paying a visit to County Hall on September 10 to find out how they can also benefit from the programme.

The programme team has already presented at conferences across England and Scotland and has been visited by several organisations, including the Regional Improvements and Efficiency Partnership, who are interested in adopting a similar process.

The council’s approach to electronic document and records management (EDRM) has been one of looking at culture and practice ahead of implementing new technology.

It has addressed the basics of document management, such as organising the existing Microsoft shared file system and giving guidance on good information management practice before attempting to move to EDRM.

MIM was implemented after an audit of the council’s records and information was carried out by a dedicated team of information audit officers from the council’s corporate information management unit (CIMU).

The county council has also developed good practice guidance to help staff, including:

• Use of sensible and consistent file naming, for example dates, in a yyyy-mm-dd format so they sort chronologically

• Simple version control in the naming of documents eg. v0.1

• Emailing short cuts to documents in the fileplan rather than emailing around an attached copy of a document

• The addition of footers with the file path so that printed documents can be traced to their electronic master

• Saving documents as “read-only recommended” to reduce accidental alteration

• Adopting a clear desk policy

• Harmonising paper and electronic filing schemes

• Setting up local libraries to reduce duplication of material and improving sharing of information, both paper and electronic

• Use of double-sided and compressed printing to reduce paper usage

• Use of Outlook Out of Office assistant with additional wording to direct requests under information law to an appointed member of staff

Jonathan Downes, information programme manager at the county council, said: “We are looking forward to further showcasing the benefits of our programme with others.

“We have also been working closely with all of the district councils in Worcestershire to help them on their information management journeys, which has initially involved carrying out audits of their organisations.

“We are delighted with what we have so far achieved in the county council through the MIM programme, which has ultimately helped 5,500 staff across 550 teams improve the way they manage their paper and electronic documents and records, over a short timescale with minimal capital investment while also delivering efficiencies.”

The MIM team comprises Jonathan Downes and five project staff working closely with the corporate information management and business systems teams.

There are three key deliverables of the programme. They are:

• 1. Disposal - to raise awareness of the disposal policy which is available as a searchable tool on the staff intranet and to encourage regular clearout days of both electronic and paper files. To dispose of redundant records and send semi-current records to CIMU

• 2. Corporate fileplan - this is at the heart of the delivery model. The county council has developed a hybrid structure that balances standardisation with localisation and the functional with the hierarchical. It is standardised to those functions that are common to most teams, such as human resources, finance, management and administration and project management

• 3. Information management good practice - best practice guidance has been developed to help staff: receive guidance on how to save documents in a way that others will understand - how to keep track of different versions of the same document and minimise the risk of accidental amendments or deletion

An essential part of maintaining the change is the network of records management liaison officers who are staff that have taken on additional responsibility to support their teams in changing to the new ways of working.