Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Implementing a Records Management Technology Solution for European Public Organizations: The Challenge DLM Forum 2014 Annual General Meeting Tassos Anagnostopoulos Solutions Architect [email protected] Athens, 11 June 2014 Uni Systems at a glance 50 years of solid IT experience Uni Systems was founded in 1964. 35+ years of Banking experience. 15+ years of Telecom experience. 480+ specialized business & technology professionals 200 S/W Engineers, 150 System & Support Engineers, 50 Business Consultants 12/8/2017 Lead systems integrator & solutions provider in international market More than 25 international customers including E.C., EU agencies, etc. 65+ M€ Total Revenues (2013) 52+ M€ Services, & Consulting 11+ M€ EU Institutions, Agencies and International Organisations 2 A Reference in the European ICT Service Sector Using Greece as its base, Uni Systems is positioned as a key SI player in the emerging SE European, MENA and EU region. Major ICT Systems Integrator in the domestic market Key contractor for central EU Institutions & Agencies Among the top solutions providers in the region of SouthEastern Europe & Turkey Expand to MENA and GCC countries with targeted solutions 12/8/2017 3 EU Customers and Projects A Company with an International orientation: ECDC ECHA EMA EUROPOL FRONTEX European Commission (TAXUD, DEVCO, CLIMA, ECHO, JRC, etc), Council of EU, etc Publications Office, EIB, Eurostat Republic of Serbia EuropeAid Albania EuropeAid 12/8/2017 4 Motivation for the Presentation • We’ve seen that RM systems, – from a theoretical perspective are very concrete in their design and offer a full set of related functionalities – but in practice, they tend to be quite difficult to use, often resulting in their misuse. E.g., • Mass declaration of records at the end of the work week, often including useless information • Misclassification of records, which can be very difficult to detect. • Because of this, RM enablement of organizations often fails, or is limited in its applicability and usefulness. – If the initial deployment is faulty or ridden with problems, then the (already big) resistance to its introduction will be even bigger, and any attempts to expand it will be faced with skepticism. – It is very important that the RM system implementation is successful from the very beginning. 12/8/2017 5 Key Challenges when Implementing a Records Management System • Multiple sources of information that need to be consolidated – E-Mails – Incoming documents, often in paper form – Generated documents, which may also need to be scanned in order to capture a signature on them • File Plan may be well structured, but will usually be way too complex for the average user – Main difficulty is importing records into the system • Not always clear where a record should go • Very cumbersome process to manually select where in the filing plan a record should be placed 12/8/2017 6 Common Mistakes in the Design of an RM Solution • Basing the requirements gathering process on MoReq, instead of the actual needs of the Organization. – MoReq should be used to give ideas, not as a starting point. Attempting to start by implementing MoReq in its entirety is a definite path to failure. • Focusing on the completeness of the solution instead of the easeof-use – Modern-day RM systems provide all or most of the required functionality for managing records once they are in the RM system. – However, a lot still needs to be done in the way regular end users interact with the RM system when declaring a record. 12/8/2017 7 Records vs. Document Management • RM tool can be same or different from the Document Management Tool. – For example, in European Medicines Agency (“EMA”), the same tool (Documentum) is used for DM and RM. This makes it easier to introduce it to end users, as they are more accustomed to the concept of Filing Plan. • • • This may also lead to an approach to RM that is not as solid as it should be, having documents and records stored side-by-side (called “Informal Record Management”). However, it is still desirable to be able to trace the origins of a record, for the case of documents. Overall, having a common DM and RM tool is something that is desirable, although by no means mandatory. 12/8/2017 8 Granting External Users Access to an RM System • Another issue that we have encountered was the need to expose some parts of the Filing Plan to a select group of people outside an organization. • The mistake in the approach was the fact that the implementation had tried to grant the external participants direct access to the RM system, complicating the design of the system and adding to it responsibilities that didn’t really belong there. – Better approach is to separate any such requirement for publishing of information, by having a separate system to take care of that (authentication of external users, which groups should access which set of records, etc.) 12/8/2017 9 RM at the European Chemical Agency (“ECHA”) • Two different approaches, depending on the Filing Plan Class: – Explicit record declaration process, via a queue where regular users import the artifacts that should become records. • End Users have to browse through the entire filing plan in order to find the right place where the record should be stored. • A Contributor subsequently retrieves potential records from the queue, and declares the imported artifacts as records. – Implicit record declaration process, at the conclusion of a workflow. • All data is already there, only piece of information that is missing is whether the data should become a record or not. 12/8/2017 10 The Basic Requirements for a Successful RM Implementation • Make the record definition process as transparent as possible to the end user. • Provide to the non-specialized users very specific options, which should be limited in number. • End users should not necessarily have a full and clear view of the Filing Plan; rather, the record declaration process should act similar to a Wizard, only asking the questions that really need to be asked. 12/8/2017 11 Recommendation: Keep the Record Declaration Information Where It Needs to Be • We cannot expect all members of the Organization to become intimately familiar with the Filing Plan and the inner workings of a RM tool. • We should shield them from the complexity of the process of declaring a record, or even of identifying documents and mails as potential records. • Instead, this should be done transparently to them by the appropriate tools employed by the organization. 12/8/2017 12 For Large Organizations, Separate the Duties • Have a system be responsible for gathering all records related to a case or a subject. – This can be a workflow management system, where documents and mails are gathered and generated as part of the case management flow. – Can also be a plain document management system, where all documents and correspondence are maintained in a common place. – Or a Line-of-Business application (e.g. ERP or CRM system) if it provides some basic document management capabilities. 12/8/2017 13 For Large Organizations, Separate the Duties • In all above, the “entity” (case or subject) in question is clearly defined and is accompanied by all required metadata, allowing it to easily become a record (or set of records) in an automated way • Create a concrete mapping between the above systems and the RM system, defining all aspects related to the storing of the record, the grouping of the artifacts contained in it, the location in the filing plan, the policies that should be applied, etc. 12/8/2017 14 For Large Organizations, Separate the Duties • • • • Make Regular users only responsible for gathering the information, but otherwise shield them from any deeper knowledge of the RM system. Have Process Owners responsible for establishing the appropriate mappings. These are embodied within the system that gathers the records, in effect shielding both the RM system and its users for requiring detailed knowledge about the specifics of the particular process. Record Managers can focus on maintaining the definition of policies and retention periods, knowing that they need not worry about the proper use of the tool. It may still be necessary to have a direct way of manually adding records into the RM system. – This should be targeted to specific groups of users (e.g. secretaries) that have a good understanding of the Filing Plan and can be trained to acquire some basic “Librarian” skills. 12/8/2017 15 Conclusion - Best Practices • Start small. Define a pilot process that you want to become RMenabled. – This will help key stakeholders understand the complexity associated with an RM implementation, without burdening the entire organization. – It will also make key people become more familiar with RM concepts – Define both an explicit and an implicit way of declaring records. – Based on the lessons learned from the pilot implementation, design the approach for RM enabling the rest of the organization, to the extent that this is feasible by real-world circumstances. • Automate the record definition process, and hide the complexity of the RM implementation from the regular end users. 12/8/2017 16 Thank you! www.unisystems.com 12/8/2017 17