Building Bridges

We attended this JISC infoNet event in Gateshead this week (http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/events/buildingbridges), which was aimed at records and information professionals working in further and higher education but with some attendees from the wider public sector.

Day 1 was an interesting mix of sessions including views of different staff (customers) on records and information management, demonstrations of potential software solutions, advice and case studies from records managers about how they were tackling records management implementation in their organisations.

In the context of our AC+erm project and other recent activities it was good that the event kicked off with views from three of the four key stakeholder groups – senior manager, IT manager and systems administrator. Including these stakeholders in all parts of our project has been a fundamental principle. All three speakers were very positive whether they spoke in terms of data, information or records – and the senior manager stated that email was dysfunctional for him. The session on MS SharePoint included a useful demo of the out-of-the-box version for anyone who hadn’t seen it and the presentation by John Newton on Alfresco generated a lot of interest. It looks poised to take some market share in the IRM space!

The question and answer sessions covered a very wide range of topics including the most effective location of the RM function in the organisational structure, realistic expectations of records managers (often in one-person bands), risk and RM, knowledge and skills, and preservation of research records.

The main focus of Day 2 was on a new project JISC infoNet are about to start on measuring the benefits of managing records. Steve Bailey introduced a proposed framework for identifying and generating measurable value, based on the ‘lean manufacturing’ model developed by Taiichi Ohno in Toyota. We then split into four groups to discuss the possibilities and problems of this approach in an IM/RM context. The issues raised by the groups turned out to be strikingly similar – some of the main areas of debate centred on how to quantify the often qualitative benefits of good IM/RM; how to identify and separate out a purely RM element on which a value could be put; the importance of cultural factors; and the question of corporate buy-in and resourcing.

There was a definite buzz during the two days; it was good to catch up with former students and other colleagues and to make new connections. Perhaps because the location was on the banks of the Tyne, or because the event took place in the Bridge Conference Space at Gateshead College, the building bridges analogy was well used.

[Tag: #buildingbridges09]