Situation
Our client was a major Ontario Agency that was responsible for regulating and implementing gaming and lottery services throughout the province. An internal audit identified that the organization needed to improve its Records Retention and Disposition processes in order to address compliance requirements in this area. Accordingly, the organization needed to develop a directional strategy document which would guide them forward, not only to meet the necessary compliance requirements but also to provide strategic and organizational benefits.
Requirements
Within this context, Schroeder & Schroeder Inc. was hired to conduct a records management assessment and to create a plan to improve the organization’s records management framework structure, controls, policies, and procedures; including the development of appropriate policies and materials to support the recommended assessment and plan. Specific requirements included:
- Gaining of a thorough understanding of the organization’s background and business drivers as related to Information Management (IM) and Records Management (RM).
- A review of the organization’s current practices in physical and electronic records management to assess policy, process, and technology gaps in best practices in records management.
- A review of any existing technologies and advice around the suitability for immediate utilization for process improvement and long term strategic deployment.
- An Action Plan with high level resource estimates ready for execution in one year
- Provision of in depth knowledge and advice concerning physical and electronic records management best practices and technology to develop a visionary Enterprise Records Management Program.
- Development of appropriate directional policies and recommendations in processes and technology for long term deployment within the organization.
- Development and maintenance of key project artifacts including the project plan; control the scope of work, effort, and resource requirements, execution of the project in accordance with the established project baseline, management of risks, issues and scope changes, and provision of regular status reports in accordance with the organization’s project methodology and toolsets.
Challenges
- The organization’s large scale transformation programme, which was in flight and ran concurrently with this engagement, had depleted resources to the extent that no new software could be considered to automate any new records management processes.
- Organizational requirements to comply with the Archives and Recordkeeping Act resulted in somewhat uncertain Records Management requirements.
- The organization’s large scale transformation programme meant that a large percentage of the organization’s staff would be re-assigned to positions with future organizational Service Providers – which coupled with changes in records maintenance and “ownership” – meant that the contents of local disk drives, including any implied metadata, were at risk of being lost unless immediate steps were taken.
Actions
Working alongside the organization’s project team and staff, we:
- Reviewed the organization’s current records program against industry best practices to benchmark their current standing. The assessment was measured based on the Generally Accepted Records Principles© (GARP) maturity model for Digital Records Management.
- Produced an information governance reference model to provide understanding and depth in an approach to the records retention and disposition project
Results
At the end of the project, we provided:
- A gap analysis that described what the organization needed to improve, add, or eliminate in processes and technology in order to comply with Audit Findings, the organization’s overall large scale transformation requirements, along with legislative and regulatory requirements in physical and electronic records retention and disposition.
- A set of recommendations for action that was execution ready for achieving results within the year, enabling the organization to respond to the most urgent and important internal and external business requirements, and to improve controls to reduce risk.
- An Action Plan, with high level resource estimates, to implement the recommended results within a year. This action plan was designed to achieve, among other things, the following:
- Physical and electronic records and software data retention and disposition policies pertaining to the organization’s overall large scale transformation requirements and to Strategic Procurement.
- A Records Retention and Disposition (RRD) framework and classification scheme for physical and electronic records and software data, integrating the current Data Governance (DG) framework and the physical records retention and disposition schedules.
- RRD business processes and procedures that must be and can be deployed within a year, especially for specific key unstructured data such as e-mails and attachments.
- Implemented processes, through training and change management.
- Implemented enabling technologies, utilizing applicable existing tools and systems – including a process to run parallel program during migration from the current OLG DMS program to the proposed new program.
- A long term Enterprise Records Management Program (ERMP) strategy that included an order of magnitude cost and time estimates for the development of best practices and technology deployment, and
- Input for an eventual RFP for the acquisition of the enabling ERMP technology platform.
The client was extremely satisfied with the quality of work and value added by Schroeder & Schroeder. The insights gained from this project contributed to meeting the organization’s overall strategic and organizational needs and laid a solid foundation for future planning and implementation. Through the trust gained on this project, our team was contracted to continue on working into the next phase.