31 May 2007 - Scotland Group Meeting
RMS Scotland Group Event, Thursday 31st May 2007
Information Audits and eMail Management
Robert Gordon University, Garthdee Campus, Aberdeen
Event Report
The day started with everyone networking over coffee until 1030. Mr Andrew McCreath, Executive Director Information Technology and Communication for Robert Gordon University, welcomed all to the University and set the day in motion.
The first group of speakers for the day discussed the use of Information Audits within their organisation. The first to speak was Bruce Mann of Aberdeenshire Council. He discussed the process they took in the Planning Policy and Environment Department using both internal audit procedures and an external consultant.
The second speaker was Richard Sharpe speaking on behalf of his previous employer Department of International Development. It was an electronic record audit and was completed by a consultant. They found that the key most important factors were to have patience and a sense of humour. You also had to keep focused on the outcome.
The third speaker for this topic was Monica Greenan from SCDEA. The audit that was performed at her organisation was completed prior to her commencing employment with them. The whole process was completed by a consultant and the organisation has found that it was not fit for purpose. As the information was listed on an excel spreadsheet and was unstructured it did not provide tangible information. They have since completed a business process analysis and this has worked better for the organisation.
The final speaker was Edith Pringault-Adam on behalf of Historic Scotland. They completed their survey using a research like approach. They have completed it internally and have had a very good uptake in completion by staff. They were very focussed on the demographic of the group being used.
After the presentation the Amanda Wright had the delegates split into six discussion groups. The discussion groups reported back to the main hall after 20 minutes of answering questions based on the topic covered in the morning presentations. The overall feeling was that Information Audits were very useful only if you knew what your objectives were. An audit just for the sake of it was of no use as you were unlikely to have the correct information at the end of the process.
Lunch was a wonderful plate of either veggie or meat stovies. There were skewers of fresh fruit as a sweet. This time gave the delegates a chance to continue to network and share experiences and ideas.
With lunch over the afternoon continued with a presentation from Susan Graham of the University of Edinburgh on Email Management. As a University they have many challenges to meet including a number of different systems that do not speak to each other; a number of staff still not on a network system; and, as with most organisations, no funding to create a system that will deal with all of the issues. They have risen to the challenge and are gradually winning the battle to ensure that valuable information is not lost.
Lead by Amanda the delegates again split into discussion groups to answer questions relating to the presentation topic. With Email being a very hot topic the discussion groups came up with a lot of information for reporting back to the main group. This information from both groups will be made available on the website.
Heather Jack then gave a brief update on the RMS Scotland Committee and the RMS in general. Heather thanked the sponsors who rallied to our aid at short notice and to Edith for arranging the day despite this unforeseen problem. Heather brought news from the RMS Conference that some of the Scotland members received awards at the conference. Mr Ken Glasgow received the Records Manager of the Year award. His team at the Scottish Executive won the RMS Team award. The staff at Falkirk Council also won an award for Team Highly Commended along with Dundee University Centre for Archive and Information Studies. Heather noted that members are still not fully utilizing MailTalk, that there was only a 16% uptake in the last survey and that we are not using the discussion boards. It would be nice if we could use the Scotland site to discuss issues that relate to our areas. Heather has been Chair of the Committee for two years now and she will be stepping down, the post will go to vote at the AGM in September.
Edith Pringault-Adam thanked all of the sponsors for their part in making the day a success and thanked the University for having us.
The Scotland Group would like to thank Keith G Fraser and all at Robert Gordon's for hosting the event and Inform Consult, Iron Mountain, McPherson's Document Solutions, Tower Software and Tribal for their sponsorship of the event.
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