Category: Information Management

ARA 2023 – appreciating the value of archives

Posted by on in Information Management, Records Management, Retention Management

Thought-provoking presentations provide fresh ideas and new insights.

We were thrilled to attend the recent Archive and Records Association (ARA) Annual Conference in Belfast earlier this month.

This was our first time attending this event and it was a fantastic opportunity to meet and learn from so many like-minded peers.

Our very own Records Management Expert, Company Director and Information Management Consultant here at Metataxis, Noeleen Schenk was there, in both the roles of delegate and speaker. She shares her experience and notable highlights below:

The Archive and Records Association (ARA) Annual Conference was a really enjoyable event. I got to attend many thought-provoking presentations and have come away professionally revived – buzzing with fresh thoughts and new insights to bring to our own client work.

As an information manager, focused on current information and records, I am in awe of the work our archival colleagues undertake. I heard some remarkable stories how lost or nearly lost archives were rescued, how to catalogue archives to facilitate access, and how we can interpret archival content to further enhance our understanding of the past – these sessions were truly fascinating.

Key takeaways from the Archive and Records Association (ARA) Conference

  1. It is shocking to learn how many organisations and institutions do not value archives or consider their community memory
  2. Archivists are exceedingly proactive in engaging with their communities
  3. I will visit and view exhibitions in a whole new light and with much more appreciation
  4. We, as a profession, need to engage with archival colleagues so much more
  5. Archivists should be involved from the start of the record creation, and not just at the end of the life cycle
  6. Archivists are actively engaged with the management, preservation and interpretation of their records, while as information managers, we typically operate at a more arms length, providing guidance and policy at a macro rather than micro level.

It was great to be amongst such friendly delegates, hearing everyone talking with real joy and enthusiasm and to be part of such a shared passion for records management.

We look forward to seeing you there next year!

Learn more about how we support organisations with records management. 

ARA Conference 2023

How to deal with “just in case” retention requirements

Posted by on in Information Management, Records Management, Retention Management, Retention Schedules

Herding cats: Dealing with “just in case”

Trying to keep your retention schedules simple is an ongoing battle against the forces of complexity. And one of the major things that will hinder your plans to simplify your retention requirements will be your retention schedule stakeholders. People really do like to hold on to things. Sometimes legitimately, sometimes not so much.

In her latest blog, Siobhan King, Senior Consultant at Metataxis, reveals ways to ensure complex records management and retention requirements are accommodated.

Here’s part 5:

Herding skills

Growing up in New Zealand, a television favourite of mine was a local version of A Man and his Dog, which was named with typical kiwi literal-mindedness: The Dog Show.

When designing data retention schedules, I often think back to the steeliness of two dogs named Zip and Jess as they stared down particularly toey sheep to nudge them into their pens. Just like the pens on A Man and his Dog, you must gently, but firmly, guide your users towards the right retention management decisions.

The dreaded “just in case” argument

“Just in case” is the kind of phrase most records managers dread hearing from their stakeholders.

There are many perfectly legitimate reasons users give for wanting to hold on to records for a certain period of time. There may be a law or regulation that needs to be adhered to, rights that are protected, or business processes which require the records to be referred to at any point in time.

But then there are the more nebulous reasons people give for holding on to records – “just in case something happens, and I need them.” Just in case what? Well, it could be just about anything.

And herein lies the problem. With enough imagination, you can dream up any worst-case scenario where an obscure old record saves the day.

just in case retention requirements

Isolated incidents

And what is even worse… is when there actually has been a freak occurrence where this exact situation has happened. Someone has managed to save your organisation a great deal of money or embarrassment with an email they’ve had stored in their mailbox for nine years.

Take a deep breath, hold your nerve and have some of these questions ready when talking to someone who presents you with a “just in case” argument:

  1. Check they understand triggers: Check that your stakeholders understand that information will not be disposed of before they are triggered. “Just in case” may arise from a misunderstanding of triggers and a fear that you’re going to delete records out from under people while they still have a legitimate need for them.
  1. Consider the personal data and data subject rights: Look at the personal data that is held in each record and whether you can reasonably argue that there is a legitimate business need that outweighs data subject rights? Remind people that your organisation does have to meet data protection requirements which does not accept “just in case” as a reason for retention.
  1. Measure the risk: Ask your stakeholders “what is the likelihood of the just in case scenario happening (again)?” and look at the “actual risk?” i.e. what does it cost the organisation?  
    As an example, I’ve had a stakeholder tell me that a record type had to be kept in order to prevent the organisation potentially incurring costs from a complaints process, However, it turned out that the actual total cost was just £24. What’s more, the likelihood of this risky event recurring was also very low. It had only happened once, and this was over six years ago. Ask how often, how likely, and how much it would cost to apply a risk management evaluation to your retention requirements.
  1. Get the full story on that “save the day” scenario: In the case where a record “saved the day” do not be afraid to probe (in a neutral way) to get some more information about the full scenario. It is quite possible you are not getting the full story. For example:
  • Did the record in question only help because it was a proxy for something else that should have been retained but was too difficult to find in a time-critical situation?
  • How long ago did this happen? Did it happen so long ago, things have moved on and it’s no longer relevant?
  • Was the person telling you this story involved enough to understand what actually happened? Could it even be an urban legend?

Helping people find more appropriate retention rules

These are just some of the ways you can begin to unpick the requirement to keep data “just in case.”

Getting to the bottom of the underlying concerns that drive such a requirement can help you to guide your stakeholders to more appropriate retention rules.

It can often feel like herding cats, but with patience and understanding, it’s a rewarding result once it’s done. All that’s left to do is implement your retention rules. We’ll be looking at implementation in the final of this blog of this series next time.

In the meantime, if you need some help talking to your stakeholders about records management, or would like to learn more about practical data retention and records management, simply contact us.

How to avoid complex retention requirements

Posted by on in Information Management, Records Management, Retention Management, Retention Schedules

The struggle against complexity

Trying to keep your retention schedules simple is an ongoing battle against the forces of complexity. And one of the major things that will hinder your plans to simplify your retention requirements will be your retention schedule stakeholders. People really do like to complicate things. Sometimes legitimately, sometimes not so much.

In her latest blog series, Siobhan King, Senior Consultant at Metataxis, reveals ways to ensure complex records management and retention requirements are accommodated.

Here’s part 4:

Valuing subject matter expertise…

Generally, your stakeholders are the best people to talk to regarding how long records should be kept, especially for those record types whose retention is determined by business needs over legal or regulatory requirements. Stakeholders are a great source of information about how the business works and what records are produced. But their insights shouldn’t be taken as law when it comes to the retention schedule. Stakeholders are not records managers and do not have the expertise to classify and manage records – this is where we add value. 

…and records management

When consulting with your organisation on the retention schedule, you will encounter users who are keen to press upon you the vital importance of their records. They are likely to explain the dire consequences that will occur if incorrect retention is applied to the records they produce. You can trust stakeholder direction a lot of the time, as they will often identify those exceptional record types that need to be kept longer because their early destruction will significantly impact the organisation. But occasionally, people make distinctions that don’t really matter from a retention management perspective.

Challenging conversations about values

When responding to the above concerns, there is, of course, a need to tread carefully. These can be challenging conversations to have. No one will respond well to the argument that they are not beautiful and unique snowflakes. Everyone needs to know that their contribution to an organisation is important. But the difference is that the retention value you place on the outputs of the activity is not a reflection of the value of the activity to the organisation.

challenging retention requirements

Dealing with complex retention requests

For some, simply acknowledging the complexity of business functions and activities is enough. This can be done verbally or incorporated into documentation. Appropriate places to capture this knowledge might be Retention Schedule class descriptions, Information Asset Registers, user guides or retention implementation plans. 

Some things you can counteract, some you have to accept. There are some common concerns or misconceptions you can head off at the pass if you’re prepared for them. Here is a list of some common issues I have encountered:

  1. Over-retention of records arising from poor internal processes which need to be amended
  2. Concerns about technical or practical application of retention, for example where records have insufficient metadata
  3. An over-estimation of the importance of their function and the records they produce within the organisation as a whole
  4. A lack of understanding of evidential requirements and/or personal data requirements
  5. Belief that retention will prevent uncommon or unlikely events which would cause problems for the organisation 

A matter of perspective

The small differences that people see in their work are important to ensure the job is done well. However, it’s not always important from a retention perspective, your job is to weight user expectations within the broader context for the organisation so you can create a simpler retention schedule.

Next time, we’ll look at the dreaded “just in case” requirement that often arises when having these conversations with stakeholders. 

Retention management can be challenging. Here at Metataxis, we’ve helped many organisations address these challenges. If you would like to learn more about practical data retention and records management, simply contact us.

Retention schedules made simple

Posted by on in Information Management, Retention Management, Retention Schedules

Simplifying retention schedules for your big bucket data

In her latest blog series, Siobhan King, Senior Consultant at Metataxis, addresses the value of big bucket data retention and shares some ideas how to simplify your retention schedules to minimise complexities across your organisation.

Here’s part 3:

It’s not all about class

Organising your retention schedules into big buckets is not about trying to create large all-encompassing retention classes. While this is of course a really important step, there are a number of other parts to your retention schedule that you will want to simplify. Simplifying all aspects of your Schedule reduces the number of factors, which in turn reduces complexity.  

When talking to your stakeholders, the following could be considered to maintain simplicity for stakeholders:

Retention periods

If you can, try to corral your stakeholders to agree to a small number of retention period types in your schedule. There are common regulatory time periods that can help you choose which ones you want to use. For example: Financial records are usually kept for 7 years, as is the catch all retention mechanism the Limitation Act. So, try to nudge people towards choosing 7 years as a retention period for records that need to be kept for a moderately long period of time. Try to avoid having retention periods of 6 years, 8 years, or 9 years. These will involve much more effort to implement.

Triggers

If you ask a stakeholder to define when a business process is over, they can be very specific. For example: “the Quality Review of the inspection process is completed once the B488 form has had its second review by the fourth-tier quality reviewer.”

When really, a trigger such as “end of quality review” would suffice.

Specific triggers like this will make your retention schedule very complex, and extremely difficult when you try to apply this to systems. We can trust that the people doing the work would know how and when to mark something is closed. But we do not need to know the exact detail of the process to execute retention.

Having more general triggers, such as “end of programme/project” or “contract closure” can be really useful as they can be used in a number of different contexts. So, we suggest you try to have as few triggers as you can, and make them as broad as possible.

Disposal authorisers

Identifying an appropriate and reasonable number of people to be responsible for disposal review at the end of lifecycle for records is by far this most challenging aspect of any data retention schedule.

The challenge arises from needing someone with a sufficiently senior role to make a decision, while being operational enough to understand the content of the records to be disposed of.

Unless your organisation is really small, this is unlikely to be the same person. This is because, for example, the head of HR is concerned with governance and strategy and not likely to know the operational ins and outs of say, recruitment campaigns and applicants.

retention schedules disposal authorisers

Traditionally, this has meant that there is some form of delegation of decision making to the subject matter experts. Or conversely, some sign off of decisions are made by the head of department. This is a frustratingly difficult aspect of a retention schedule to simplify. Setting up workflows to incorporate a lot of people is really difficult and costly, so it is important to try to keep the number of authorisers low – even though this is challenging.

Disposal actions

As with the above, we recommend keeping these as simple as possible. Delete or archive may be sufficient for most organisations.

The question “what is an archive?” is a whole other conversation. Some organisations will deposit data to a national repository such as TNA, some will have their own in-house archive. Others will have records that have long-term value and need to be kept permanently even if the organisation does not have an archive.

Minimisation leads to simplification

When your retention periods, triggers, actions and authorisers are simplified, something beautiful happens. With a smaller number of factors in play, it makes it much easier to lump record types into much larger retention classes. This makes big bucket retention that much more possible! 

So don’t just go straight for classes when simplifying your Schedule. Think about minimising all the moving parts as well. It will make things much easier in the long run.

Next time, I will talk about dealing with the complexity that people will inevitably want to introduce to your schedule and how to deal with “snowflake” requests.

Retention management can be challenging. Here at Metataxis, we’ve helped many organisations address these challenges. If you would like to learn more about practical data retention and records management, simply contact us.

Demystifying data retention

Posted by on in Information Management, Retention Management

Simplifying data retention for your stakeholders

In her latest blog series, Siobhan King, Senior Consultant at Metataxis, addresses the value of big bucket data retention and shares some top tips how to make it easier for your colleagues to understand.

Here’s part 2:

A lesson in transparency

Early in my career, a project manager who I worked with on a retention project said she found me to be “mercurial” when it came to advising stakeholders on retention. Flattering as it was to be referred to as “the oracle” on data retention, I was rather mortified to learn I was seen as something akin to a cold and unpredictable power dispensing mystical advice.

Over the next few months I introduced greater transparency to my approach, explaining why I was making the recommendations I made. Three months later, the same colleague proudly told me she could always pick what sort of advice I would give users and even felt confident giving advice on retention herself. Result!

Demystifying retention is really important to our colleagues and stakeholders. Demystifying how we arrive at the retention periods we advise for our users is probably one of the biggest things you can do to make retention much more approachable.

Here are some tips to make your process for retention management much easier for colleagues to understand:

Explain the different drivers for retention

Explain to your colleagues that retention schedules are shaped both by what the law requires and what the business requires. This may be disappointing news to some stakeholders who would prefer a hard and fast answer on how long things should be kept encoded in law. But business value is the biggest conversation to have with stakeholders. If people understand the basic principle of assigning a business value up front, the rest of the conversation will got a lot easier.

Talk to stakeholders about their business processes

One of stakeholders’ top concerns regarding retention management is that retention rules mean records will be deleted before the end of a business process. Projects are a classic example of this. Stakeholders might see a retention period of, say 6 years, and fear that records related to projects that run for decades will be deleted before the project has ended. This is the perfect opportunity to put stakeholders straight about retention triggers and the need to identify when the business process ends. This can be followed up with a discussion about how long records are needed after the business process ends.

Balance organisational interests with data subject rights

If stakeholders are managing personal data, they may already be aware that they need to manage this in line with GDPR.  This stakeholder group is probably the most frustrated to learn that the GDPR doesn’t tell us exactly how long we can keep personal data, but uses slightly evasive legal terms like “legitimate purpose” and “reasonable” which can be somewhat subjective. 

Sometimes, you may have to tell stakeholders that the period of time they propose to keep personal data is unreasonable e.g. 20 years for former customers. It may be unreasonable because they can’t point to a legitimate business reason to keep things that long, because it’s a real outlier in terms of industry practice, or because if you asked the person on the street what they thought of the retention practices they might find it unacceptable.

Conversely, sometimes you need to reassure a stakeholder that it is perfectly acceptable to retain certain types of personal data for a long time because it protects the rights of the organisation, and more importantly, it protects the rights of the data subjects themselves (for example, records which provide proof of ownership, benefits conferred or qualifications conferred).

Data retention can be challenging. Here at Metataxis, we’ve helped many organisations address these challenges. If you would like to learn more about practical data retention and records management, simply contact us.