Defining new records management policies & procedures for UK regulator
Introduction
This independent public body is responsible for regulating the conduct of around 42,000 businesses across the UK.
Business drivers
This UK regulator recognised that they had a significant skills and capability shortage around information and records management. With no-one internally responsible for records management, the team accepted that they were not maintaining nor managing their records in compliance with their legal and regulatory obligations.
In addition, as a regulator, this poor records management practice was effectively putting some of their own enforcement actions at risk. However, the records management challenge felt intractable, and the organisation simply did not know where to get started to tackle the issue. They needed expert support to address their information management strategy – and they needed it sooner rather than later.

Key requirements
This UK regulatory body wanted to implement an information management strategy and roadmap to address their records management issues and maintain compliance.
The organisation was looking to deploy clear information management standards, procedures, practices, guidelines as well as defining best practices for governing the management and use of the organisation’s information and records moving forward.
They needed expert support to improve their information management policy, practices and procedures as well as champion best practice across the business in relation to electronic information management. They also wanted to be able to identify key information assets to manage their business value, risk, content and lifecycles as part of the compliance process.
The Metataxis approach
As Information Strategy experts, Metataxis was engaged by the client to help them define and create a comprehensive, clear and compliant information management strategy and associated roadmap.
In the first instance, we undertook an extensive discovery audit of their existing information management practices and requirements. This exercise revealed a clear view of the regulator’s current practices – highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses of their records management processes. We then assessed these results against industry standards (ISO 15489) as well as their legal and regulatory obligations for managing records.

This provided the regulator with a complete picture of both their “as is” and “to be” of their records management practice.
Based on this discovery audit, we were able to create an information management strategy for the Regulator. Through the creation of an information maturity model and then plotting the organisation’s current records management practice against it, we were also able to formulate a high-level action plan to enable the regulator to implement their new information strategy in a controlled and staged manner.
Metataxis worked closely with the business to understand their current situation in order to define the best records management practices, methodologies, techniques and development tools to help them deliver compliant operations.
Armed with a clear picture of their current practices and a defined information management strategy, the Regulator was well prepared to move forward, confident they were doing so in a compliant manner.
As part of the strategy, we were also able to identify synergies between information management and other existing programmes of improvement, to effectively introduce and embed good practice into all new changes being introduced, delivering real value to the business.
This pragmatic and holistic approach really helped win the hearts and minds of front-line staff and really demonstrated the value of information management across the organisation. This also ensured that information management was not seen as a stand-alone activity, but one that needs to be embedded into all practices to be successful.
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