Transforming Estates Records Management (TERM) A pilot implementation of the JISC Impact Calculator at King’s College London Lessons Learnt Report 1.
Overview
King’s College London has one of the largest university estates in the UK including 100 major buildings on five academic campuses as well as numerous others across London and the South East. Several buildings are located within NHS Trust estates and two major sites are managed by a commercial facilities services provider (Ecovert) under PFI arrangements. The College is currently involved in two new builds and has just signed a 78 year lease for the East Wing of Somerset House, a grade one listed building. Several other buildings are grade two listed. In June 2009 the College estate was valued at £1.8 billion. A history of mergers, site specific management and the employment of external project managers has meant that record keeping within the Estates & Facilities directorate complex and diverse. Records are captured and stored in a number of discrete systems (for project management, space management, maintenance, incident reporting and so on) and data is not effectively integrated. Paper records persist too and information duplication and excessive retention are widespread. Until recently, with the introduction of both centralised electronic and improved paper storage for business records, Estates & Facilities have lacked the impetus and sufficient support to address their records management problems. Recent infrastructure improvements within the College have resulted in a centralised storage solution for core business applications which Estates & Facilities have not been able to take advantage of due to information duplication and excessive retention. This situation has also delayed their ability to move to Access Kings Global Desktop, a remote access solution that provides access to business applications and a shared storage solution. The availability of additional expert support through this project was seen as a valuable spur for the College to review Estates & Facilities’ records as well as being a genuinely challenging test of the Calculator.
2.
Methodology
In order to effectively test the Calculator, a broad range of processes were considered focused on the areas in which the Estates & Facilities department most needed assistance. These were •
The number of boxes of Estates & Facilities paper records in non-current storage Target: to reduce this through better retention control and more thorough deduplication
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The number of boxes of Estates & Facilities paper records sent into non-current storage with clear and useful contents lists Target: to increase this through better identification of records and record types
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Size of Estates & Facilities desktop share
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Target: to reduce this through better management including de-duplication and retention control •
Percentage of records duplicated, both paper and electronic Target: to reduce this through a systematic approach to RM in the current and noncurrent lifecycle phases
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Time spent retrieving records Target: to reduce this through more reliable and consistent filing of shared information including enhanced local policies for document naming and versioning
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Percentage of records with a clear retention period assigned by Estates & Facilities staff Target: to increase this through better application of the College RDRS
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Level of RM awareness amongst Estates & Facilities’ staff Target: to increase this (measured by before and after surveys) through targeted advice, support and training
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Effective management data on storage costs Target: to deliver this by providing clear unit costs for paper and electronic storage
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Improve compliance within Estates & Facilities Target: to increase awareness of and compliance with legislation informing records retention
With the establishment of these targets, the project had a clear focus and the benefits of improved records management practices within the Estates & Facilities department would be demonstrable across a number of areas.
3.
Implementation
The project was delivered in a number of ways. Firstly a project steering group, comprised of three members of the College records management team and key members of the Estates & Facilities department was established. Monthly steering group meetings were set with each meeting focused on a specific area of development, i.e. records retention, practical appraisal, legal compliance, etc. Members of the steering group were encouraged to pass information and resources from these sessions on to their colleagues and teams. In collaboration with the steering group, a number of aids were produced to assist Estates & Facilities staff with implementing more efficient records management practices within their department. These included an Estates & Facilities Records Retention Schedule, an extended and improved version of the Estates & Facilities records section of our standard College retention schedule. This provided comprehensive guidance on the retention and disposal of a wide range of Estates & Facilities documents, and incorporated JISC resources and best practice from other institutions. A decision tree was also made available for appraising records, aimed at improving staff awareness and confidence when deciding which records needed to be kept.
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Use of these resources, in collaboration with a comprehensive training programme, were designed to produce a measurable improvement in records management practices within the Estates & Facilities department and provide data for entry into the Calculator.
4.
Lessons Learnt
Over the course of the six month project, changes were inevitably made to the original plans and a number of lessons were learnt. 4.1
Staff buy-in to project
Staff within the Archives and Information Management team at King’s had worked over the previous 6 months with Estates & Facilities on the JISC funded PEKin project. Although this is focussed on archival value digital information, it had become clear that the lack of records management within the directorate was affecting the ability to capture information at final stages in the lifecycle. A good relationship had already been established with key staff which allowed this project to move forward within such limited timescales. A stakeholders group was set up which met monthly and Senior Management gave their support early on. This project did not operate in isolation from other priorities within the College. During the project, two long term staff took early retirement and remaining staff had to take on existing roles during a re-organisation that is still not complete. Whilst key staff had committed themselves to the project, they also had to consider other priorities and were not always able to attend meetings or respond to requests for information within expected timescales. It is important not to underestimate the amount of time needed to get buy-in or how much staff time must be invested in building relationships and retaining them. 4.2
Unfamiliarity with the terminology used in the Calculator
Staff working on the project did not have experience of defining business processes or of translating metrics into monetary terms. As the methodology was unfamiliar, much time was spent referring to guidance notes and interpreting them. The project workshop in March was helpful in answering some queries but only the project manager attended this. The Impact Calculator guidance notes were not particularly easy to understand. We felt that these could have been written in much plainer English and simplified to assist users from a non-business background. Temporary staff working on the project spent a great deal of time reading the guidance notes, deciphering the information and interpreting how the calculator should be used. Records management professionals from a non-business background found inputting data into the Calculator to be a confusing and daunting task. Our team had little experience of assigning value (monetary or other) to specific records management processes and unfamiliar terminology (such as ‘conversion of unit in non-monetary terms’) did result in some uncertainty as to what should be entered in each field, and how an appropriate entry was to be made. Towards the end of the project, a finance manager was identified who was able to support the project staff in understanding the terminology. Future users of the impact calculator may be supported by similar staff that can ensure that the calculations are realistic and will
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ensure that senior managers are provided with a clearer understanding of the benefits of change management activities.
4.3
Project scope
Within the bid document, nine areas of identifiable change had been identified. The size of King’s Estate and the issues surrounding localised project management meant that this was not practical as a test of the Impact Calculator. With the limited staff resources available, a better test of the Calculator was to reduce the scope to less problem areas and address other issues at a later date as part of other projects. In practice, the areas of change were cut down to three areas, which allowed us to focus on a range of different metrics and work with key Estates & Facilities staff. One metric that was discarded focussed on records duplication, both paper and electronic, throughout the Estates & Facilities department. The project provided the opportunity to audit the location and volume of records but not to progress to resolve these issues. There were similar issues with electronic storage and the project provided an opportunity to address the highly dispersed and localised records storage arrangements and plan further work to resolve these issues. On another occasion further pre project research into the operational and business needs of the Estates & Facilities department would support better decisions about scope and capacity for change.
4.4
Defining metrics
In the initial bid to pilot the Calculator, a set of nine metrics were defined which would contribute to improved records management within the Estates & Facilities Directorate. Once initial data collection had been initiated, it became clear that each metric represented a business process in its own right, requiring a number of sub-level business processes to be defined and individual instances of the Impact Calculator were needed to document each business process. Consequently, the amount of research required and the amount of data capture expanded considerably during the project The need to re-interpret initial metrics and to identify further data capture that would be required was confirmed during the Impact Calculator workshop in March, nearly halfway through the project. This led to some project delays whilst the metrics were reviewed. Defining metrics continued to be a problem throughout the project. As work streams progressed and the results of efforts across various areas became clearer, there was a need to re-visit and re-write the metrics on several occasions, so that they continued to be an accurate reflection of the project. An original intention was to reduce the number of Estates & Facilities boxes in non-current storage through better retention control, and to increase the number of boxes in storage with clear and useful content lists. Both of these processes were part of the drive to improve appraisal techniques throughout Estates & Facilities, getting staff to appraise the records they were keeping and to understand why. Over time, these two processes merged to become ‘A reduction in the number of unlisted and un-appraised boxes of Estates & 4
Facilities paper records in non-current storage’. This new process encompassed the work on both box listing and assigning retention periods, and the associated metrics evolved to ensure they accurately reflected the project tasks and goals. 4.6
Measurables
One of the principle lessons learnt throughout the whole project, with regards to metrics, was the importance of choosing areas of focus that were suitable for entry into the Calculator. Once underway, it became clear that a number of our metrics were more difficult to measure in any meaningful way, and that including them in the Calculator would require a unit of measurement of awareness to be defined to do this. One such metrics was ‘the increase in Estates & Facilities staff awareness of records management and information compliance issues’ which was central to this project but not easily converted into a unit of measurement. For this particular metric we surveyed Estates & Facilities staff to assess their awareness of records management and compliance issues at both the start and end of the project. In the surveys, a graduated scale of awareness was used (from 0-5), with each number on the scale assigned a level of records management awareness (RMA). This RMA ultimately became our unit of measurement within the Calculator, expressed in percentage terms. Metrics with a space/cost focus were easily converted into meaningful figures. When defining the metrics, it was felt important to use a mix of both quantitative and qualitative calculations although the qualitative ones took more resource and time within a short project timescale. 4.7
Cost benefits
In order to obtain the data for the Impact Calculator, a number of costs had to be identified to enable the return on investment to be calculated. Figures such as the cost per gigabyte of stored data had not been previously defined within the College and externally defined costs were not readily available despite internet searches and requests for costs via online lists within the records management community. A figure was obtained for cost per gigabyte from two separate sources, both external storage providers, one of which will be providing shared storage services to the College as part of our Access Kings Global Desktop project. A large amount of resource had to be allocated to identify current storage silos and to collect figures for the storage spread across many different locations. The resulting cost benefits indicate that since the absolute cost of storage has dropped drastically over recent years, the cost benefits of reducing storage based solely on volumetric data does not provide a high return on investment. Exceptions to this are large data collections such as scanned drawings or digitised collections where costs will become significant and long term costs of retaining data such as management costs and retrieval issues. If cost benefits are calculated based on staff time, a very different pattern can be identified. A survey published in Information Week and regularly quoted in the media estimates that 7.5% of staff time is lost due to inability to retrieve information. If this is applied to a full-time member of staff losing that amount of time per year, based on an average staff salary of £25 per hour, the loss equates to over £3,000 per person per year. Although this cost cannot be realised in monetary terms, based on a staff allocation for Estates & Facilities of 151, any improvement in records management that reduces the amount of time lost will show substantial cost benefits.
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Lessons learnt in this instance have identified the difference in unit costs and where an alternative approach to cost benefit may show better return on investment and efficiency savings for the College 5
Successes
Gathering useful data for the metrics was a considerable challenge, and numerous meetings were held with Estates & Facilities staff to extrapolate information on storage space and costs, both paper and electronic, records retrieval times, use of electronic systems, and arrangement and management of project and maintenance documentation. These meetings however were used not only to gather data for entry into the Calculator, but also as useful outreach and networking opportunities. An additional benefit of this has been the increase in staff motivation within the Estates & Facilities department, and their engagement with records management practices. Whilst staff recognised that the nature of their department meant the implementation of new procedures for managing records would require both time and effort, by the end of the project there were clearly recognised potential rewards of such actions. As a result of this project, there has also been greater realisation within the department that achieving goals such as reducing storage space and costs is reliant on good understanding and application of records retention and legal compliance rules, i.e. knowing which records to keep and which can be disposed of. The most successful tool was undoubtedly the training programme. One-to-one and group sessions on box listings and records appraisal were offered as well as a popular session on management of electronic records, which included electronic document storage and email management, as well as the use of Enterprise Vault (the College software for archiving emails). These sessions were well attended, and future sessions will be run for Estates & Facilities staff over the summer. There is also potential to re-use the resources and training developed throughout the project to assist other departments at King’s.
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