IRMS Public Sector Group: Facing the Brave New World By Elizabeth Barber “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us” (A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens) It may be that the opening lines to a Tale of Two Cities, have been over-used since the beginning of the pandemic, nevertheless they open a window onto the development of the Public Sector Group since March 2020. We were due to meet, in person, on March 20th at the Westminster Archives Centre, and I watched anxiously as the number of coronavirus cases was rising and in the end I made the very difficult decision to cancel the event, thinking that we would re-convene later on in the year. Now, 15 months on, we have experienced really exciting developments in the provision of content to our members all over the globe. The one thing that our membership have talked about missing, is the in person contact and sharing of ideas, and whilst we might be moving towards the realisation that whole
day events no longer fit the needs of the membership, we are looking actively at how we might start to provide an in-person event as soon as it is safe to do so. At the beginning we as Group Chairs were starting to explore how we might continue to provide content and support to our membership. The purchase of the Livestorm platform allowed us to offer on line webinars. Learning how to set up and use Livestorm involved a tremendous amount of work on the part of the Exec and the Groups. Sadly, it coincided with a close family bereavement and I had to take some time out, so I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks to Sarah Graham, who stepped in and took over the Livestorm management for the Public Sector Group. It meant that we were able to move into providing online content within a few weeks of the system being available. We were delighted to be able to welcome the three speakers who would have spoken at the event on March 20th. Robert Bath starred at our premiere in May, followed by Randy Smart Perkins and Richard Jeffrey-Cook. These speakers were all covering different aspects of M365 from managing in Teams to data security. Scott Sammons also joined us to share his expertise on the “Power of 3 covering ROPA, Information Asset Register and Retention Schedule”. We were very excited about the number of delegates who signed up for these sessions and made us stop and think about how this might work in the future rather than just as a response to the pandemic.
INFORMATION AND RECORDS MANAGEMENT SOCIETY 51
