Guest post by Andy Resto.
Background and overview
In Fall 2021, the records management professionals from UBC Vancouver and Okanagan campuses began the process of updating and completing records retention and disposition schedules for the university. As a worklearn student, I have been able to be a part of the Records Retention Schedule Development (RRSD) working group whose members are: Alan Doyle, Paige Hohmann, Michael Stewart, Barbara Towell and myself). This project is important for the university, and has been significant for my own professional development.
When Andy is not providing expert help to the RMO….
As per UBC BoG Records Management Policy GA4, s. 2.2, and 2.3, the institutional records of the University of British Columbia require appropriate retention and disposition, and it is the responsibility of the University’s archival and records management professionals to design, issue, and maintain this guidance. A lot has changed since the schedules were last comprehensively updated in 1997, and for those reasons this project has been given high priority.
Between September 2021 and March 2022 the RRSD working group created 81 new retention and disposition schedules, and posted them online for review in conjunction with a web development project redesigning the records management website.
Tasks
My role on the working group involved project management and logistics work as well as document control, formatting, and data management. I organized bi-weekly meetings and kept track of action items alongside e-Records Manager Barbara Towell. As a group we created a review procedure for schedules development as they were uploaded to a shared MS Teams site and edited. After each schedule was reviewed by the team I would move it from our review area in MSTeams to a protected staging area for updates and formatting.
Along the way I kept track of important records management data points such as, Office of Primary Responsibility (OPR) which are units identified in the schedules as having responsibility for the full and complete set of records on a record series. Documenting OPR is important because some units may think they are responsible to retain records for the full retention when they are not. I also tracked the authorities such as UBC’s Board of Governors Policies, legal statutes, regulations, and professional best practices to assist UBC’s Legal Counsel in their approval of the schedules. Finally, I identified and listed all the records series whose final disposition was either selective or full retention by university archives in order to assist with the appraisal and approval by the University Archivist, Erwin Wodarczak.
The bulk of the schedule creation was done by Barbara Towell, though additions were also made by Paige Hohmann, Alan Doyle, myself and Michael Stewart. Handling the 80+ schedules as they were written and edited and classified was a great learning experience that I’ll certainly carry over to other archival positions I have in the future. Records environments can only get smaller and easier to maintain after UBC, right?
To develop the new schedules, we first had to identify gaps left from the old schedules by mapping out the functions and activities of the university. Using Microsoft Visio to help visualize university functions provides a bird’s-eye view and helped to compartmentalize the work.
Once we were reasonably happy with the new schedules, the focus turned towards the new records management webpage which would house them. Once this WordPress site was ready to be populated, I separated each individual schedule from the master and uploaded them to their own pages. We hope the website will be user-friendly, easy to navigate and beneficial to the units who need access to the schedules. Through the spring we will make the schedules available for community review, using a survey that we created. After incorporating feedback, the schedules will be ready for approval in early summer 2022.
Challenges
Two big challenges come to mind with this project: 1) developing a dependable and consistent review process with our new website, and 2) coordinating the development between both UBC campuses (Vancouver and Okanagan). Matching up our own timeline of schedule development with web development was challenging and required flexibility, but at the end of the day taking the extra time to ensure the website was functional and effective will pay dividends. We will see the impact of this for the first time once the official university process is underway.
As far as the two campuses go, University functions and offices completing those functions differ from time to time; this made writing certain schedules challenging, but also proved to be challenging from a data management perspective. Maintaining two separate lists of OPR contacts, for example, was time-consuming.
Takeaways
Though it may seem daunting, developing or reviewing retention and disposition schedules is a necessary process, and totally feasible if you take the time to lay out good workflows. Knowing which schedules are under review, which are ready to be uploaded, and having ways to access information from the schedules quickly are all important. Consider clearly defining team roles, utilize team members’ expertise, and designate someone to maintain centralized final documents. Also, remember that the main thing is to have the schedule made, because the details can be hashed out later during a review process.
A benefit of these records retention and disposition schedules is to lessen the burden on records creators to conduct external research themselves on how to handle their records. They also act as a way to identify what records should be sent to the university archives as well as giving units the green light for records destruction. We want less data build-up, less risk for liability issues, and more storage space. Follow the schedules and we’ll get there, people who made these know what they’re talking about.
Next Steps
From mid-March to mid-May 2022 we will be conducting two phases of reviews. As the new website is launched, users from UBC will be able to visit our new retention and disposition schedule pages and provide feedback using a Qualtrics survey. This survey was designed to target missing pieces in our schedules. The survey will identify the participant, as well as the schedule they are commenting on, which will allow us to quickly identify where changes need to be made.
After revisions from the first round of reviews, the schedules will be sent out once again for a final commentary, after which point they will be ready for official UBC approval by University Archives and University Counsel.
My role during this period, aside from helping design the survey, will be to update documents and web pages with any necessary changes, ensuring our information is consistent and error-free for launch.