Love, As Always, Pete

The Weekly Letters, by A. Pedersen Wood

March 25, 2005

Dear Everyone:

I decided to take today as my first, official Vacation Day.  Hence, no Letter last night, Letter today instead.

The reason I decided to take a Vacation Day is that I was getting tired and had started to make stupid, little mistakes.  Maybe the move into our new “space standards” was taking a toll on me.  But when one of those stupid, little mistakes threatened to take out the back of my carport, I looked at my schedule to see when I could take some time off.  Between this week and the first one in April, when I’ll be visiting beloved “Hobby”, today looked like the best day.

So I scheduled a Vacation Day, got it approved by my supervisor (actually, his email response was, “Have a great weekend.”), went to bed early last night and slept a solid twelve hours.  I feel much better now.

In other news…

Last summer, when I attended the Association of Records Managers and Administrators (ARMA) Leadership Conference, one of the speakers warned us about IT.  IT is Information Technology, i.e., the computer people.  His warning was echoed by our first speaker at the Mt Diablo Chapter last September and again at the International Conference in October in Long Beach.  In effect, they were saying, “Watch out for IT.  They will try to take over your department.”

The general stereotype is that “records management” means the management of paper records in a typical file room.  When I first joined the corporate records management group in San Francisco in 1987, someone asked me if I was “one of the Box People.”  The people who manage the paper records that go into boxes to be stored in the Records Center.

In sharp contrast, “information management” means the management of the technology used to manage electronic information, as well as lots of other things.  I could go on for pages, but you don’t really care about it.  So here’s the thing:

During the rush to find ways to reduce costs, a project was created to look at Information Management.  It was called the Information Management Program Project.  The project leader took one look at the acronym (“impp”) and promptly changed the name to Enterprise Information Management.  EIM recently announced its first big recommendation:  Take Information Management out of BRES (“Boring and Really Expensive Services”), push it to a much higher level throughout the organization, and move it into the IT Company.

(Most companies have an IT department.  Company, which is larger than some Third World countries, has an entire Operating Company.  It used to be called CITC – Company Information Technology Company.  But with the merger in 2001, it would have become ACITC and people just started dropping the “AC” and calling it ITC.)

When I first read about the announcement, I thought, “Uh-oh!  Just what ARMA warned us about.”  But then I had a chance to think about it and I realized what a great idea this is.  The thing about IT is, they have clout.  When IT says, “You will do this,” people do it.  When we say, “You will do this,” people just shrug.  “What do you know, you’re just ‘the Box People’.”  So moving to IT is looking good to me.

And when does this happen?  In about five weeks, on the first of May.  So, having just moved into our new quarters, there is already talk of where we will be moved to next.  On the plus side, there is no talk of whose job will be cut.  The organization is going to be even bigger than it is now.  The first step will be a “drag and drop” of entire groups out of BRES and into ITC without any other changes taking place.

Looks like a very interesting Spring up ahead.

Love, as always,

 

Pete

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