October 5, 2006
Dear Everyone:
I flew back from “Hobby” this morning and boy, are my arms tired. (Ba-dum-pum!)
Yet another business trip to “Hobby”, one of
Actually, one of the offices we were there to visit is technically not in “Hobby”. It’s in “Sugarland”. “Sugarland” is a small town that has steadfastly remained a small town. It just happens to completely surrounded by the city of “Hobby”. “Sugarland” probably started out as the usual farming, or cattle-raising, community. Then “Hobby” kept growing and growing until it engulfed “Sugarland” rather like The Blob.
You’ll be driving along and you see a sign that reads, “Leaving “Hobby””. This means you’re in “Sugarland”. A few blocks later you see another sign that reads, “Entering “Hobby”” and you’re not in “Sugarland” anymore.
The reason for this trip (as if it matters) was to provide education to a large group of people on something we like to call Electronic Clean Up Day, or ECUD. A Clean Up Day is simply a date that is set aside by management for people to spend cleaning out their office space. Get rid of those old binders from that conference you attended five years ago and never consulted once after you got back.
While you’re at it, donate some of those goofy toys that you picked up during a training session to a children’s shelter. That jacket you hung in the closet and never used? Give it away. Those business plans from two years ago, into the recycle bin.
Those of us in Information Management (IM) Consulting are there to advise as to what you can just throw away and what you have to keep according to the Retention Schedule. The Retention Schedule is a list of 26 Business Functions and hundreds of Record Categories that spell out what to keep and for how long. It’s based on operating needs, proof of ownership, whether or not a record protects the company in a legal proceeding (read: lawsuit), or if a government entity just says you have to keep a record. There are over 4700 federal, state and local statutes and regulations that pertain to legal requirements for business records.
Aren’t you glad you don’t have to read all 4700 of them to find out if that piece of paper in your hand is something you have to keep?
What’s different about Electronic Clean Up Days is that the records in question are electronic. They’re not on paper, although people may have printed them from time to time. The actual official record is a Word document, or an Excel Spreadsheet, or a PowerPoint presentation stored on a drive somewhere. Most of them are stored on a special kind of computer called a “file server”. The file server is divided up into what are called “shared drives”, meaning people can share the documents stored there.
There are, figuratively speaking, tons of them out there. People create a document, use it, then forget about it. And that creates a really big mess when someone is trying to locate a particular document. It boils down to “what did I call it and where did I park it?”
Now we’re trying to get them (“them” being one of Company’s operating companies called Boring and Really Expensive Services, or BRES) to address this monumental mess they have. Everyone agrees it’s a mess. Everyone agrees it needs to be cleaned up. Everyone assures us that they’re too busy to do it right now. We then assure them that their company president disagrees.
We also give them some tools that can help them locate and deal with their electronic documents. This is good because a lot of other operating companies are starting to jump on the bandwagon. Electronic Clean Up Days is going to be a popular presentation at the IM Conference to be held here in “Pleasanton” the week after next.
Speaking of next week, I spoke with one of my other customers in “Hobby” and we agreed that, since no one has registered to take the training that I was going to give, we would cancel the training and the trip. So I don’t have to go back to “Hobby” next week. (Yeah!!!)
And that means I can finally put my garbage out to be picked up.
Love, as always,
Pete
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