Records management systems

With the increase in legislation and standards over recent years concerning the implementation of electronic document and records management (EDRM) solutions, organizations today face a real challenge. When choosing an EDRM platform, should the primary focus be how well it addresses an organization's corporate requirements or how easily an organization can adopt its use?Considering the ever-increasing flow of electronic information, maintaining a balance between the needs of the organization and those of its staff is often a daunting task. Organizations are required by law to ensure EDRM systems have the capability to apply business rules including the management and retention of both physical and electronic documents. Staff want to use a solution which isboth intuitive and familiar. Of equal importance is the need for staff to complete the job they are employed to do. To discount either set of requirements is a recipe for disaster.

Records management is the application of systematic controls concerning the creation, maintenance, and destruction of records required in conjunction with theoperation of an organization. The goal of this paper is to describe the principles and generally accepted practices of records management.

Tarrant County, Texas chose ViewDirect TCM from Mobius Management Systems to integrate and streamline records management and other mission-critical applications. The implementation has dramatically improved departmental productivity and customer service and has saved the County approximately $3.27 million over four years. Submitted by Mobius Management Systems

From the beginning Earlene Dixon, Prince William County Records Manager, knew it would take a team to implement a new records management system successfully. The majority of records being retained were paper. Becky Hogarth, IT Systems Developer, was asked to join the records management staff and together they set out to find a system that would allow agencies to identify and manage Virginiapublic records more effectively. Submitted by TOWER Software

One of the ongoing problems faced by Amtrak's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is that many of the functions they are expected to perform are not supported by advanced or even connected information systems. Therefore, any information storage and retrieval solution that actually does get integrated must be flexible, scaleable and compatible with whatever infrastructure is currently in place.

The phrase 24/7--24 hours a day, seven days a week--is one the medical community lives by. And what better way to make patient records available at all times than with a knowledge management system? No more hunting for a patient file stuck in a warehouse. No more lost lab report or misfiled medication order.Now, 24/7 access to medical records is extending beyond the confines of the hospital to the Web. Electronic patient records vendors such as MedPlus (www.medplus.com) and Axolotl (www.axolotl.com) provide access to secure patient records through the Internet.Capturing patient information electronically at the patient's bedside is also key to easing the flow of knowledge throughout the hospital. For example, at MacNeal Health Network (Berwyn, IL), doctors and staff can capture and enter patient information, and access records from sites spread across Chicago's suburbs.

If you go to the bank and they can't find your records, that's annoying. If you're wheeled into the emergency room at 3 a.m. with chest pains and they can't find your chart, that could be deadly.That's why healthcare facilities of all sizes are focusing on document imaging systems that will provide physicians with immediate access to documents. While many healthcare facilities have used document management systems for years, most have been imaging files after the fact--after patients leave the hospital.The need to provide physicians with immediate access to records has also brought the issue of backfile conversion to the forefront. Having parts of files available on an imaging system while others must be accessed on paper or microfilm makes life difficult.

Mississippi Valley Surgery Clinic provides the physicians and patients of the Quad Cities with a state-of-the-art outpatient surgical facility. The clinic searched for an affordable document management system allowing his team to store and access the surgeons' transcriptions for patients.

If your organization is like mine, you live and die with E-mail. It's how you share messages and files with colleagues. It's how you communicate with clients and suppliers. It's how you collaborate in team projects. It's how you get alerted to things you need to do. As the volume of fax and paper mail declines, that daily E-mail just keeps on rising.In all probability, your E-mail system is the repository of corporate knowledge that you actually use most often. It probably also represents the largest set of informal records that exists about your business. In fact, use of E-mail for all these things is so repeatedly woven into the fabric of daily work that you just don't have time to take messages and attachments out of the mail system and save them on the local file system, or--are you kidding?--index them in a document management system. After reading a mail message, you want to just leave it in the E-mail inbox, or perhaps drag it to a selected mail subfolder

The job of a records management office is to take all paper documents that need to be preserved, from all county offices, and implement a strategy to preserve them. For many years, the law mandated that all permanent records be preserved on microfilm. When the law changed on January 1, 2001 to allow digitally scanned copies to be legal documents, the challenge to find a preservation system that would be both efficient and cost effective increased dramatically.

IBM recently announced that it was the first records management vendor to receive the TNA certification in the UK. The more I looked into it the more I've realized there isn't anything that special about the "new" TNA certification --just a different name that reflects the merger of two UK government agencies into one. The certification is still based on the same UK PRO certification -- which the government agencies are still looking to update. One thing that does look interesting is that the IBM DB2 Records Management platform (i.e. the Tarian Engine) has been on a tear in the DoD 5015.2 certification area. In addition to certifications (Chapter 2 and 4 for the Records Manager itself) within IBM's own product line and the integration with Xerox DocuShare, it recently re-certified Infolinx Systems Solution's InfolinxWeb and CACI Highview Records Manager (formerly the Vredenburg product) with the new version of the product

The University of Winnipeg, like all universities, generates large quantities of administrative records, including financial records, human resources records, correspondence, and many others. However, in contrast to most universities, the University of Winnipeg decided to implement a comprehensive records management system for its administrative records. Begun four years ago, the University will soon use this system on a campus-wide basis.

The Record Management Module (RMA) converts ZyIMAGE into a full record-management system (DoD 5015.2 compliant), which can manage and search documents (paper, electronic, e-mail) throughout your organization.

Enterprises of all sizes have to comply with an increasing number of legal and regulatory obligations, many of which require companies to be able to locate and authenticate documents and official company records. As a result, companies are taking steps – if they haven't already – to implement comprehensive, company-wide records management systems. Used with permission from Integrated Solutions magazine

To meet its published goal of being the world's best bargain place, Big Lots employs state of the art technology,including an extensive data center at its headquarters in Columbus. So, how is it done? Big Lots chose Results Engineering to help implement a content management system using OnBase, enterprise-class software that combines integrated document management, business process management, and records management in a single Web-enabled application.

The Lahey Clinic in Burlington, MA centralized its patient record processing using EMC Captiva InputAccel. With InputAccel Lahey streamlined forms and records processing from over 25 departments, transforming paper documents into electronic data ready for immediate use in a central repository.EMC Captiva is the leading global provider of input management solutions used to transform information from paper, fax, and electronic sources into business-ready electronic content suitable for processing by content management, health information management systems, and other enterprise applications.Watch this video customer testimonial and learn how the Lahey Clinic created an end-to-end solution using EMC Captiva InputAccel.

To gain greater control of and access to the electronic records of the state of Georgia, the Georgia Archives needed to implement TOWER Software's TRIM Context for improved accountability, compliance, efficiency, and productivity of the staff. Submitted by TOWER Software

In 1996 a determined records management team went in search of a paper archive system. The team discovered TOWER Software, a 10-year old Australian company, which was new to North America, but not to records management. Fast-forward 10 years to 2006 to see how Comcast has leveraged their original investment in TOWER Software's product and has now upgraded to TRIM Context 6. Submitted by TOWER Software

This case study details the challenges met by Thacher Proffitt as they advanced their records and information management systems and reveals the advantages of afederated approach to records management. The solution, Federated RM, enables organizations to achieve regulatory compliance and legal discovery goals while ensuring secure access and control over enterprise-wide content. Submitted by CAMDY

The Gimmal Group's Dan Elam recently pointed me to an important and seemingly under-reported guidance memo (pdf) to U.S. federal government CIOs from Karen Evans. Evans serves as a kind of über-CIO for e-government at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).The biggest news comes in the third paragraph: When planning for and acquiring information systems and services, agencies must incorporate records management and archival functions, including the cost of implementing and maintaining those functions, into the design, development, and implementation of information systems.