New tool makes Public Records Act compliance cheaper

Innovative new tool makes Public Records Act compliance cheaper and easier

The Chief Archivist’s report to parliament in December 2015 on the state of government recordkeeping highlighted disappointing progress by many government agencies. Information Leadership has released iWorkplace Records Manager 365, a new SharePoint 365 tool that makes good recordkeeping straight-forward and cost-effective for all agencies, particularly those that are smaller or more budget constrained.

Microsoft 365, a cloud-based solution, is being adopted by many agencies who do not want to be locked into on-premise IT environments or expensive proprietary cloud solutions that may become obsolete. Information Leadership’s iWorkplace Records Manager 365 is an innovation designed to provide those organisations with a robust and cost-effective Microsoft 365 cloud option for PRA-compliant document and records management.

Information Leadership Director, Sarah Heal, says “We already provide a highly successful and cost-effective approach to over sixty New Zealand on-premise SharePoint implementations. However, we recognise that cost and complexity of on-premise solutions are a barrier for some organisations, which has led to our work in developing SharePoint 365 solutions such as this.”

Information Leadership’s iWorkplace Records Manager 365 directly addresses key concerns raised by the Chief Archivist – effective reporting on recordkeeping to leadership within public offices and appropriate records disposal – for organisations that are using Microsoft’s Office 365 suite, with features such as:

• A preset reporting toolbox that gives records managers and their leadership a wide range of meaningful reports on the state of recordkeeping inside an organisation, including user adoption, quality of metadata and splice/dice reporting on vital records and paper-based records

• Digital workspaces tuned for the needs of users, so the business records actually make it into the system; as well as a proven methodology for implementation and for bringing internal staff up to speed

• A sophisticated, yet straightforward to use, retention and disposal toolset that manages the records ‘in-situ’ through their lifecycle.

“As an innovation we have developed here in New Zealand, the price point for iWorkplace Records Manager 365 is also well below most offers on the market and does not include any ‘administration fees’,” says Ms Heal.

The pricing model also enables agencies to progressively implement their recordkeeping solution as funding and priorities allow. Instead of being priced on a per user basis, iWorkplace Records Manager is priced on the volume of records.

“We think this is a much fairer arrangement especially for large organisations that may have a small number of users creating content, while a large number of people consume that content. For example, in health boards and similar organisations, organisation-wide policies and procedures tend to be authored by a few, but read by many,” says Ms Heal.

This also means that organisations are not paying the full cost of licence fees while their implementation is in its infancy, meaning their initial budget can focus on business and risk priorities, user adoption and organisational change. As the implementation grows and the organisation starts to manage more records, licence fees can be extended.

Some organisations need to have on-premise SharePoint for its additional functionality and integration with other systems; but they also want to have Microsoft 365 – perhaps for making documents available to external parties, or for cheaper SharePoint for people who are not heavy creators of content. With the coming release of SharePoint 2016, Records Manager 365 allows organisations to manage both sources of content including moving or copying content seamlessly from one system to the other.

“Our philosophy is all about helping our clients find the best – most cost-effective and fit-for-purpose – ways to meet their needs, including PRA compliance, which is also reflected in our iWorkplace Design Bank™,” says Ms Heal.

Many Information Leadership clients use iWorkplace Design Bank to access the designs and retention rules implemented by other member organisations that have decided to share this knowledge. This saves time and money and avoids agencies reinventing the wheel. They can also ask questions and get answers directly from their peers.

ENDS

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