Why we need to bring money into Records Management
As Zig Ziglar used to say, “money isn’t important, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen.”
Whether we like it or not, money makes everything we do possible.
It’s reasonably close to oxygen, and we as a professional group, appear to be afraid of it.
We defend ourselves from this fear, by saying things like “they don’t get it”.
“They” is usually people with a delegation who have decided not to spend money on what we do.
The problem, is that they do get it.
They have lots of things to invest in, and in their opinion, an investment in records is going to deliver less to their business or their public, than another investment.
How could we turn them around on this opinion?
We’d probably have to have equipped ourselves to discuss the relative merits of the two investments - which is fundamentally about money.
But we haven’t.
The more insidious problem this creates, is that we have no useful rubric to assess the efficiency of our practices - the value they generate, relative to the cost, and relative to other ways of achieving the same goal.
And we leave so much good un-done.
And we waste so much money that could do so much good.
Because we won’t ask simple questions, like ‘how much does it cost us to manage the lifecycle?’
How could we halve it?
How could we halve it again?
And again?
This also means we can’t explain the value of our tools.
What is the value of an EDRMS?
Autoclassifier?
Manage-in-place?
These are powerful tools that can massively increase the efficiency with which records can be effectively managed.
Or at least, we think they can.
Wouldn’t it be nice to know?
Next time the investment gets knocked back, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to have a real conversation about it?
Maybe get the money?
When they don’t get it, neither do we.
I absolutely agree that we need to bring better 'arguments' to the table to secure proper funding for managing the evidence of organisations' business. It would be so beneficial to have robust case studies to use that demonstrate efficiency, effectiveness, and economic ROI on investment into the business function (instead of just a) 'you have to be compliant/you have to manage risk' arguments and b) 'if you buy this new software - it will magically fix everything' sales pitches).
I'd be keen to see a central/publicly available set of case studies that help the industry as a whole in such a way.
Wouldn't you?
This is very timely in NSW Government as there is a focus on cost savings. At some stage, someone is going to ask for an ROI and whether there are better / less expensive options for our work. Why do we insist on file plans / metadata that doesn't help our clients actually find their documents? Why do we make RM a process that actually adds to the steps they need to take to do their work? And as for actual funding for preservation ... not this year's priority at all. Lots of questions looking for answers.