In this section: Scotland Group - Meeting 30 September 2008; Scotland Group - Meeting 17 June 2008; Scotland Group Meeting 11th March 2008; Scotland Group Meeting - 13 December 2007; Scotland Group Meeting - 16 October 2007; Scotland Group Meeting - 31 May 2007; Scotland Group Meeting - 11 January 2007; Scotland Group Meeting 15 September 2006; Scotland Group Meeting 21 June 2006; Scotland Group Meeting 21 March 2006; Scotland Group meeting 17 November 2005; Scotland Group meeting 9 June 2005; Scotland Group Members questionnaire; Inaugural Meeting of the Scotland Group

Scotland Group Meeting - 16 October 2007

Date added: 3 September 2007

Physical records: Storage, risk and disaster recovery

Records Management Society - Scotland Group Meeting, Tuesday 16th October 2007

Committee Room 1, Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh

Meeting report

The meeting was opened by Edith Pringault-Adam and Susan Mansfield, from Scottish Parliament, welcomed the Group.

Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, the session on physical records storage had to be limited to in-house options and case studies. To redress this, the next Scotland Group event, on Dec 15th will cover commercial storage

Sarah Emmerson presented for the records centre operated by the Lothian and Borders Police Records Management Unit. The decision to operate an internal storage service was based on three elements:

security: this was a key requirement as some of the records stored deal with undetected crime records and access controls are essential to ensure that they do not fall into the wrong hands. For this reason, the location of the Centre is not openly advertised;
existing building: the fact that the Force had a building which could accommodate the records centre made the option more attractive.
cost: although the initial set up costs were high, these were obviously less than they might have been as there was no new build requirement. The set up costs included provision of security and fire prevention facilities, purchase and installation of fixed and mobile shelving, purchase of storage boxes and development of a records management database using Microsoft Office Access software

Packing of records for transfer to the Centre is the responsibility of the individual service users following the packing instructions provided by the Records Centre staff. The boxes are transferred to the Records Management Unit and must have an archive transfer form attached. The Records Management Unit is responsible for storing and retrieving records. On receiving the records, basic checks are carried out to ensure that the information on the archive transfer form corresponds to the contents of the box and that the packing has been done correctly. A service level agreement is in place for the delivery of the records to the users.

When the centre was set up, no records with a disposal due in the following 6 months were accepted. Authorisation to dispose of records is done through the archival transfer form. Records are not sent to the users. It is the responsibility of the Records Management Unit to destroy the records.

Dawn Turnbull and Louise Strathie from Falkirk Council then presented the facility in place at the Council. The Unit received an award at the RMS Conference in April 2007 for improvement to records management. The presentation was supported by Powerpoint and Dawn and Louise also distributed their Records Management Corporate Guide. The presentation is available on the RMS website, and the guide is available on the Council's website

To supplement their presentation, Dawn and Louise offered members a visit to the Records Centre on the 8th and 9th November 2007.

After the presentations, a panel, consisting of Sarah, Dawn and Louise, answered questions from the delegates.

The Annual General Meeting then took place with retiring Chair Heather Jack providing an update on the activities of the RMS and announced that the 2008 conference was to take place in Edinburgh. The RMS Scotland Committee (and any volunteers) will organise a welcome session on Sunday 20th April. Ideas and suggestions are welcome. Heather also reminded attendees about the new Suppliers' Directory available on the RMS website and about the planned review of the RMS Retention Guidelines.

Elections of the new Committee then took place before lunch and the nominations tabled by Sarah Emmerson were accepted. Details of the new Committee are available on the website. New Chair, Edith Pringault-Adam, thanked the Group for their support, thanked Heather Jack for her hard work in setting up and promoting the Scotland Group for the last two years, and introduced the new committee members who were present at the event.

The afternoon was dedicated to disaster recovery. Fiona Wilbraham from Stirling Council shared her expertise and her tips for recovery following a fire in the Social Work service. She particularly highlighted the need to box and store away paper records to ensure a better recovery and the fact that, in the event of a disaster, staff's concerns differ from the business needs. She concluded that in the event of a disaster, recovery should only be done from designated places, with the appropriate resources. Recovery of information personal to staff also needs to be considered. Her presentation is available from the RMS website.

Emma Dadson from HDRS then provided extensive advice on disaster recovery: what to put in place, who to engage with, the resources required, the salvage and business continuity operations. Her presentation, which is available from the RMS website, included a number of case studies, highlighting the wide variety of disaster scenarios that organisations have faced and the varying degrees of impact these disasters have had on them. Attendees were left in no doubt that the involvement of records management staff in disaster planning is fundamental for effective risk management.

Dominic Jordan from HBOS rounded off the day and presented the actions taken by HBOS to improve management of paper records, explaining the particular demands faced by banking institutions and the increasing importance of securing records containing personal data. The program has been driven by the need to minimise risk both to clients and to the bank itself. The systems and controls that are now being put in place will also deliver significant operational benefits.

Edith Pringault-Adam proposed the vote of thanks to all speakers, to Scottish Parliament for the provision of the venue and to McPhersons Document Solutions , Paterson Data Management Ltd and Iron Mountain for sponsoring the event.

	CorporateRecordsCentreFalkirk.pdf (126.8 KB)
	DisasterRecoveryStirling.pdf (2.8 MB)
	EmergencyPlanningHDRS.pdf (1.5 MB)
	RMS Agenda 16-10-2007.doc (45 KB)

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