Title
Electronic Records Management - Information Governance (Goal 4)
Body
RECOMMENDED ACTION (Motion):
Staff will provide an update on the City-wide records inventory and support a discussion by the City Commission on the proposed goal.
BACKGROUND:
Goal 4: Pursue Opportunities to Increase Transparency and Encourage Citizen Participation
Electronic Records Management System
* Conduct a City-wide records inventory and make information readily available, which will increase
public access to City records and information.
In December 2018, the City Commission approved a five-year Strategic Plan for Records Management for 2019-2023. Several of the Plan's objectives fall into what the industry is now referring to as Information Governance. Information Governance, or IG, consists of multi-disciplinary structures, policies, procedures, processes and controls implemented to manage information at an enterprise level, supporting an organization’s immediate and future regulatory, legal, risk, environmental and operational requirements. In other words, insuring that accurate information gets to the right person, for the right reason, at the right time to make the right decisions.
The City Recorder's Office will be slowly introducing pieces of the IG puzzle over the next several years until the City has a fully functioning information governance plan. This will establish a consistent and logical framework for employees to handle data through the developing and/or updating of City policies and procedures in collaboration with the Information Technology (IT) and other departments.
The City has over 800 boxes at an off-site storage facility called Iron Mountain. Of these 800 + boxes there are at least 108 boxes that are not labeled with a description on the log, so the City has no idea what is in these boxes. Part of this City-wide records inventory would be to visit the Iron Mountain site, review the content of the boxes, and update the log with the descriptions. This is very time consuming and may have to be broken into small sessions. The next step in conducting a records inventory would be to create a plan for each to department of what records they are the record-holder of along with where and how those records are managed and by whom. This will also take an enormous amount of staff time from both the City Recorder's department and the various departments being interviewed at the time.
In the end, the goal is to scan as much as possible and make these records and information available to the public either through our online records portal or through quicker responses to public records requests. The City Recorder's office will be looking at additional needs for this project and will be seeking grant funding and evaluating internship programs.