# Presentation: 872241

## Confessions of a User or I Survived The Simultaneous Installation of an EDMS and RMA  

*Donna Read*
*Senior Records Analyst*
*National Archives & *
*Records Administration*
*Southeast Region*
*August 31, 2004*

## Why Start a Project Like This?

- Archival holdings dating from 1800’s:
- 	Over half million documents, letters, articles, books, historic homes, textile, etc.
- Current organizational holdings included:
- 	Newsprint, microfilm, video, broadcast tapes, DAT tapes, architectural plans, Pulitzer prizes, photographs, magazines, books, etc.

## Systems Already In Place

- Archival holdings: word processing files, databases, manual lists, index cards, tacit knowledge
- Records management program started in 60’s, included off site records center
- Late 80’s in-house relational DB put in place that automated retention schedules, disposition reports, box labels and deposits

## What drove us to become users?

- 	Research needs –
- 			over 30 different finding aids
- 	Questionable if existing RMA was Y2k 	compliant
- 	Living in a DOS world (unhappy users)

## Requirements

- Champion/Sponsor
- Project Manager
- A Plan –Formal Proposal/Business Case
**Senior Management Support!!!!!**
- Partners:	IT & Legal
- Good Records Management Foundation

## The Process

- Analyze needs and requirements
- Who are your clients
- How do they search
- What are they looking for
- Where are they looking for the     	information
- How will they use it once they get it

## Process Continued

- Create RFP (parameters) –
- Web enabled, open architecture, type of DB
- Security and privacy issues
- Number of expected users
- Search capabilities: full text, wildcard, proximity, Boolean, etc.
- Other software interface requirements

## VSE - Vendor Selection Event

- Choose Your Vendor(s) –
- Tread carefully- do your homework
- Go on field trips – visit their clients
- Get all promises in writing, record telecons
- Understand – they call it a feature, you will call it a bug
- The sales person may not know the technical side of the software
- Our initial choice was PCDocs & Foremost

## Unexpected Additional Partner

- EDMS vendor said:
- Must have an integrator for the system!
- Familiarity with the product
- Speak technobabble fluently
- Our IT staff did not have knowledge of the software
- Another round of vendor interviews.

## The IntegratorCorridor Consulting, Inc.

- Lifesaver
- Glue that held us together
- Facilitator, liaison with IT
- Key to the success of the project

## Pieces of Our Project

- PCDocs
- iRIMS
- API for PCDocs & iRIMS to communicate
- Integrator
- History Department
- Legal Department
- IT Department
- Senior Management

## Before Construction

- Foundation - Solid Records Management
- RM policy must already exist
-   and be enforced
- Installing an electronic system does not
-   clean up your paper mess, just
-   adds an electronic mess

## Before Construction continued

- Technical Infrastructure – Up to date
- Will the software run on your hardware
- Will upgrades in the product affect your hardware interface
- Buy-In From Staff
- Requires change management
- Will affect the workflow and culture

## Meetings Meetings Meetings

- Size of the project determines the 	number of years of meetings
- You have this project as a residual 	duty
- This is the vendors full time job

## Details

- Are you customizing the product?
- Your upgrades will need customizing also
- If you’re using a COTS will functionality be lost?
- What are willing to give up
- How much training to get and give?
- Who pays for the training
- How to handle legacy data conversion
- What is the ROI in converting legacy data

## Details (continued)

- Who gets access to the documents?
- Security concerns involved with access
- Cost of continuing maintenance.
- Usually a yearly cost of 15% of the initial investment
- Does IT have resources to support you?
- This impacts their systems admin staff

## The Unexpected

- Organizational changes
- Staff changes
- Vendor Changes
- PCDocs purchased by Hummingbird
- RIMS (PS Software) purchased by Open Text
- Software not functioning as promised
- Additional costs to get software to work as promised

## What Did It Look Like?

- Customized profiles to meet our searching needs, 	multiple libraries in EDMS
- Outstanding searching & retrieval of documents 	in the system
- Full text searching in the RMA, barcode labels
- Ability to set retention against electronic records 	in the EDMS with event based trigger

## End Result

-   Started in March of 1997
-   Installed first software in November 1999
-   Conversion of 200,000 records from legacy
-     system to RMA
-   Trained 120 employees on use of RMA
-   Moved all files from the desktop environment
-     to the EDMS
-  Imported scanned documents into the EDMS

## Lessons Learned

- Have to start with a sound foundation
- Better documentation of vendor promises
- Take smaller bites – smaller pilot
- Communicate better with senior management

## Implementation of EDMS and RMA

- Donna Read
- NARA Senior Records Analyst
- 404-763-7064 or 727-781-0568
- _[donna.read@nara.gov](mailto:donna.read@nara.gov)_
- NARA, Southeast Region
- 1557 St. Joseph Ave.
- East Point, GA  30344