The ARMA Madison Chapter met on February 19, 2008, at the American Family
Insurance complex. Two members of the chapter were the featured speakers. Pam
Duane, CRM, is the Senior Enterprise Records Retention and Regulations
Coordinator, and Tim Hughes, CRM, is the Records Manager at Madison Gas and
Electric Company (MG&E). Both have been employed by MG&E over twenty
years.
Their challenge at MG&E was to change over 13,000 record titles to functional
retention schedules. There were 87 department schedules, and many were unique to
the utility business. The range of retention also varied widely. The utility also has
more than one set of guidelines/rules to follow. The Wisconsin Statutes, the
Wisconsin Administrative Code, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and
the Public Service Commission all have something to say about the record keeping
requirements.
A functional retention schedule serves several purposes. It is practical. It is better for
litigation and management risk. It better reflects why records are created. It better
supports compliance issues. It is needed to understand the legal area.
The project was initially to be done by a consulting firm, but when that did not work
out, Tim and Pam took on the project. Over 18 months was spent in completing the
project, and it still is not quite finished. It was necessary to do an inventory, so an
inventory form was created. Department heads and staff had to be interviewed. The
issue of electronic records had to be dealt with as well. Tim and Pam found they
sometimes had to negotiate retention schedules rather than use an authority.
Schedules were often based on need, either the users or the record managers.
One of the hardest concepts for department management to grasp was that records
were no longer department records. The records were company records and subject
to retention schedules set up for the company. It was necessary to define what the
official record is and determine who holds the official copy. Tim and Pam
emphasized the need to get approval from various entities, the audit department, the
legal department, and the information officer.
The record managers are still in a "holding pattern" though as the software has not
been implemented yet.