BI Think Tank Summary, February 7, 2012

With a vision of Continuous Improvement in how CORADIX tries to positively influence the Business Intelligence (BI) situation in the Federal Government, we asked some of our top BI consultants to a brainstorming think tank on the issues of identifying obstacles to success.   With over 200 years of experience in the room (we are not that old, but there was quite a few people present), this is a summary of what we came up with in no particular order. The method of procurement used requires you to understand the problem, before you actually do, in many cases. There is a religious belief that the dominant ERP’s have all the answers. BI programs don’t really exist – they just call...

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Comments on the Value of the Big Bucket Approach, from Bruce Miller

Bruce Miller, Founder and President of www.rimtech.ca shares his perspectives on the value of the Big Bucket approach to developing more effective and manageable retention schedules. He observed the following: “These are all good points you make Andrew. With this Big Bucket Approach you’re actually placing a less granular (bigger bucket) version of the retention schedule “in front of” the actual, detailed schedule. Suppose we have the following (3) accounting buckets: Cost Accounting 4 years General Accounting 5 years Retail Accounting 6 years We can replace all of them with a single bigger bucket simply called ACCOUNTING, and set the retention period to 6 years, the longest of...

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How Long Should I Keep My Records?

The proliferation of electronic records imposes a daunting task on organizations to effectively manage their records retention schedules. The challenge is how to strike a balance between legal and regulatory requirements and a more manageable retention schedule by consolidating similar or related record series into a fewer number of retention categories. A possible solution to this vexing problem is what is referred to as the “Big Bucket Theory” articulated by Susan Cisco: “Big Buckets for Simplifying Record Retention Schedules.” The premise of the theory is that aggregating record types into fewer retention buckets may result in a more simplified and accurate classification scheme....

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A New Report on Government of Canada Electronic Recordkeeping Requirements; an Assessment

In a recent plenary presentation titled: Moving the Federal Information Management (IM) Agenda Forward, Corrine Charrette, Chief Information Officer Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada stressed the Government of Canada IM strategy is to ensure that “information is safeguarded as a public trust and managed as a strategic asset.” The Library and Archives Record Keeping Methodology provides the tools and processes necessary to identify value and control information resources of business value. But what about an implementation methodology and best practices associated with the development of electronic record keeping systems? What electronic records management standards must an electronic...

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