Information and Knowledge Management strategy

The project issues
North Ayrshire faced immediate practical problems of record management, in particular storing and managing paper records with inadequate archiving facilities.

Additionally North Ayrshire required an Information Management Strategy which would determine the way forward for managing all types of information and a way of sharing intellectual capital.

The issues here were:

• Information governance and legislative requirements
• How to hand on valuable knowledge and experience of the significant number of key staff due for retirement
• How to develop a mature organisation, valuing and using information
• How to manage documents, records and web content in the longer term
• How to maintain good data quality, and use information for performance management
• Information collection, presentation and retrieval
• Information sharing, partnership working
• Addressing the Open Scotland, Efficient Government, Customer First and Joint Futures digital inclusion agendas

The Socitm Consulting solution
For records management: Socitm Consulting coordinated an information audit and the definition of retention and disposal schedules, providing a Records Retention Schedule. This was a corporate document based upon the functions and activities of the Council rather than a Service-level file listing structure.

Socitm Consulting also developed a Records Management Manual and a template for an Information Asset Register for each service area to create and maintain.

Finally we developed a Records Management Strategy and recommended a corporate document management solution be procured.

For Information management: based on the input from a series of interviews, Socitm Consulting developed an Information Strategy which defined a way forward for:

• developing an information culture
• information governance: legislative compliance and protocols to support information sharing etc
• information security
• lifecycle management of documents, records and web content, including information classification
• information presentation, retrieval and communication
• digital inclusion

The benefits to the client
The client was able to put in place the practical recommendations made concerning records management and had a clear vision of how to tackle information and knowledge management in the longer term.

The client commented: ‘Excellent outcomes from the reports produced. The quality of output exceeded expectations’.

Project identification
Client organisation: North Ayrshire Council
Client contact: Derek Gemmell, Technical Support Manager IT Services, 01294 324283, dgemmell@north-ayrshire.gov.uk
Lead consultant: anna.smallwood@socitm.gov.uk
Project no: 5451