Managing Records: Services for State Agencies: Newsletters
Newsletter: January 2009
Welcome to the January 2009 State Agency RMO newsletter!
The Year in Review
This has been an extremely busy year for those of us here at the State Archives. We’ve provided advice and assistance to state agencies, and sponsored workshops and symposiums. As we reflect on how we can improve our services, we’d like to share our accomplishments with you.
We, at the State Agency Services unit, sponsored the Annual Records Management Officers (RMO) Meeting with a discussion of email and e-discovery. The attendance was record-breaking: over 120 attendees from 45 state agencies. We collaborated with two of our local government regional offices to offer an Electronic Records Symposium that covered implemented applications of electronic document management systems (EDMS) in State and local governments. Again, there was a great turnout with 125 in attendance. And we held eight scheduled workshops, as well as going out to speak at numerous agencies and agency-sponsored events, where we spoke to well over 500 agency staff on the principles of records management.
The Archives’ Records Retention and Disposition Scheduling Unit received and reviewed records disposition requests for 352 records series, from 71 program units in 24 State agencies and issued 183 Records Disposition Authorizations authorizing disposition of records in 69 program units in 19 State agencies. These 183 approved RDAs authorize the disposition of more than 440,644 cu. ft. of paper records. Overall, the RDAs approved in 2008 can be summarized as approving the disposition of about half a million cubic feet of records, equivalent to the amount of records stored in 50,000 5-drawer file cabinets.
The State Records Center provided the following services to state agencies: they stored 38,284 new boxes, destroyed 12,930 boxes, filled 16,168 reference requests, and re-filed or interfiled 12,432 files and boxes.
The accessioning unit at the Archives took in 2,353 cubic feet of archival records this year. Those numbers may look small compared to the above figures, but it’s the equivalent of 313 five-drawer filing cabinets, and already we’re off to a bang this year as we prepare to accession a very large collection of maps.
The work of the agencies is a critical component of our success, and it’s important to acknowledge that this summary is a reflection of the tremendous amount of that work agencies have done as part of their records management programs. Each and every one of us should be proud of the work we’ve accomplished this past year. 2008 was a year of opportunity and achievement for all of us. We look forward to 2009 being more of the same.
New RMOs
We’d like to briefly remind agencies that it is important for them to notify the Archives when new RMOs are appointed by providing their name, title, and contact information. Doing so ensures that we are able to continue providing our services to your agency and directing our communications to the appropriate person.
Thank you and Save the Date
Thank you to all of those who participated in or Spring workshop survey. We will be finalizing our schedule in the upcoming weeks and will send it out to the list with registration information as soon as we can. The first workshop we will be offering is the Electronic Document Imaging on February 12th here at the Archives.
That’s it for this month! Remember that we want to hear from you. State Agency Services is here to help make your job easier by answering questions, doing site visits, and providing training.
Jennifer O’Neill
joneill@mail.nysed.gov
(518) 473-2112
Sarah Durling
sdurling@mail.nysed.gov
(518) 473-6803
