Identifying systems for Step D assessment

• What type of systems should be assessed?
• Determine the specific systems to assess
• Business systems exist in a variety of forms
• Focus on all systems performing the business you are analysing
• Assess all components of a system
• Keep your focus on the business you are examining

What type of systems should be assessed?

The types of systems you are assessing in this step are those used to perform organisational business operations and which are required to keep evidence of those operations as records. They may be systems that we think of as traditional records management systems, or could be business applications, such as databases or web content management systems and their supporting infrastructure.

In reality, a business system can be anything from an Excel spreadsheet on someone's hard drive to a system dedicated to a particular activity such as HR or financial management, to a million dollar database accessible via your website. It is also important that you evaluate every system in the organisation that involve processes that may have evidential requirements. This includes familiar automated systems such as accounting, human resource and client information applications that may not function as recordkeeping systems.

Any system which conducts organisational business activities and from which you require evidence of its operations should be a recordkeeping system, and be included in the scope of your assessment.

Tip: Seek advice
If you are having trouble identifying all relevant systems, or want to ensure that you have examined all relevant systems, seek the advice of staff who perform the business activity you are assessing to make sure you have got everything covered.

Determine the specific systems to assess

When undertaking Step D, you will generally be focussed on a specific area of business. You therefore need to target the system or systems that perform that business. When identifying the systems upon which you are to perform your assessment, you should bear a number of points in mind:

• business systems exist in a variety of forms
• focus on all systems performing the business you are examining, and
• assess all components of a system.

Tip: Focus on systems
The focus of your assessment of existing systems should be the broad systems used to manage records created in your organisation. Do not focus too much on the individual records that are managed within the system - your focus should be on how these records are managed and the qualities of the system within which they are kept.

Business systems exist in a variety of forms

Be aware that business systems can exist in any form – they can be purely electronic, they can be paper based or they can be hybrid systems. Hybrid systems represent a mixture of electronic and paper based components. Systems can be also small, discrete and located in one specific area of your business, or they can be large and diverse structures that span a number of geographically diverse business areas.

Tip: Only assess systems from which you require evidence
You may have systems which are managed for their information value only – they transact no business and no evidence is required of their operations. Such systems generally contain timely, manipulable information. A database containing name and address details of your clients is an example of such a system. You don’t need to include these in your system assessment. Remember, you only need to include in your assessment those systems from which you require evidence of their operations.

Tip: Don't forget to include relevant databases in your assessment
Certain organisational databases may be required to operate as recordkeeping systems. If you have such databases, you will need to determine whether they are able to meet your recordkeeping requirements.
You should identify whether these databases are making adequate records that meet your business needs. You should also determine whether these databases manage records in secure and appropriate ways, that will ensure the records are maintained and evidential for as long as you have a business need for them.
For further guidance see Public Record Office of Victoria, Preserving Records in Databases, May 2003

Focus on all systems performing the business you are analysing

Whether you are doing DIRKS as a whole-of-organisation exercise or whether you are focussing on a specific area of business, you will need to assess ALL systems in the functional areas you are focussing on, not just those which are known to be operating as recordkeeping systems.

Example: Poor information systems contribute to collapse of national banks in Jamaica
In the late 1990s, a number of large national banks collapsed in Jamaica, precipitating a national financial crisis. In the years since the collapse, research has been done into some of the recordkeeping-related causes of the crisis. Poor business information systems, and the number of ad-hoc and uncontrolled systems adopted to circumvent these, created a number of problems.
Since the banks' existing computer systems lacked the functionality to produce the types of reports that managers required, managers tended to create and use ad hoc reports using popular spreadsheet software (eg Excel)…
Many of these spreadsheets provided what could be viewed as important evidence of decisions concerning critical bank business functions such as asset and liability management, budgeting and loan loss provisioning, however, the informal way in which managers created and kept these spreadsheets often led to dissolution of the meaning in these records over time…the spreadsheet software had no features that automatically linked spreadsheet documents…to the business transactions and processes from which these records had been created…
Over time, the context in which the Jamaican bank managers had created these records became more distant and the significance of the records and their meaning became more obscure…Moreover, the records' meaning and significance often were lost completely because of the ease with which the technology for storing spreadsheets permitted alterations and deletions of computer files, a characteristic which also undermined accounting and accountability for the banks’ financial transactions. [2]

Talking to action officers and drawing on your analysis conducted in previous steps of the methodology will help you to be aware of all possible systems that should be incorporated into your assessments, including those ad hoc ones that may have been created as ways around existing problems.

Tip: Systems can span business units
Be aware that systems may cut across business units - not all systems that perform a particular function will be located in the one section of your organisation.
If you undertook process analysis in Step B: Analysis of business activity, you can refer to this documentation to identify the disparate business areas and systems that you need to examine.

Assess all components of a system

Remember, when you are assessing your organisational business information systems you are not just looking at the technical components of these, but also the broader framework of:

• the people who use the system
• the people who manage the system
• policies and procedures that support system maintenance and use
• recordkeeping tools used in the system
• business rules applied within the system, and
• training programs that support system use.

Step D will provide guidance about how to assess each of these different system components.

Keep your focus on the business you are examining

To identify systems for your Step D assessment, you need to keep your focus on the business activity or activities you are examining, as this will help you to identify the systems that are relevant to your assessments. In Step B: Analysis of business activity you identifies business activities and processes, in Step D you are assessing the capacity of the systems that perform these processes.

Remember that the business activity you are examining may cut across organisational systems, so be sure to think broadly and include all relevant components when assessing your existing systems.

Example: Assessing the personnel management function

As has been discussed, one organisation wanted to improve the way personnel management was documented. In Step D, the focus of their system assessment had to be quite broad as, as they had identified in Steps A and B, aspects of personnel management were performed across the organisation. The Staffing Section obviously had a coordinating role, but section managers also administered a range of personnel activities. To determine whether existing systems were adequate, they needed to look at:

• the personnel database administered by the Staffing Section
• the hard copy personnel files maintained by the Staffing Section
• the staff files and work planning documentation maintained by section managers, and
• the policies, procedures and training that applied in each of these environments.

Therefore not one, but a range of systems needed to be examined to ensure that the adequacy of their personnel records could be assessed.

Footnotes

[2] Victoria L Lemieux, 'Let the Ghosts Speak: An Empirical Exploration of the 'Nature' of the Record, Archivaria, Number 51, Spring 2001, 102