From file cabinets to digital records, the U.S. Army Garrison Rheinland-Pfalz Publications & Records Management Center of Excellence (P&RCOE) is working hard to go paperless. The U.S. Army recently announced they are upgrading their records management system in a press release titled, “Army records management moves to 21st century.”
“The way of the future is electronic records, and one thing I’m working on is getting all the records that you would normally store in our warehouse and make them electronic for two reasons — to reduce the amount of storage space and to make maintaining them easier,” said James Francis, P&RCOE chief.
The process will begin with identification of records, personnel and roles. Then comes training. Francis plans to set goals for every unit regardless of where they are in the process, even those that have no current records management plan.
Records management is a vital function in any organization. It preserves institutional memory and the capacity for re-use. This is true whether it is a box of papers or a thumb drive of digital files.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
