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Paperless office ahoy!
By LCDR Bob Norton-Baker
Volume 50, No. 10, June 14, 2007 |
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AVOID DIVING OPS: Become a Navy record keeper! Store your documents in DRMS and not on the G drive.
Cartoon courtesy National Archives of Australia |
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It is the intent of Sea Change Key Area 3 and Key Area 6, among other things, to reduce or simplify administrative requirements – especially those which affect workloads at the local level and to improve the provision of appropriate information to individuals and groups across Navy and to Navy people elsewhere in Defence. A coordinated Records Management System is a positive step towards this goal.
A key element of Navy Information Management is the art of “Records Management”. Records management embraces the complete document life cycle from creation (e.g. reusing a Brand Navy Minute template), using “work flow” to rework numerous draft versions until we have a document ready for signing, circulating an electronic link to the document to cut down on network bandwidth and storage, maintaining security of the information and finally disposing of documents according to Commonwealth legislation.
Did you know that of the three services, Navy is the highest user of the Defence document and record management system, DRMS, but there is still much room for improvement; we still need to give the fleet and many shore establishments access to our centralised record management system. If we all follow a few simple rules and use the correct tools we will be able to create, find and reuse information; we will start to work smarter not harder.
For instance, ever looked for a document, for what seemed like days on end, looking high and low, stem to stern, and the relief when you finally find it!
In 2006, DRMS was rolled out to 1,200 personnel in all shore elements of Fleet Command. We are now working on a project to implement DRMS in ships with HMAS Kanimbla taking the lead. One feature of DRMS is that ships office staff will be able to manage the registry of all Kanimbla’s files without the need to use home-grown MS Access or Excel spreadsheets. When personnel post-in, their electronic personnel files will be able to be easily transferred. Dare we say it maybe the start of the paperless ships office.
Navy is also leading the way with other record management initiatives. Navy is providing the service representative on the Defence evaluation team in the tender to replace all multi-functional devices (MFDs) with a single source provider. The range of eco-friendly MFDs being considered will be colour-capable of printing, copying, scanning and faxing as well as proving additional facilities of collating, stapling and hole-punching. The ability to scan hard copy into an electronic text-searchable format easily to our record management system will enhance our drive to reduce paper and share information.
Project EDEN is investigating the next generation of record management systems for Defence. Recently, Navy personnel participated in roadshow presentations, technical qualifications and functional (tyre-kicking) evaluations of the two EDEN “finalists”. All the feedback from Navy people has been included in the reports going to the EDEN Project Board where the short straw will be drawn.
For all DRMS users, the same records management principles that you have learnt will be conveyable when EDEN is rolled-out and implemented into every Defence unit, including all ships, submarines and patrol boats.
For more information visit the home-page of Navy Records Management: http://intranet.defence.gov.au/NavyWeb/sites/NavRecMgmt/
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