[IARA - State Agency Records Managers] Chat Transcript, January 2022

Chat Transcript, January 27, 2022

(Cleaned-up and mildly re-arranged for continuity.)

Amy Robinson: And we have a chat. Hi, Jeff! You have no microphone, but it is good to see you too. Hi, Heather.

Heather Lynette: Hi, Amy.

Amy Robinson: I'm awake enough to actually do shout outs as people come in, this time. It's a miracle.

Alright, it is 11:00 o'clock. Good morning and welcome to the January 2022 Monthly State Records Managers chat. First one for the New Year, and it's a new year. We can all just be thankful that it's not 2021 anymore.

To let everybody know, the chat is being recorded just for our purposes, to go back and look at it, but if any of you ever want to do that, just ask me for it and I will figure out a way to get you a copy or access to to our copy.

And hi, Liz. Your microphone is turned off, Liz. Mute button up at the top right of your screen. Still can't hear you. Nope.

Liz Sullivan: What about now? 

Amy Robinson: Yeah! Was it a microphone setting?

Liz Sullivan: Yes, it was. I had to use the shift control M to get it to unmute.

Amy Robinson: Gotcha. Hello, anybody else!

"Show participants." This will let me know who is here. Alright, so usually we do

Introductions for IARA staff:

If you haven't been here before, I'm Amy Robinson. I am the records analyst for State agencies, and then I fit in help and advice anywhere else that I'm needed. So I'm helping out with county agencies sometimes too, but you folks are state agencies, and my main connection is talking to you about your records retention schedule. Updating it sometimes, or creating new ones for you, or just answering your questions about how to apply it to real records in Real Life, which is not written way that Legalese Retention Schedule Language is written.

So I do a lot of that. I do a lot of "what does this actually mean and how do I apply it to my records? Does this cover my records?" Hopefully the answer is yes, and if the answer is no, we find you what covers your records or we create something that covers your records.

So that's me.

And we also...oh, Chandler's here! We also have our agency Executive Director Chandler Lighty, if you wanted to introduce yourself.

Chandler Lighty: Thanks, Amy. I'm just gonna listen to the call.

Amy Robinson: Good times. And then we have the other Amy, who is my compatriot in County Records.

Amy Christiansen: Hi everyone, good morning.

Amy Robinson: And then we have Kara Chinn, who is our Records Management Coordinator, and she's kind of going back and forth working on projects with both sides of Records Management: state -- you folks -- and the other Amy's folks. And also helping out pretty much everywhere in the agency that something needs to be done, it seems like. 

Kara Chinn: Morning.

Amy Robinson: And Jeannine Roe, who is our Electronic Records Archivist, is here.

Jeannine Roe: Good morning, everyone.

Amy Robinson: And oh, good morning Shelley, as I saw a couple more people came in. And Steve Novick and Ashlyn. I think I got everybody.

So that's our people, and let me pull up my Monthly Bulletin. I've got the agenda pulled up for you, but

Let me pull up the bulletin so I can talk a little bit about what is in it:

[navigating IARA website]

• Services For Government.
• State Records Management.
• Monthly bulletins.
• Our January bulletin.

Alright, so in the January bulletin, the big thing that we talked about, or that I told you all about, in the News You Can Use section is that we've created a

Records Manager Survey.

The Other Amy and I are running it together, so we've put out these questions both to you guys in state government agencies and to record managers in county and local agencies: clerks and recorders and assessors and anybody at that level who is dealing with records.

And this is open-ended. Right now we haven't put a close date on it because we're looking for your thoughts and suggestions; we're not tabulating statistics with this.

Let me show you the actual Records Manager survey. So I have to stop sharing for a second and then start sharing. And then I pick the window, and it is... the Records Manager Survey!

So you should see, hopefully, on your screen, a giant block that says IARA Records Manager Survey in a browser window.

Liz Sullivan: Yes.

Amy Robinson: I'll just run through the questions really quickly, because we're not asking you to fill it out now, just giving you an overview of what's on there.

It asks for your name and your agency email address so that if you have questions that you put in there, or wanted more discussion about something, we can contact you, And then it asks if you are working for a state government agency or a county local government office, municipal, schools, libraries...

Then the meat of it:

What topics or processes would you like to see more about in our bulletins? Or talk about more in the chat?

If are there any regular meeting features for this chat that you'd like to see added to our agenda as a regular thing. And we had some - we brainstormed some suggestions to see if you'd like us to add:

• A featured question that you know isn't covered in the Bulletin, but came up this month or recently for us, that seems like everyone would want to know the question and the answer to it.
• Updates on new Records Management resources that aren't from us, like new training that came out from the National Archives or something else that's interesting and might help you. Publications.
  
  
• Whether we pick a specific discussion topic for the discussion. The open discussion at the end of this chat. In addition to whatever questions and things people come up with, should we add one thing to talk about that's just "Hey, what do you guys think about blank?"
  
  
• And then "something else which you will describe in the text box below." So if you have any suggestions that aren't one of those, we've got a box for you to fill that in.

And then this [next question] really isn't applying to you folks, because the question is "If you haven't come to one of these chats or if you came to one and then stopped, why? What things can we improve that might make you come back?" So there's a bunch of options there and then "It's something else that I'll explain in blank question 9."

One of the big things that we're interested in is "Would you be interested in a peer discussion meet up."

It would probably be during this chat. We would just make this chat, say, an hour long, or some time period longer than what we usually have here, and set it up so that there might be breakout rooms, or it might be just everyone talks about the same topic.

But we give you the topic, and it comes from suggestions from you folks about "What do I want to talk to other Records managers about?" Not "What do what questions do I have for Amy?" but "What questions do I have for the records coordinator over at BMV? Because I work in revenue and we have some things that cross over. So what do they do?"

We want to set up some questions like that, theoretically, if enough people are interested in it so that we can get a chat going between you folks. Not just kind of me dominating the talk and asking you questions, but you asking each other questions, and sharing the knowledge and resources that you've come up with in your own experience with the records and your agency, to see if it helps out other people.

And then if yes, what topics?

And then we have a super open question, which is "What can Records Management do to better serve you?" What kind of improvements would you look for? Whether that's you want more education, you want more publications, you want us to do something different with this chat, or suggestions that we have not even thought of.

And when you fill this out, you submit it and if you are inside the state of Indiana Office 365, I think it will automatically attach your email address to it, but we put the blank in there just in case, so that we know who sent it.

You submit it. It comes to us. We can look at it individually on a page, or we can look at them all in a spreadsheet. And we take the things that you've told us and try and put them to use.

And if there were questions in there, we can contact the person who asked them and discuss it with them, and maybe come up with some great new things for y'all to talk about and share.

So that is the Records Manager Survey.

And let me switch us back.

Well, first of all, did anybody have any questions or comments about that? I guess I should open it up there 'cause there's time to do that.

Let me pull up the [text] chat just in case, 'cause I have a tendency to miss when somebody asks something in the chat. And good morning Jamie Sisco 'cause I missed you in the shout outs.

Jamie Sisco: Good morning!

Amy Robinson: Let me switch out of the Records Manager Survey and back to sharing the agenda. (And every time I do that, my box with this meeting where I can see you moves back over to my other screen and I have to drag it to the one that has my camera on it.)

Agenda... make it big so I can see it... 

The other thing we talked about in the bulletin was "Who are we and what do we do?" A lot of you guys know this. A lot of you have seen in either in the the Record Manager Handbook or put together from our website, or you've just worked with us for so long, you know what our divisions are and what they do, but just in case, we put that out there in the bulletin.

And the the same basic information went out to the county folks too. So sometimes we share our bulletin information and sometimes we talk about totally different things depending on what records management needs we think they have.

So, our divisions and services:

Records Management

Hey, that's us! And we are, you could say, divided into State Records Management, County Records Management, and Electronic Records Management, but we're really not divided. We're sort of mingling together like a very well blended smoothie. We all help out in questions, compare the retention schedules to see "Well what did the state people do, what do the county people do for this? We should probably make that match." We answer your questions about records management and if the thing that you need done is something that is done by one of our other divisions, we let you know who to contact there.

The Records Center

stores records that are temporary. Still belong to the agency will always belong to the agency while they're being stored in the Records Center. And they have to be in a retention schedule that way to start with. The retention schedule has to say "transfer these records to the Records Center."

It is a temporary storage service. So if you have records that end up staying in your office for 15 years, and your retention schedule says you were supposed to transfer them to the Records Senter five years ago, no big deal, other than they're taking up space in your office. They're your records; if you don't want to send them to our offsite storage facility, then you don't have to.

If you keep something for longer than the entire time period your retention schedule says to send it to the Records Center for, and you're finally
ready to do something with it, skip the Records Center part of it.

If it says "Send to the Records Center for 10 years and then the Records Center will destroy," and you've had it for 15 years, you can go straight to destroy.

If it says send to the Records Center for 10 years and then they will transfer it to the Archives," and you've had it for 15 years, skip the Records Center. You transfer it directly to the State Archives.

Thank you Jeannine. [Jeannine pointed out a question from text chat.] And Heather, the link to the survey is in this month's bulletin. Which went out by email, but it's also on the website.

The Archives

And these are the two divisions that people tend to mix up. The Archives is where records that are permanent, chosen for historical purposes, go to live forever. Maybe not completely as they were transferred, because the archivists are able to weed out what they don't think has historical value from the boxes when they get them, but the records transferred to the Archives become property of the Archives' collections, so that's the forever place.

The Records Center is the temporary place. Nothing can go to the Records Center that does not already have an end date on it. So we can't write a retention schedule that says "Transfer it to the Records Center and hold until our agency is notified that the business has been audited."

Anything that has an indefinite period about it, ihe indefinite part has to happen in your agency. That could be 15 years in your agency, sometimes. As came up in a discussion sometime last week with an agency that was probably sad to learn that they couldn't rewrite one of their record series to send it out to the Records Center to stay for the long indefinite period of time while they're waiting for someone else to do something.

Records Center, temporary. Archives, permanent.

So when anyone in your agency says "We need to archive that" or "We need to send that to Archives," make sure that you and they are on the same page
and that they don't actually mean they need to send it to the Records Center for temporary storage.

Two different places, two different functions. We offer them both, and they definitely work together. But figure out, when you're helping someone transfer records, where they really need to go. And if you're not sure about that, you can call me and I'll help you out.

Records Center vs. Archives: that's the difference.

[Question from the text chat]

Stephanie says in the chat, "if we have files that...you've kept skipping the Records Center, that can be destroyed after the retention scheduled time period..."

So they're ready to be destroyed. Don't need to be out at the Records Center.

"Do you need to submit the destroy records form, the State Form 16, to us? Or can you delete those without the form."

[Answer]

You need to submit the State Form 16 to the Records Center.

It's a notification. So when you destroy records in your agency, you are supposed to fill out a State Form 16 and submit it to the Records Center. You are not waiting for their *approval* before you can destroy the records. You just send in the State Form 16 notifying them that you have destroyed the records according to your retention schedule.

And that is true [even] of records that were never scheduled for the Records Center. The Records Center is just the division in our agency that collects all of the notices of destruction to give you guys a back up. A paper trail for a certain period of time -- and I don't have it in front of me, but I think it's five years -- so that if y'all happen to lose your documentation that you destroyed these records, there's something at the Records Center that they can look up for you.

So when you destroy records in your agency, no matter what the temporary storage place was before destruction, yes, you do send a State Form 16 to the Records Center.

But you don't have to do it before you destroy the records. You just get the state form 16 signed before you destroy the records, If you are not the Records Coordinator. Because the Records Coordinator for your agency is supposed to give permission to destroy records,

But you can send it to the Records Center after it's all over and done with; you're not waiting on that.

[end of question]

Our Electronic Records Program

is kind of an umbrella. It's part of Records Management, part of our division, and kind of largely situated there in terms of how we interact in the agency.

But electronic records is part of every single thing that we do.

So Jeannine is the Electronic Records *Archivist*, which means she deals with electronic records being transferred to the State Archives -- so she's kind of Archives and Records Management.

She and Meaghan Fukunaga, who couldn't make it because she's on another project right now, are essentially the IT people when it comes to "What do we do with this type of electronic records?" So they answer, theoretically, any questions, or we get together in a meeting with your agency and help figure out what to do with your electronic records issues.

The Conservation Lab

is mostly about making sure that things in the State Archives stay in existence and not crumbling apart. If the Archives receive something that's been damaged or is in a bad way, it might not last long, Elizabeth Hague, our conservation technologist, does her best to figure out how she can make it last a long time, or whether it just can't be and the information has to be gotten off of whatever form it was submitted to the Archives in so that the information at least is preserved.

The State Imaging and Microfilm Lab

is your friend and mine. Kim Hagerty runs it. They do microfilming -- and many people are just familiar with them under their old name, Micrographics Division -- but they also do imaging. They also do scanning for state agencies. Probably cheaper than your external vendor unless your vendor is sort of part of your entire electronic system for your agency and you can't get out of it.

So if you are moving to imaging or thinking of moving to imaging, talk to the staff at the State Imaging and Microfilm Lab before you start looking for an external vendor to do it, because they offer the service. And if they can't do the service for your particular technology setup or needs, they can advise on the the best standards to look for in your vendor that *can* do the service.

Forms Management

-- last division -- manages State Forms. They design them on request of agencies, although hopefully we're going to be moving away from that. There's a lot of changes in the works that are not yet in place, so right now they design forms for state agencies on request. They make changes, analyze.

And revisions, where the state agency has made a new version of the form and they submit it to State Forms Management, State Forms Management checks it over to make sure there's nothing super off, no mistakes, no questions that are not allowed to be asked on a State Form, or questions that when you ask it on a State Form you have to include a certain code. When you ask for a Social Security Number, you have to actually include a certain part of either the Indiana Code or the US code that says your Social Security number is being asked for "for blank, blank blank and we're only going to do blank blank blank with it."

Those are some things that the Forms Management Division checks on everyone's form when it comes through for analysis. Essentially, to make sure that when we send forms out or make them available for the public, they kind of all -- they don't have to look completely the same, but they all have to adhere to a set of standards that make them look professional. Make them visibly and obviously an official state of Indiana document.

And a lot of what they do, and a lot of what we certainly hope they can move to, is just "Here's your form. Yes, it looks great. We're going to replace it on the catalog. Now your new form is up." Right now, they do a lot more, and it takes up a lot of Forms' time that could possibly be diverted to other service abilities.

So that's what Forms Management does. Changes to what they do are in the works, but right now it's sort of a full service shop.

And that's really all that we talked about in the bulletin. Let me pull my agenda back up, and we're

Open for questions:

That's kind of all I had to say to you folks; now you can ask about anything. Or if you have questions for each other, or something you want to share that you've had a weird records management experience. You can unmute yourself, say who you are and and talk away. I will mute me.

Chandler Lighty: This is Chandler, executive director for IARA. If anybody has any questions about -- I know you're not forms coordinators, most of you are not forms coordinators for your agency, but if you have any questions about what we're trying to do there, I can entertain those here.

Amy Robinson: Yes. Our deputy director for Forms Management is out at the moment, so thank you, Chandler, because I would have probably been very bad at answering those.

Anything from anyone, other questions or anything you want to share?

And I am scrolling the [text] chat to make sure I don't miss any questions from someone who doesn't have a microphone.

[Nope.]

In that case, I will say we look forward to hearing -- reading -- your answers on the survey to see if we can sort of make this communication process better. Or maybe more entertaining; you know, if your suggestion is that Amy should wear a different hat every month when she does this chat, I might just go for that.

So tell us what you want in the survey, and meanwhile enjoy your January, and I'm sure that I will be talking to most of you at some point by email in the next month. So this is not Goodbye, it's it's just Good Afternoon.

[Question from the text chat]

....And Alicia is typing a question in the chat so I will not close until I see what she has to ask. Oh, OK. Alicia says she accidentally typed. No questions.

When you see those little three dots where the person is typing, it can be very entertaining, or it can be [scared voice] "What are they gonna say?"

And sometimes it's just that they accidentally clicked in the box and they're not typing anything, which is what happened here.

[End of question]

So again, I will say have a good day, have a good month, you will all hear from me sooner or later during this month, and enjoy your January. Thank you very much for getting together and talking with us this fine morning.

And I will be around as I wait for everyone to go their separate ways, so that I can keep the recording going and the list of who was here is available for Jeannine, who usually takes that. Hi Kim! (I saw Kim Hagerty pop up for just a second there.)

But you are free to flee into the rest of your day!