[IARA - County/Local Records Custodians] Monthly Bulletin December 2024

🎁🥶⛄ Dashing December, Records Custodians! ⛄🥶🎁

I feel like I say it every year but I can't believe December is upon us. I'm working to wrap up all major projects and things to-do from my list, and checking it twice! As far as I know, my family plans to stay home this holiday season and not do any major traveling. We may do some festive activities around the city like the Carmel Christkindlmarket or take Edwin to see Christmas lights. My mother and I always like to attend a Christmas Eve candlelight service, it reminds me of my childhood with my grandparents in Florida. Overall, we will end the year on a slow(er) pace enjoying great tidings with family and friends before we begin a new year in 2025! I hope you have a merry and bright December too. 

Last Month's Bulletin

In the October 2024 bulletin, discussion topics included TT Retention Schedule Training Online, Approved Updates to the GEN and CT Retention Schedules!, CCPR Secretaries, Please Hold Your Annual CCPR Meetings, Indianapolis Public Schools Clean Up, Amy and Madison Won An Award, and the Topic of the Month was CCPR Webpage on IARA's Website.

To view past bulletins and chats, go to our RM Bulletins and Chat Archive webpage.

Reminder You Can Use: Last Chat of 2024 is on December 4th

There is no Chat on November 27th or December 25th, we combined those and changed the date to December 4th at 11 a.m. eastern. See Teams information:

Phone Conference ID: 614 865 189#

Another Reminder You Can Use: CT Retention Schedule Online Training

On Friday, December 13th from 2-3 p.m., IARA will be hosting an online training about the updates to the Cities & Towns (CT) retention schedule from June 2024. We would love to have anyone who deals with city and town records to attend! 

To register for the 12/13 CT Online Training, click here.

The online training will be recorded and available on IARA's website in late December. To find the Cities & Towns (CT) retention schedule, click here. For other schedules, click here. 

News You Can Use: New IARA Staff Member, Ann Young!

Ann Young joined IARA’s Records and Information Management team as the State Records Management Liaison this fall. In the role, Ann will be focusing on supporting statewide records management efforts, including enhancing training, overseeing record retention schedules, and providing consultation to state agencies. She looks forward to serving the State of Indiana and strengthening records management practices across the state.

News We Can Celebrate: Huntington County Community School Corporation Document Archiving Project

IARA is highlighting another exciting project happening at the county level, this time an electronic records project at a school corporation. Michael Sumpter with Huntington County Community School Corporation worked with IARA's Records & Information Management staff (mainly with Anna Lucas) to establish a plan to digitize student records. See some of the project information below:

Goals of Project

To digitize student records and eliminate paper when possible. We have taken some advantage of our SIS holding this information, however, we are wanting to expand it further to eliminate all paper copies on students starting next school year, assuming we would be in compliance with the requirements of State policy for record retention and archiving.

Overview

All individual student cumulative files, with supported files and folders, would be stored in our SIS (Student Information System) Document Database Server (DDS). The DDS would reside in scale virtual environment and would be on a consistent replacement/enhancement schedule as long as it can be budgeted.

Expansion of on-premises backup appliances would include implementing a disaster recovery mechanism at the most distant school. Since all our buildings are connected by 10GB Fiber, we would be able to take advantage of great bandwidth an additional location in the event of a tornado, flood, or weather-related event. This would also further segregate our live data from our backed-up data and allow us to create a disaster recovery location. 

Specifics on Backups

1. We currently utilize a backup appliance system.
   1. Built-in technology and encryption to prevent ransomware and malware attacks.
   2. Provide same level of protection on local premises and cloud services.
2. Backups are performed each night and stored to an on-premises backup appliance inside scale virtual infrastructure.
3. After a successfully completed local backup, the snapshot backup is made and stored into the cloud service.
   1. In the event of an outage or compromise, servers can be made available within a matter of 30-50 minutes.
   2. Can be deployed at anytime in any building within our corporation.

Document Database Server & Archived Database

1. Building secretaries, office staff and administration would maintain and manage all files, folders, etc. for all students in the Document Database Server for a State minimum of 7 years.  However, if the school chose to retain records longer (for historical value) there is more than enough storage space to accommodate those records.
2. After the 10^th year, the corporation office personnel could elect to delete older records if they chose to do so.

System Maintenance & Storage Control

1. The replacement schedule for our scale virtual environment is set to begin next summer.  We will have budgeted for replacement server for each year for four years, and then adding storage in year five to accommodate for the increase in documents, etc.
2. Once the system becomes too large, we can easily remove/delete old records (If needed) at any time by deleting the items beyond 10-20 years.  We currently have information on all students from 20 years ago, which could be removed at any time, granted Permanent Records are all paper copies as of now.

RM Topic of the Month: 2025 Monthly Chat Schedule

2025 Monthly RIM Teams Chats for County/Local Offices  Almost always the last Wednesday of the month at 11 a.m. eastern on Microsoft Teams January 29 February 26 March 26 April 30 May 28 June 25 July 30 August 27 September 24 October 29 December 10 (2nd Wednesday)

. . .

AMY CHRISTIANSEN

Records Management Liaison

Indiana Archives and Records Administration

o: 812-929-3882

e: achristiansen@iara.in.gov

w: www.in.gov/iara

a: 402 W Washington St, Room W472, Indianapolis, IN 46204

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• county_citiesandtowns.pdf