Digitizing is difficult even under the best circumstances. Federal records managers may be facing an even steeper challenge. They’re also having to comply with the aggressive schedule set by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and the Office of Management and Budget in memorandum M-19-21 in an environment that is notorious for scheduling and budgeting issues. Advisory group McKinsey & Co. has found that government IT projects face project delays 20% higher and cost overruns six times greater than private sector firms.
What’s a federal records manager to do? Fortunately, the difficulties inherent in any digitization project can be conquered, if you know the challenges you need to overcome. McKinsey has helpfully identified three foundational challenges facing public sector digitization efforts.
1: Difficulty with organizational change
Public sector entities can be slower to adapt to new circumstances and to adopt new technologies than their private sector counterparts. Sometimes this is the natural consequence of bureaucracy, sometimes it is a cultural issue within an agency that may highly value the status quo while devaluing risk-taking. McKinsey argues that “a successful digital transformation requires a culture of iterative and agile delivery, flatter hierarchy, and close collaboration among agencies and functions.” These are not necessarily traditional characteristics of government agencies, which may experience less flexibility to be able to solve digitization-related problems as they arise.
As a result, any digitalization effort needs to be an organization-wide initiative. It needs to be led from the top down, with users and front-line stakeholders given an opportunity to provide input and offer buy-in.
2: Absence of needed skillsets
A transition to electronic records management requires a specific set of skills. For records management, all the skills and expertise normally associated with successfully managing records are only the start. From there, digital transformation of records management requires technology-oriented skillsets, including the ability to make maximum effective use of any electronic records management (ERM) system, as well as related soft skills that can help facilitate change management and solicit buy-in from a variety of stakeholders.
To ensure the organization can deploy the appropriate skills, they need to look at both training and hiring procedures. Ideally, new hires should enter the organization with the requisite skill sets. But if not, and for current workers, the agency may need to make sure adequate training is provided.
3: Lack of strategic alignment
Too many cooks in the kitchen, all trying to do different things simultaneously, is a recipe for failure. When the digitization effort is not clearly and carefully aligned across the agency, different functional groups can end up undermining each other. In other words, if the shift to electronic records management – which affects everyone – isn’t coordinated across the whole agency, its adoption will be haphazard and piecemeal. That will reduce the likelihood of success and erode the benefits that come from digitizing in the first place.
One key: the records management function must be prioritized within the agency. That’s sometimes a tall order, but if other teams and functional units don’t understand or respect the importance of the electronic records management program from the start, the digitization effort will inevitably struggle.
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