Before converting to an Electronic Records Management (ERM) system, one government office administering a federal lending program had accumulated over 3,000 standard record center boxes of files on site. There were so many, they had to stuff the files into actual offices.
But if you think having them close by made individual files easy to find, think again. With so many files, it could take an hour just to locate and go through the relevant box to find the individual record they needed. But it was far worse for records stored off-site: those could take weeks to locate and retrieve.
But then they digitized, and the time-to-find shrunk to seconds.
Enhanced searchability is one of the hallmark benefits of electronic records management. No file or record is ever more than a few clicks away (subject to role-based access rules, of course). Even better, users can search for files in all kinds of interesting ways that aren’t possible under analog records management systems. Users can obviously perform simple searches, like looking up a file number or title. But when it comes to ERM records, rather than a simple search being the extent of searchability, it’s just the start. They can also perform:
- Full-text searches: One thing that ERMs can do that isn’t possible with pen-and-paper systems: search the content of the records itself. Full-text search means that users can search for phrases or words contained within the record. For example, offices could pull up a list of all records containing a specific key phrase.
- Metadata searches: ERMs also enable users to search for data associated with the record rather than being contained within the record. For example, users can search for all records created within a certain date range, or they can search for certain types of records.
- Boolean searches: Many ERM systems will let users include Boolean operators (OR, AND, and NOT) in order to conduct complex searches that combine or exclude different searchable elements. For example, the NOT operator will exclude any records that contain specific searchable information.
- Smart searches: All of the above can also be combined in interesting and highly effective ways to pinpoint very specific files or groups of files. Users can search for records of a certain type that also contain a specific phrase and were created within a defined date range. Sometimes these searches can even be automated so the user doesn’t even have to go through all the steps themselves.
In other words, modern ERMs bring all the extensive search functionality of something like Google to records management, making it easy to find any record in the system with just a few clicks.
Imagine your office is producing records for legal discovery. Attorneys have requested all records that mention a specific individual within a given date range, unless the record has been granted a particular classification status. With an analog records management system, finding all records that meet all those conditions could require an exhaustive search to locate and assess all relevant records. With the right ERM, however, it’s a simple search entry that produces all relevant records at a click. The time savings is truly monumental.
There are a couple of things to think about, however:
When converting to electronic format, try to convert as many existing records as possible for inclusion in ERM, and make sure the conversion is thorough and accurate. In a rush to populate the new ERM, it can be all too easy to pull an old record in but leave it without essential metadata, which can render the record essentially incomplete and unfindable (or very difficult to find) because associated information isn’t included.
Similarly, errors in the conversion can render a record unsearchable. For example, if the agency or technology uses optical character recognition (OCR) software to create searchable data, but mistakes in the OCR output (so-called “dirty OCR”) are left in, it can inadvertently render the record unfindable. Care is required when converting records, and ideally the conversion process should be handled or at least guided by records management specialists with experience in electronic records management. If your agency adopts a new ERM system, the team behind the system may be able to help with or even handle this task themselves, which can reduce the risk of errors that would hinder search-ability.
About PSL
PSL is a global outsource provider whose mission is to provide solutions that facilitate the movement of business-critical information between and among government agencies, business enterprises, and their partners. For more information, please visit or email info@penielsolutions.com.