Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutRMAB Minutes 2010-01-01RMAB Notes June 24 2010 Present: Herb Engman, Paulette Terwilliger, Lisa Carrier-Titti, Laura Johnson- Kelly, and Gail Kroll Absent: Eric Levine and Dan Walker Discuss Objectives and Immediate Concerns: Paulette asked that this be an organizational type of meeting since the position was new to her and she wanted to get an overview and handle on what needs to be done and expectations. a. Policy & Procedures: Paulette talked about what has happened in the past few years regarding the P&P and suggested that she draft a new one. She thought that the current one was outdated and does not reflect how records are managed at all. She would like to keep it simple. Discussion followed and Lisa offered her notes and research from the last few years. It was decided that Paulette would draft a P&P to use as a starting point. b. Digital Recording Retention Period and/or Availability: Paulette talked about what the Town is doing right now with digital recordings and the MU1 schedule pertaining to recordings. The audio recording of minutes on the laptop and portable recorder started as an experiment. These audio recordings were deleted, for the most part, according to the MU1 schedule of 4 months after the adoption of the final minutes. The exception being the Town Board and Planning Board meetings since January 2010 have been kept. With the upheaval in the Town Clerk’s office there has not been consistency in the retention. It is time to review the experiment and decide on guidelines that will then be incorporated into the new P&P. Questions about FOIL and the Town policy of keeping backup tapes, which would save the audios indefinitely, were discussed. Paulette will call Bob Freeman and the Association of Towns to get clear guidance regarding an audio file’s status as a FOILable record. If the Town is going to continue keeping backup tapes for years and years, then is everything always available? That essentially negates the disposition schedule. There was also a discussion on whether the audio should be available on the town website and if “bookmarking” or some other method could be used to indicate where on an audio file a particular discussion occurred. Paulette reported that she and Deb had difficulty using the “bookmark” feature on the current software and they didn’t think it transfers well when an audio is converted from the transcription format (which you need specialized software to listen to) to the final MP3 format. Paulette felt that having the agenda along with the MP3 audio file on the web would be enough for a resident to navigate to a particular discussion to listen to. Discussion followed and it was decided that the topic would be presented to the Board. c. Records Management Half Day: Paulette discussed past records management days and felt that what is really needed are department- specific records management sessions. For example, when she started in Codes, there was so much stuff on the Building Drive, the Code department met for 3 hours in the Aurora Room with a projector and went through the drive together, reorganizing and deleting obsolete files and documents. This was a great help and many of the drives need this. Discussion followed and the idea will be discussed at SAC because we would need department head buy-in. 2. Set Meeting Dates and Times: It was decided that RMAB meetings would be held on the third Thursday at noon as a lunch meeting. This will start in August, with the next meeting scheduled for August 17th at noon. Records Management Advisory Board Thursday, August 19, 2010 NOTES Present: Herb Engman, Paulette Terwilliger, Eric Levine, Laura Johnson-Kelly, Lisa Carrier-Titti and Dan Walker Absent: Gail Kroll Subject – Digital audio recordings of minutes and placement on the web. The RM Board discussed the history of the subject and the past retention schedule of the cassette tapes. Lisa gave storage background and processes from an IT perspective, and Paulette stated that audio recordings are requested maybe 5 times a year in the past 4 years and generally for known hot topic agenda items. Then they discussed the pros and cons of different retention periods for the digital audio recordings of Board meetings. The concept of using audios and resolutions as the official minutes of meetings versus summary minutes was also briefly discussed. Paulette stated that no minutes are done verbatim anymore and that by using the laptop during the meetings, the production time was cut to 1/3 of what it used to be. She felt that staff and different boards and committees used the summaries as a reference which would not be available without listening to the whole recording, and/or someone may only listen to a part of a topic and miss the rest of the comments, coming away with a different idea of what went on. She added that the minutes are approved and adopted to give board members the opportunity to make sure they accurately reflect the conversations and comments that were given. The RM Board then discussed the process involved in filing and saving the audios and how they will be omitted from the backup tapes, yet preserved for the duration of their retention. The RM Board then discussed whether or not the audios should be placed on the web. They discussed the pros and cons of being on the web and the recent problems with altering and/or “out of context” quotes from audios being put out in the media, and also considered that the demand is not great and that that demand can be easily fulfilled. After a lengthy discussion, the Board decided to direct Paulette to put the following concept on retention and placement in the Policy & Procedures Manual currently under review and revision. Digital audio recordings of board minutes will be disposed of on the last day of the following year. Example: Meetings in 2009 will be disposed of on December 31st of 2010. Therefore, the minimum retention period for any audio recording will be 1 full year, i.e. July 12th 2009 audio will be disposed of on December 31, 2010, giving it a retention of 17 months. This enables a timely and orderly disposition of audio recordings with ample time to fulfill any FOIL requests. Digital audio recordings will be copied into the audio file on the server, but omitted from the nightly back-up by Lisa. A copy of the recording will remain on the TC laptop in case of a server failure. Also, a list of Hot Topic FOIL requests will be compiled by the Town Clerk’s office and submitted to the Board on a monthly basis. At that time, the Board may direct the Clerk to make a copy of an audio recording to be kept with a particular project file or with the Attorney for the Town in case it is needed or deemed useful. Digital audio recordings will not be placed on the web since they are available through the FOIL procedure during the retention period. Next meeting will be September 16th at noon. Notes from meeting with Lisa on July 22nd Backup tape process. Son, Father, Grandfather Daily, then last day of month, monthly and the dailies go away, then last day of the year and the monthlies go away. Yearly on last day kept for last 10 years. • 5 weeks of Daily tapes. The last Daily tape of the month becomes the End of Month tape. Then daily tapes are erased and used over again for the next month. • 12 End of the Month tapes are kept until it is erased and used over again for the next year’s End of Month tape. • The End of the Month tape for the last business day of December becomes the Year End tape, which has been kept indefinitely. The Year End Tape contains any data that has not been deleted from the file server that year. We tell the backup process to NOT back up the audios if we save them in one location. If they are backed up, then it becomes a more cumbersome process of reloading the backups and deleting specific files. Much easier to hold in one folder. I will talk to Sandy, Carrie, and Deb to implement Emails are the other issue which really needs to be addressed. We can be sued if they are not available and we do not or did not take reasonable steps to ensure they would be. Staff needs to print out pertinent emails and put them in the project files Or We need an email archiving system (Dryden is in the process of establishing one which may help us transition to one) The archiving system takes the onus off of the RMO to “police” the saving of emails. For now, I will be talking to the Board on Monday and stating that we will treat digital audios the same as we did the cassettes. I will explain that I was mistaken and daily tapes are not and have not been kept for 10 years. we do have 10 years worth of the yearly back ups which means 10 backup tapes, not the 3,650 I implied. Record Management Advisory Board Policy Manual Update October 26, 2010 There are reams and reams of paper on the records management policy and procedure review process that was, quite simply, overwhelming. The original policy is outdated and was quite detailed and lengthy, combining both the policy of the Town and the detailed procedures of each record’s process through the stages of use and retention. The sample policy from the State was also very large and very detailed. Our proposal is to separate the two into manageable documents. The policy would simply be the actual definition of the approach of the Town regarding records management such as following the MU1 Schedule, defining a record, defining responsibilities, and then pointing to the individual department’s procedures for a detailed explanation of the process each record goes through during its retention period. The concept is that a policy should be the basis for the procedure. The review for the policy has been taken up, and put on hold a couple of times over the last two years due to the turnover in the Clerks office. We’d like to get the momentum going again and see it through. A policy is only as good as its follow-through and enforcement and that is the goal. That said, we have developed a draft outline for the policy and suggest taking a section at a time and discussing it at RMAB. After discussion, we will develop the draft body of the policy to reflect the committee’s direction and then submit that for review until we have a completed policy. The meat of the policy, Stewardship of Records, which will define the individual department’s responsibilities and point to departmental procedures, is where the real work is needed. The policy will define the responsibility of the departments with the oversight and approval of the RMAB. That oversight and approval of these procedures is the largest part of the process and will be the most time consuming for the Board. What we need now is a consensus on the concept of splitting the two entities and then we can go from there and start with the simpler policy outline. Our first attempt at this outline is attached, to give the Board an idea or feel for how we envision this document. By “we”, I mean both Deb and I in the Clerk’s office, and along that line of thought, I would like to have Deb come to the RMAB meetings while we talk this process out. I have invited her for this Thursday’s meeting.