In June 2008, the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO), the office of Parliament that drafts most of New Zealand’s legislation, made its first-ever transfer of 2202 “London” archive boxes, or 550.5 linear metres of records, to Archives New Zealand. Archives NZ was happy with the quality of the work, because it passed the organisation’s “5% box check” with flying colours. The Flying Filing Squad (FFS), the Wellington-based consultant contractors owned by the author, was happy to have completed it successfully.  "Graeme Thompson, the PCO Records Adviser, was particularly happy.  The transfer had come in within the planned time-frame and under budget and had encompassed a number of essential recordkeeping system developments and improvements for the PCO.

How was this achieved?

In reviewing the project the Parliamentary Counsel Office and the Flying Filing Squad have identified four critical success factors:

1.    You’ve got to have guts to get started;
2.    You’ve got to have a list;
3.    Meeting Archives NZ’s needs speeds the process and costs less; and
4.    Project Relationship management is critical.

1.    You’ve got to have the guts to get started.
Since he began work at the PCO in 2004, Graeme had realised that it was storing thousands of files but the lists available were:

• not up to Archives New Zealand’s Listing Standard;
• incomplete, with unlisted material lurking in offsite storage;
• inconsistently listed despite specific naming conventions for legislative drafts, e.g.: six different abbreviations for the word “amendment” in available lists.

There was nothing to do but bite the bullet and start a listing project. Graeme realised that it was going to take dedicated resourcing and time for concentrated attention that he did not have. Graeme set about an internal relisting project to correct the listing of files stored on-site at the PCO but did not have the resources or time to relist the thousands of files at offsite storage. From experience, he knew it could not be left to students with no knowledge or experience of records management; hence the Flying Filing Squad involvement.

Since a transfer could not happen immediately for budgetary and other reasons, Graeme planned a two stage project. The first stage would be the Relisting Project, to be carried out in July and August of 2006, which would eventually relist 22,650 files and 27,651 file parts of administrative and legislative drafting files, and legislative submissions. The second stage, the Transfer Project, would be completed later as the budget allowed. The Transfer Project was completed in June 2008.

Graeme had the support of his Manager of Support Services, a member of the Senior Management Team at the PCO. He made sure that she understood that filing problems and unlisted materials would extend the project timelines, but that it had to be done. He got her approval, and the approval of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel, for an ‘open-ended’ project and contract, so that the relisting project would end when it was finished, without any budgetary or other constraint. He ensured it was understood that whatever the cost to do the listing now, there would be big cost-savings later, because the lists for transfer would be completed and the files ready for reboxing for transfer to Archives New Zealand.

COMMENT:
If you have a legacy of unlisted boxes in basements and off-site storage (and heaven knows what files stashed under desks and in regional broom-cupboards) it can be easy to put off the day. There are just two certainties: one is that one day Archives NZ will be in touch to find out what you have got and how you are managing it. The other is that it will get worse before it gets better: you will inevitably find more files than you did not know about, boxes of un-filed papers, even boxes within boxes - the uncertainties of the scope of the project tend to grow once you’ve started. (Another FFS client estimated that they had 70,000 boxes to list. They actually found 99,000.)

It is vital that everything is found and brought into the project. FFS Top of the Pecking Order Helen Hancox fantasises about driving a plague cart around the corridors and calling “bring out your dead” - with files emerging from the strangest places!

The FFS’s experience is that it may be best to chunk the project into key activities (such as listing, filing, boxing, retention and disposal development) both for budgeting and project management purposes. Each chunk will provide demonstrable results, and Finance managers love it when you have tidily packaged projects ready to fit around financial years.

2.    You’ve got to have a list!
For the 2006 Relisting Project the PCO developed its own Listing Guidelines manual and a sample list, with all possible corrections already made to it, as the basis of the Relisting Project.

Due to the highly specialised nature of the records being relisted, Graeme also invested time to ensure that the FFS project workers understood the PCO business functions, outputs and terminology of the PCO so that the listers could quickly recognise the content. He had rubber stamps made up for the identification of Bills, Regulations, and Submissions. He even had them go through part of the formal PCO induction process so the Deputy Chief Parliamentary Counsel in charge of legislative drafting could explain the complete legislative drafting process from the receipt of agency drafting instructions, until the legislation is enacted or made as regulations. This gave the project team an excellent head-start.

The PCO did not prepare a manual  for the 2008 transfer process, and the level of training was not as intense as in 2006 which led to some minor misunderstandings.  However, because the PCO Records Administrator Shannon Tomlinson, was onsite with the FFS staff, the problems were quickly resolved. Graeme said he learned a great deal from this error and would not let any future projects involving external contractors to go ahead without adequate PCO training and a PCO manual.

An innovation for the project was that Graeme had ordered stamps made with the Archives New Zealand Series numbers on them to stamp the archives boxes, to save time, and the listers’ hands from OOS (occupational over-use syndrome).

Once FFS had completed the Relisting Project, PCO staff was able to continue working with the lists, identifying boxes of files that could be destroyed in terms of the current schedule and sorting lists into logical clusters of bills, regulations, non government bills, copies of legislative submissions from the Submission Office, and administrative files.

COMMENT:
The Flying Filing Squad often claims that it is never list-less, but Archives NZ requires no ordinary list - the transfer lists must meet their specific standards. (Check out the Archives NZ web site for more details - http://continuum.archives.govt.nz/ )

There are predictable difficulties in listing: often systems have changed over the years producing inconsistencies in file reference schemes, complex cross-referencing, files split between non-sequential boxes and other delights like files that need to be split into multiple files. The FFS has found that the combination of a good briefing from the client plus the “professional intuition” that springs from its own experience enables staff to pick up when something is odd, thereby saving a lot of duplicated handling and potential miss-filing.

3.    Meeting Archives NZ’s needs speeds the process and costs less.
Legislatively required activities can either be approached as a tiresome compliance exercise – or an opportunity to develop and demonstrate good practice. Working well with Archives NZ lays the foundation for smooth disposal of records in future years. The PCO took this approach when commencing the project in 2006, and it carried through until the ultimate transfer.

COMMENT:
Archives NZ has a huge task in progress as they implement the Public Records Act 2005. Things you can do to make it easier all round include:

• providing them with a list which meets their listing standard
• A good list, it makes it much easier for Appraisers to do their research. They can generally achieve a lot by reading that list and then doing their “examination of the record” which is when they review a selection of records. Once you have an Archives NZ-approved Retention and Disposal Schedule, you can move onto self-management of your disposals either through transfer to Archives NZ, or destruction with signed certificates of destruction going into the record
• boxing files accurately to meet the Archives 5% check. This takes knowledge, project management, and concentrated attention to detail. 
• transferring boxes to ANZ in a way that works for the Archives Management Group. This means making – and keeping - an appointment to transfer. It is possible to do the boxing in advance of the appointment to transfer and storing the boxes in a “ready” state. It also means filling the boxes properly, recording content/series data in the Archives NZ format, and getting the right number and configuration of boxes per pallet. ANZ provides helpful check sheets and guidelines that cover all of this work, but there is nothing quite like actually doing it.

4.    Project Relationship management is critical.
With the PCO project,  success meant excellent initial briefing, weekly reporting, early identification of emerging issues, respect for each other’s expertise, formal reporting lines, and effective trouble-shooting when necessary. For both the 2006 and the 2008 relisting projects the PCO had a staff member onsite, dealing with special listing issues that could not be done by the FFS staff. This allowed the FFS to consult the PCO about anomalous files and the PCO to change project procedures and parameters to deal with file queries.

COMMENT:
Major recordkeeping projects like retention and disposal projects are a challenge for project managers. Legislation-backed compliance requirements make a good stick, but don’t create warm fuzzies to keep key stakeholders keen. Add to that the scoping uncertainties inherent in the listing stage, and the difficulties in getting staff to surrender precious files, then the Business Owner of the project may find himself or herself having to “go into bat” on occasions. It is critical that project management responsibilities are clearly understood both by the client and by the project team.
Managing the relationship with an off-site storage company is also important. Knowing how to specify what the company needs, in what order, and being able to work with the realities of the Off Site Storage  provider’s operation is vital to being able to work efficiently.

Summary
Given the four critical success factors above, it becomes possible to achieve what the PCO did. It had a clear overview of the project, overcame the uncertainties and project risks of the listing phase, and created a platform that enabled the transfer phase to come in under time and under budget. For both projects, the PCO was delighted with the results.

The 2006 Relisting Project overruns, expected and prepared for in the project planning,  paid for themselves in 2008 because the PCO avoided the pressure of simultaneously relisting, re-boxing, and transferring  its records during the limited transfer time-frame available from Archives New Zealand. Added bonuses for the PCO were the unlisted, misfiled, lost, and otherwise forgotten files that were discovered, including: the oldest PCO administrative record, a letter dating from 1926; one of the oldest surviving examples of legislative drafting files, dating from 1940; and the only surviving example of World War Two legislative drafting, a regulation excerpt, identified as dating from 1943."