2008 Spring Workshop Series

The New Information Management Skills

Friday, May 23, 2008
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Congress Centre - 55 Colonel By Drive
Registration at 8:15 am
3 Workshops run concurrently from 9 am to 4:30 pm

Function-based Analysis and Classification

Capturing evidence of business actions, of the decisions that led to those actions, and of the various inputs influencing the decision-making, is a major challenge facing today’s organizations. Legislation such as the Federal Accountability Act here in Canada and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the U.S. are symptomatic of societies that are becoming more and more intolerant of poor research and situational analysis/assessment, flawed decision-making and inappropriate action. Simultaneously, technology is providing an unprecedented potential for creating, gathering and keeping information, to the point of inundation.

In this environment of heightened sensitivity to accountability and information overload, an organization needs a full and accurate understanding of its business role, responsibilities and activities or, in other words, of its business “function”. This understanding of function is a necessary condition for every other dimension of running the business – for planning, conducting and evaluating activities; for establishing internal governance structures; and for managing resources, including information. Indeed, an understanding of business functions is a necessary condition for:

determining information resource requirements (identifying what information should be gathered and created); how information resources should be organized for business use; and what aspects of these resources should be kept, and for how long.

The purpose of this workshop is to:

orient participants toward function-based analysis and classification, specifically, to the Library and Archives Canada Business Activity Structure Classification System (BASCS) approach to this form of analysis and classification;
review and conduct actual exercises in applying BASCS to business activities; and
review and discuss how function-based analysis and classification are used to establish records retention and disposition specifications.

From this experience, participants will:

gain an understanding of function-based analysis and classification; and
learn what is involved, how it is done and, most importantly, why it should be done.

Immediately following the Function-Based Classification Scheme design workshop will be a brief presentation of techniques used to design retention schedules and to engage in effective disposition work, once your classification scheme is approved.

About Your Workshop Facilitators

Following several years of records and information management work at Canada Post, Jon Fotheringham moved to Library and Archives Canada where he has been helping Government of Canada institutions manage their information resources, particularly, in terms of classification, retention, disposition and evaluation. Through this work, he has come into contact with a wide variety of recordkeeping and information management environments and, by working with IM colleagues across the government, he has acquired much insight into recordkeeping and information management problems – and their solutions. Currently, Jon is a Senior Project Officer in the Recordkeeping Innovations section of the LAC Government Records Branch. He is currently engaged in project work in support of the ADM Task Force on Recordkeeping within the GC. And, he continues to be a primary resource in support of the BASCS approach to function-based analysis and classification of business activities and function-based classification of business information. Jon holds an Honours BA in History; is a Past-President of the ARMA-NCR Chapter, and is a former executive member of the Records Management Institute (RMI).

Charlie Jahn is a Principal of CONDAR Consulting Inc. He has 30 years’ of management experience in general administration, telecommunications, facilities, human resources, and records and information management functions.

At CONDAR, where he has worked for the past ten years, Mr. Jahn is responsible for projects that cover the complete range of records and information management services. However, he specializes in three distinct business lines: information management program development (which includes classification system development); audit and review services; and managing culture change.

Mr. Jahn is a former instructor in Algonquin College’s Records Management certificate course. He has served on ARMA NCR’s Board of Directors, the Records Management Institute’s Executive and he is a past President of the RMI.