July 08 Issue - Employee Monthly Magazine

Goal: Deliver improved business processes, systems, and tools that meet the needs of our employees, reduce the cost of doing business, and improve the Laboratory's mission performance

Preserving our past, documenting our future

Implementing business process improvements

There is a strong business need at the Laboratory to standardize processes for managing "active" documents. Implementing cost-effective systems to document work, obtaining copies of documents needed to perform work, and retrieving documents/records for legal and other purposes is part of any company's good business practices.

At the Laboratory, the Information Resource Management (IRM) and Information Systems and Technology (IS&T) divisions are developing an electronic document management system, or suite of tools, that will replace more than 30 disparate document management systems across the Laboratory. IRM and IS&T are working with customers to implement interim solutions until the Labwide tool is available.

A pilot Electronic Document Management System recently was completed at Technical Area 55, where IRM services are being centralized under one IRM manager to standardize document-control processes, implement efficiencies, and centrally manage documents and records.

In response to concerns that valuable records and documents have been abandoned over time in various places at the Laboratory, IRM studied the breadth and depth of conditions encountered at the Laboratory where records appear to have been abandoned. A report from this study concluded that the abandoned records problem is smaller than previous estimates have indicated, poses no clear threat to national security, and appears to be decreasing due to records training for points of contacts. Additionally, the report, which was issued to management last month, offers cost-effective solutions for gradually reducing the Laboratory's remaining abandoned records.

IRM and Central Training divisions developed three new training programs to support the Laboratory's document-control and records-management programs. For managers and Lab employees, computer-based training courses were created that effectively communicate basic document-control and records-management requirements. A classroom training program for employees with specifically assigned document-control and records-management responsibilities started in April. More than 80 points of contact have been trained.