WA Government Archiving Project
State Government Agency Outsources Archiving Project to Information Proficiency

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CASE STUDY SNAPSHOT
Industry
State Government

Overview
Concern that off-site storage costs are increasing and not meeting State requirements for retention and disposal of records. Files have been lodged with an off-site storage provider without sentencing or packing for archival storage. This has resulted in no destruction of files or preservation for the State Archives. The client wishes to outsource retention and disposal services to an organisation experienced in R&D processes.

Benefits
  • Meet Regulatory Compliance: noncompliance exposes the business to financial penalty, legal and operational risk and cost.
  • Reduced Storage Costs: the ability to destroy records when the retention period expires will assist in the reduction of the ever increasing cost of storage.
  • Ensured vital records were protected into the future.
Services Provided
  • Outsourcing
  • Sentencing
  • Retention and Disposal
The Client

A Western Australian State Government Agency located in the Perth central business district.

The Primary Objectives
  1. Sentence, record and repackage all files in off-site storage
  2. Reduce overall storage costs
  3. Meet State Records Office requirements for State Government Agencies.
The Challenge

The Client had approximately 5,000 boxes located in off-site storage dating back to 1960. Many of these boxes had not been sentenced prior to storage and some of the boxes were well beyond their retention period, had not been recorded correctly or had not been packed and stored in the correct environment to meet State Records Office (SRO) requirements.

The Information Proficiency Solution

After discussing the situation with Information Proficiency, the proposed solution was to conduct an outsourced Disposal and Archiving Project to sentence and process the backlog of boxes. The Project would be managed by Information Proficiency and undertaken at the Information Proficiency Midland premises. Boxes would be retrieved from the off-site storage facility, sentenced, recorded and repackaged by Information Proficiency’s Archiving Team. Select files would then be approved for destruction and returned to the off-site storage facility until the destruction date, or alternatively, returned to cold storage pending transfer to the SRO. The Project commenced in April 2012.

Information Proficiency has:

  • Destroyed: 1,159 boxes;
  • Sentenced 681 boxes as archives, by preparing files, repackaging and placing into cold storage pending transfer to SRO
  • Sentenced 1,813 boxes which were repackaged and returned to temporary storage pending destruction.
  • Processed another 2,000 boxes with various outcomes.
The Business Benefits

Information Proficiency helped the client to meet regulatory compliance and reduce costs through cost effective outsourcing.