NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) is transforming its records and information management, making systems and processes more user-centric and aligned to existing workflows.

The program of work is called Records REMAP – which stands for records reconfiguration, enablement, and maturity advancement program.

TRIM administrator Anthony Zilcer told a recent OpenText summit that NESA’s origins meant it had undergone “many migrations, changes to data, upgrades and movements, merging into one broiling pot of TRIM history”.

TRIM is an electronic document and records management system (EDRMS) originally made by HP, before being acquired by Micro Focus, which was then bought by OpenText. It is now known as OpenText content manager.

The authority is also looking to clean up network drives and group mailboxes in its environment.

NESA was formed in 2017 to replace the three-year-old Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards (BOSTES). The Board was formed from the combination of the Board of Studies and the NSW Institute of Teachers.

The intent is to make records and information management as simple and as user-centric as possible.

“If we make it simple and also easy to use, then why won’t people use it? They will,” Zilcer said.

“Normally when I’ve been involved in [transformation] programs, the focus is on records management, but [here the focus is] bifocal: it’s on the records management, absolutely, but it’s also on the business users. 

“You could say that this entire program is customer-centric because that’s exactly what it is. We’re putting the users, the business, the way that they work first – within the bounds of compliance.”

Records REMAP has three parts or “foundational pillars”.

The first is a “predominantly technical” part upgrading Content Manager from version 9.4 to 24.4 – although Zilcer said there is some interest in features in newer versions than that.

“We’ve been working on the upgrade in a proof-of-concept so that we can understand how to do [it], any issues that might appear, [and] we can capture those and work out how to do them before we go through and do the full upgrade,” he said.

The second pillar of the transformation is enablement, which is “not just training a user how to press a button [but] teaching them how to help themselves and help their co-workers.”

“It’s also about enabling the entire business to work better and more efficiently,” Zilcer said.

Business unit engagement is “the largest part of the program” but is so far “going really well”, Zilcer said.

“We’ve got several different business units that are engaged directly and indirectly,” he said.

“One of them is doing UAT [user acceptance testing] on a workflow. 

“We’ve got a few more that are re-evaluating the way they use their network drives, which is great, and there’s still at least two more that are trying to get an automation in place so that we can clean up exploding group mailboxes.”

The third pillar is around maturity advancement, and for that NESA intends to make use of the records management assessment tool or RMAT, a NSW government-specific self-assessment tool “that allows public offices to assess the maturity of their records and information management”, according to its documentation.

“One of the main points of this initiative is to use this RMAT as a way to measure what we’re doing,” Zilcer said.

“it gives us feedback, it allows us to see what’s on track, how we’re going to move forward, what we need to change, what’s wrong and how to make it right.

“The RMAT also helps justify funding and resource allocation [to the Records REMAP program] as well.”