Manual for the Design and Implementation of Recordkeeping Systems (dirks)

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Further information

Comprehensive guidance about all other aspects of outsourcing arrangements is provided in ARMS' guidelines, Accountable Outsourcing: Recordkeeping Considerations of Outsourcing U.N. Business.

Doing DIRKS to ensure records are created and kept when business processes and systems are reengineered

DIRKS and process and system redesign

Identifying your recordkeeping requirements

Improving business processes and systems

Reviewing business processes and systems

Further information

DIRKS and process and system redesign

The United Nations committed to the philosophy of continuous improvement. This involves continually assessing and reassessing not only the outcomes of business processes but also the processes and systems themselves to see what improvements can be made to streamline and improve methods.

The DIRKS methodology is particularly valuable in assessing how recordkeeping can be built into redesigned business processes and for redesigning business systems to ensure they meet all your recordkeeping needs.

Identifying your recordkeeping requirements

Undertaking Steps A-C of the DIRKS methodology can help you to identify the types of recordkeeping requirements your organization needs to consider when it is reviewing its business processes and systems.

Step A: Preliminary investigation

Step A is an opportunity to look at your department/office broadly to see its goals, how business is performed, who performs it and the reasons why it is performed. In this step risks, stakeholders and other factors that impact on the way business is performed are also examined. Therefore, this step is extremely valuable for business process or system review, as you are able to see the context in which processes and systems operate. This understanding will be refined during subsequent steps.

If you need to only analyze processes or systems for one function or business unit, it is good to start with (or obtain) a broad idea of your department/office’s goals and business in Step A so you have a clear idea of your office's roles, requirements and operations. If there are blurry lines between business activities or areas, or if the systems or processes you are assessing cross between business areas, you will need to ensure your preliminary investigation covers all relevant areas. However, once you have a handle on the broader issues you can start to concentrate on the area of concern.

Example:

One Australian local government authority was undertaking DIRKS analysis to assist in the design and implementation of an appropriate recordkeeping system for the transaction of the council's human resources function. The project team already had a good understanding of the organization, and disposal coverage for this area but they still conducted some broad research in Step A to look at how the function interacted with other functions. Then they focused their examination on:

legislation that governs the operation of the personnel function in local government
privacy management issues
a broad identification of how personnel management is conducted across the council, not just in the Human Resources Unit
stakeholders who should be consulted about the review, including business unit managers, each of whom has some personnel related responsibilities
court cases involving personnel management which the council has previously been involved with.

Step B: Analysis of business activity

Step B is an opportunity to look in much greater detail at the functions, activities, transactions and business processes performed which will provide you with a useful basis for other decisions regarding improving business processes and systems. For example, the examination of business processes in Step B (particularly in the sequential analysis) can contribute to the identification of:

existing inefficient or outdated work processes
what records are currently created as part of work processes
activities the your office has a mandate to perform but are not carried out in practice and the reasons why they are not
ways processes might be streamlined and documented in a standardized way (identified fully in Step E: Identification of strategies for recordkeeping), and
risks with recordkeeping implications.

The scope of this analysis depends on the project goals. This information can be further defined in later steps of the DIRKS methodology allowing you to develop better business processes, design templates and standard procedures which integrate recordkeeping with the work tasks.

Step C: Identification of recordkeeping requirements

If you have undertaken process analysis in Step B: ^ Analysis of business activity you will have a breakdown of your current activities and processes and some knowledge of the records captured as part of the performance of these. In Step C you look at what recordkeeping requirements the depatment/office is subject to - including records you need to keep to meet regulatory requirements, business needs and what the community expects of you. You also look at the risks of not meeting these requirements and devise a list of 'accepted' requirements, which can then be a benchmark for you to assess your business processes and systems against.

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