Manual for the Design and Implementation of Recordkeeping Systems (dirks)
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Improving business systems and processes
Doing Steps A-C and knowing the types of requirements that affect your business processes and systems is important.
Steps D-G of the DIRKS methodology can help you to apply this knowledge. These steps of the methodology can help you to:
- determine whether your existing systems enable your recordkeeping requirements to be met
- employ a range of strategies to ensure your business systems adequately support your recordkeeping requirements
- undertake system design work where necessary, to help you meet your recordkeeping requirements, and
- implement revised systems and processes effectively across your organization.
Step D: Assessment of existing systems
If you are doing DIRKS to improve specific processes in your offiec, you need in Step D to target the system or systems that perform these processes. Remember to think broadly when looking for systems and do not only assess the systems you are aware of. Talk to other people who perform the process you are assessing and ask about the systems they use.
Some staff may have developed personal systems to control aspects of the business process, involving spreadsheets and their own personal procedures. Be sure to include any such systems and the records they create and generate in your assessment. Remember too that the systems performing your business process may not all be located within the one business unit. Make sure you include all business systems in your assessment, irrespective of their location.
If you have worked your way through the methodology and assessed your organization in Step A: Preliminary investigation and done a detailed assessment of the business and how it should be conducted in Step B: Assessment of existing systems and Step C: Identification of recordkeeping requirements, you will have a good idea of how systems should perform by the time you reach Step D. Use all this knowledge you have gained as a means to assess the effectiveness of the systems that are currently in operation.
| ^ Tip: Be comprehensive in your system assessment If you are assessing the way a specific function is transacted or examining all business systems in your department/office, you need to be comprehensive in your assessment and make sure all appropriate business systems are examined. Systems can be rapidly developed in ad hoc ways. Automated systems and processes can evolve rapidly across the organization. You therefore need to be vigorous when looking for systems as you may not be aware of all systems currently used to transact and document your business. |
Questions to ask
Specific questions about systems that you may want to ask could include:
- does the system meet the specific business requirements that apply to it?
- is the system easy to use?
- do all appropriate staff have access to it?
- are all relevant business rules applied within it?
- is the system adequately maintained?
- do procedures explain how it should be maintained?
- can the system adequately manage the records it generates?
This range of questions will help you to determine the appropriateness of the systems your organization currently uses to transact its business.
^
Assessing all organizational systems
If you are doing a full review of all systems in your department office, you will need your Step D assessment to be comprehensive, but attainable. To help you achieve this, your Step D analysis can be rolled out gradually across your department/office.
If you are doing a full scale DIRKS assessment, you may wish to undertake your system assessments incrementally and gain a thorough understanding of a business system and its strengths and weaknesses before you move onto the next system.
Alternatively, to keep your work manageable, you may want to use the knowledge you have gained in Step B: Analysis of business activity and Step C: Identification of recordkeeping requirements to help you prioritise aspects of your Step D analysis. If you've undertaken an assessment of business in Steps B and C and gained a broad organizational understanding as a result of Step A: Preliminary investigation, you will have all the information you need to undertake a risk assessment of your organizational business operations.
Doing such an assessment will allow you to identify those areas of your business that perform crucial or litigious functions, as well as those areas that are less subject to difficulties or legal investigation. You can then use this risk analysis to prioritise your system assessment.
You will need to ensure that all relevant systems are assessed, in the areas you have chosen to focus on. Talk to action officers and use your knowledge of business process. Use interviews to determine how action officers would like to see business done. Have a very good understanding of the specific recordkeeping requirements that apply to the business areas you are assessing.
See the section above on the assessment of specific business systems for an outline of some of the questions you may choose to ask when you are ready to conduct a specific system assessment.
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Step E: Identification of strategies for recordkeeping
Step D: Assessment of existing systems enables you to determine how your organizational systems currently operate and to identify the problems that may result from standard operating procedures. In Step E you will utilise knowledge of existing practices, and the problems associated with these practices, to determine a range of strategies that will enable you to solve these problems.
Step E outlines four strategies - policy, design, standards and implementation. Working through this step will help you to choose the strategy or combination of strategies that will enable you to redress the inappropriate system performance identified in Step D.
Once your choice of strategies has been identified, in Step F: Design of a recordkeeping system you will start to design solutions based on the strategies you have chosen, that will enable you to rectify the system flaws you've identified, and allow you to start to meet your recordkeeping requirements.
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Step F: Design of a recordkeeping system
If you are undertaking DIRKS to improve business processes and systems, in Step F you will start to implement the recommendations you have been building during the course of your DIRKS analysis. In Step F you will design all components of your system bearing in mind all the lessons you have learned about how to improve your business processes through the incorporation of better recordkeeping.
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Step G: Implementation of a recordkeeping system
A project to improve business processes or systems will impact greatly on the day-to-day work of staff members. Its success also relies greatly on staff acceptance of the changes. The change management mechanisms recommended in Introducing DIRKS and the promotional strategies recommended in Step G may contain useful suggestions to assist in your implementation.
If you are only looking at work process changes, you will need to consider how you are going to move from one way of conducting business processes to the new way, and what effect this will have on operations. If you are making changes to systems, conversion strategies are very important to consider.