Manager
Records Management Centre
University of South Africa
Johannesburg
South Africa
Ngwanaphalama Margaret More will be presenting on The University of South Africa's 35 million Rand Records Management Programme on Tuesday
The big challenge loomed in 2004. South Africa merged its three largest distance-learning institutions, UNISA, Technikon SA, and Vista University’s Distance Education branch, VUDEC. Recordkeeping tyro Ngwanaphalama Margaret More … her African name means “Baby Springbok” … had to match the low-tech records of the two incoming educators with the UNISA systems.
“We needed to improve our existing document management system, too. I held a workshop on records management needs with all the UNISA stakeholders. We had about 40 people from so many departments ... library, student administration, HR, IT, legal, all of them. We did SWOT analyses on records management. A common understanding was reached among the stakeholders; it was quite apparent that UNISA needed to establish a corporate RM programme, managed and controlled by a records management centre.
“The stakeholders passed the word on to their bosses. I wrote the proposal to the university management and, voila, the project was approved and they allocated my budget of 35 million.”
She based that massive figure on calculations like the cost of scanning the paper archives of the two incoming institutions. She asked three vendor companies to estimate costs for upgrading the existing systems and then added 10 per cent for exigencies.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
“During that management meeting … I did not go in, just my boss … I was nervous. I didn’t know, but I was positive they would accept it. Everyone said I was crazy but it was supported by the steering committee comprised of stakeholder executives. They were right behind it.
“On the day, at around 1 o’clock, my boss called me and said ‘I need to speak to you’. I knew, then. He would have told me on the phone if it had failed.
“When I went in, he said ‘congratulations’. The Management had approved the figure with only one condition … that the money would be spread over five years. That was fine! I’d half expected something like that. It was so exciting.”
The new Records multi-Millionaire launched straight into her up-graded campaign with a records and information audit throughout the new UNISA and its five main hubs in the Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, Limpopo and North West provinces.
“We found lots of gaps, a lot of waste, space problems, no policy or procedures, not enough retention schedules and those we had were not up to date. There were no file plans, no proper electronic records system, no overall records management policy, no disposal or access procedures. There was no control of documents couriered between UNISA head office and the hubs. We’ll never know what documents were lost or where. We relied on students to follow up sometimes months after registration, compromising their assignments and even their exams. It was no-ones’ fault, really. People were working in whatever way they thought, not knowing about records management and legal requirements.”
Inspired by former President Mandela’s and the new republic’s determination not to dwell on their past, Margaret More set about putting things right. She has created nine “task teams” to run down the problems and open the future. The teams deal with subjects like policy and procedures, taxonomies, retention schedules, facilities, communications, HR, change management and so on. She has a team focused just on scanning, for example, as well as another on the wider issues of information management (IM) technology. “For us,” she says, ”scanning is a very big issue. We have a great deal of documents to scan and index and that alone is a very big job.”
