Department of Navy wins prestigious NARA award: records management initiative recognized by the National Archives and Records Administration

CHIPS, July-Sept, 2007

The Department of the Navy (DON) was selected by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to receive one of five Archivist Achievement Awards for outstanding achievement in federal records management.

The National Archives and Records Administration serves American democracy by safeguarding and preserving the records of the federal government, ensuring that the public can discover, use and learn from this documentary heritage.

The DON was recognized specifically by NARA for its ability to provide full-range life cycle records management capabilities, up to and including disposition. The DON received the award for its DON Enterprise Records Management Solution program. ERMS is a self-sustaining program that provides secure information management and records preservation across the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) global enterprise that is 400,000 members strong.

Employing a combination of strategic governance and practical deployment tactics, the ERMS program was rapidly deployed across 30 echelon II commands in two short years. Since 2005, the DON ERMS program has educated more than 10,000 members in records management practices and captured more than 500,000 official records serving 148 distinct processes in the Navy, including legal, investigative, financial, research, operational and manufacturing disciplines.

The DON ERMS framework consists of: (1) Governance tailored to the DON records management practice; (2) A highly functional commercial records management application, called Total Records and Information Management, or TRIM, available at each user desktop; (3) A comprehensive education program providing both classroom and Web-based training tailored to various stakeholders within the DON ranging from the casual records consumer and producer up to records officers; (4) Accelerated implementation through education and on-site deployment support; (5) Uniform application of DON records policy around the world, afloat and ashore; and (6) Enterprise-wide information retrieval, administration and oversight capability.

The ERMS framework has been fielded extensively at shore-based commands within the DON, and in March 2007, the Director of Navy Records office completed the first records management pilot in the fleet aboard the aircraft carrier, USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75). This pilot was conducted via the Trident Warrior 2007 series of experiments to automate core business processes (leave, transfers and separations) within administrative and personnel offices onboard the ship.

As with all prior implementations, the afloat implementation of the DON ERMS practice furthers the program's support of the Navy's operational warfighters through a framework that delivers the right information to the right person at the right time.

To sustain the records management practice within the DON, a program to support records officers is in place to ensure that the community stays engaged and organizations have access to the ever-growing body of knowledge within the enterprise. For the larger federal enterprise, the DON ERMS platform sets the stage to complete the information management life cycle by creating a working conduit to integrate with NARA's Electronic Records Archive (ERA).

Records Management Application

The DON ERMS employs a core configuration across the NMCI enterprise within TRIM. Each major organization within the DON is allocated its own TRIM repository. Each repository is pre-populated with the core configuration, including: (1) DON File Plan in accordance with the DON Standard Subject Identification Codes (SSIC) Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) Manual 5210.2 ; (2) DON Retention and Disposition in accordance with SECNAV Manual 10.1; (3) DON Thesaurus catalog; (4) Enterprise and organizational security profiles; (5) Security policy for records; and (6) Standard record type templates.

Education

Teaching the DON's geographically and functionally diverse community about records management principles was an essential first step to capturing vital records. Four Web-based training modules were created and deployed to Navy Knowledge Online (NKO), available at http://www.nko.navy.mil:

* Entry-level Records Management

* Advanced Records Management Concepts

* Entry-level TRIM

* Advanced user TRIM

Anytime, anywhere access to these Web-based training modules has increased awareness of the DON records management practice and resulted in more than 8,000 individuals taking these courses. Through classroom and Web-based training, the DON ERMS program offers training tailored to records management novices and veterans alike.

Implementation

The DON ERMS program implemented a six-week initial deployment methodology to accelerate activation of an organization's TRIM repository. Through a combination of classroom training and on-site implementation support, subject matter experts from the SECNAV/Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) Directives Control Office (DNS-5) worked with more than 30 major organizations to train, configure and activate a custom records management scheme.