tfpl blog

The Annual SLA Winter Warmer Pub Quiz

by Helen Trudgeon, Contracts Recruitment Consultant

 

Last week saw SLA Europe’s Annual Winter Warmer Pub Quiz event take place, once again hosted by professional QuizMaster, AskTony and kindly sponsored by Swets and the Financial Times.

SLA President and TFPL Managing Director Darron Chapman welcomed the 16 teams, made up of SLA members and friends, all eager to be crowned Quiz Champions 2012.  So keen were staff at TFPL, that we were able to field 2 full teams – the IDOX Idles and TFPL & Back - competing not only for the main prize, but also to take home the honour of being TFPL’s own internal champion. Purely in the spirit of friendly rivalry, of course.

The quiz kicked off with an investigation of our knowledge of recent current affairs, which perhaps left a little to be desired, but the room soon warmed up as we were asked, amongst other things, to identify obscure television adverts, to get inside the heads of Sun readers  and to spot price an eyewateringly obscure range of commodities.  Smartphones were sadly banned, but our team nonetheless managed to achieve modest success, based on a sound knowledge of Asda pricing and at least one mathematical genius who knew the current price of Brent Crude.

The final round remains memorable, if only for the noise of over 80 people singing along to Chas n’ Dave and the Rocky soundtrack.  Possibly with more enthusiasm than any inherent musical ability. Or perhaps that was just me.

The eventual and well deserved winners were the Film Club, captained by Mark Haines, whilst both of TFPL’s teams managed a respectable mid-table ranking, with IDOX Idles pipping TFPL & Back by just 1 point.  We are already anticipating next year’s re-match.

Ultimate winners the Film Club https://picasaweb.google.com/asktony.co.uk/Sla2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCJrUv8Dvu5285AE#5698928439449238770

https://picasaweb.google.com/asktony.co.uk/Sla2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCJrUv8Dvu5285AE#5698928397971520194

Recruitment Update: Agency Worker Regulations, by Tracey South, Recruitment Manager

The regulations came into force on 1 October 2011 and give agency workers the entitlement to:

-  the same basic employment and working conditions as if they had been recruited directly;
-  if and when they complete a qualifying period of 12 weeks in the same job.

We have taken immediate action to ensure compliance with this new legislation:

-  Updated all of our contracts and procedures in line with Recruitment and Employment Confederation guidelines;
-  Updated our recruitment system;
-  Worked closely with current contractors and clients to ensure that they are aware of these changes and how they will be affected;
-  Trained our team and have been out to various AWR conferences and events;
-  Ensured all new vacancies are dealt with in accordance with the AWR regulations.
It has been a challenging couple of months for the team but we're confident that we are well prepared and fully briefed.

For more information about AWR, you can go to the information page on our website. For information about contract opportunities, please contact Tracey South - tracey.south@tfpl.com.

Which world do we live in?

Author: Vivienne Winterman, Senior Consultant

Physical or virtual?

Tangible or indefinable?

Real or imaginary?

The list is endless. These are the worlds the information professional (IP) has to deal with. Skill requirements are changing. Paradoxically the world is getting bigger yet smaller at the same time in information terms. As the rate of information creation continues to increase at an exponential rate, its retrieval is still ever challenging. Digitisation is in to bring the world of archives into our homes and businesses.

When will it stop?

How do you contain it?

Is it necessary?

Does it benefit us?

To answer the questions. Never. You can’t. Yes/no (glass half full/empty syndrome). It should do.

To take the last question first. It should benefit us. We should learn from good practice, stories and events that ought not to be repeated. But do we?

Is it necessary? Absolutely. All information should be transparent and there if you need it. It does of course need to be well managed, structured and retrievable.

How do you contain it? Well the cloud concept is doing a good job, but I dread to think what will happen when there is a cloud burst! I’ll leave that to your imagination.

Will it stop? No way. There is so much to learn. With the world population rising to 7 billion more and more information will be created just to manage daily living requirements.

What an opportunity for the IP. TFPL’s recent report ‘Connecting information with innovation’ (TFPL’s 2011 survey of skills and roles) http://www.tfpl.com/resources/index.cfm shows that investment in knowledge and information management (KIM) is seen as an essential component contributing to business success. KIM skills are being embedded in the workforce to bring about a new way of working, so that KIM is ‘not another initiative’ but the ‘way we do things around here’. IPs rapidly need to increase their range of skills. They need to be IT proficient, provide e-learning as a means of communicating with the virtual, global, workforce, be metadata and taxonomy advisors, maintain information governance, be concerned about managing risk, aligned to the business supporting the goals and objectives, and many more as detailed in the report. Over 350 individuals have downloaded the report, available in English, French and German.  Have you?

The Cloud: Sharing information....redefined (Not nebulous, but grounded)

Author: Julia Hordle, Director of Recruitment

Let’s be honest, it isn’t often these days, that you go to an conference event expecting to interested in every topic and speaker on the schedule.

Yesterday, we heard about the principles, potential and applications of cloud technology in a way that even a lay person (me) without a technological bone in their body, could not fail to be impressed by.

I consider myself to be a lay person because, whilst I am interested in (now fascinated by) the possibility of doing so much more with the information we hold, there is always just the promise of doing wonderful work with information, and I am always reliant on others to make the magic work.

In practice, making progress with legacy systems, written in older eras, is painfully slow and there is a high dependency on IT partners who may not share or fully understand the business purpose behind the work.

We had here a group of experts, from many different perspectives, who spoke about a new era in Information; we are at a point where we can optimise value from the content we have already invested in by designing our domains so we can share, inside and outside our own organisations.

The key points driven home were:

• That given the rate of increase of the volume of data held, a cloud solution is the safest and most economical way to store information which is not security sensitive
• The way forward for most large organisations is to use a combination of private and public clouds, infrastructure and content clouds
• That in the use of the cloud, businesses perform better by encouraging self service for customer/users, thus creating the capacity to do much more
• Through social and dispersed media, the cloud can be an excellent mechanism for due diligence, through the smart use of links
•  Economies of scale and better community working are easily enabled through a cloud
• To make clouds work, thought must be given to classification, taxonomy and linkage, if they are to work across border, cultures and languages
• There are clear cost savings via reduction in classical IT expenditure
• But the ownership, value and “curation” of data needs to be carefully thought through, or we may lose information, valuable in years and decades to come
• Who pays for content, provision and/or usage? Authors, owners, users or society? How do we pay?
• Little wastage of storage or data utility in the cloud
• Need to get into good meta data habits to be fit for the cloud

Caution: we were advised that in this ”free-for-all” stage of Cloud uptake, the current wisdom is to be cautious in your commitment to cloud service providers;

Pay detailed attention to contracts. Have an exit strategy.

Who owns the data once you hand it over, what are the rights issues, will you cede power over your own IP if you are not careful?

Make sure you are prepared to have your data back, if contract terminates. Will this undo your cost reduction?

Do providers have the right to keep and use a copy of your data?

• Understand implications for compliance and for QM systems and accreditation requirements
• Independent audit  is essential. Don’t rely on service and solutions providers
• Think carefully about security and encryption versus utility
• If encryption bars algorithms for analysis, will this prevent the cloud as a useful solution to data storage and analysis?

TFPL Events did a wonderful job of bringing together a group of speakers and participative delegates who gave The Cloud a rigorous 360 degree, public scrutiny. The event discussed the Cloud as a positive, adventurous mechanism for collaborative working and for engagement with external customers for interest groups. The event worked, because the vendors did not oversell, and the users and the sceptics came to learn but not to deride.

The sentiment in the room was of an event that delighted in its effectiveness, to raise awareness and expand our perspective on the Cloud, through real experience. There was a call for more – perhaps a follow up event to share more about inventive applications of Cloud, to inspire innovation. There is also a clear demand for CIOs –intrepid strategic information and IT professionals able to lead organisations on adventures to a promised land of cost reduction, shared information and easy information living.

One of the delegates talked about a “race for adoption” and how important it is for growth, to take up new technology ahead of the curve for optimum performance. This seminar made us all want to race.

Developing capability

Author: Claire Valentine, Training Manager

Last week I attended my first NetIKX meeting at the British Dental Association.  Chris Collison was presenting on how as internal experts, knowledge and information professionals can use techniques such as ‘the river diagram’ to assess and improve the knowledge and information processes within their own organisations.  The technique takes a step on from benchmarking exercises to develop a situation whereby a learning and knowledge sharing culture can flourish.  It does this through identifying common ground on which to build a maturity model.  This model identifies key aspects to benchmark, a discussion on what ‘good’ looks like in terms of performance is then identified on a sliding scale for the model and each part of the organisation are asked to self assess their section against it.  You can read about this in more depth in Chris’ latest book ‘No more consultants, we know more than we think’ which he co-authored with Geoff Parcell.

The session itself was extremely enlightening as not only did Chris present and explain this technique but also took us through a practical exercise whereby we all made assessments of the organisations we worked in against a readymade maturity model of knowledge sharing benchmarks.  From this initial assessment we were able to develop a very clear picture in the room of where the expertise was the strongest for different bench mark measurements and where that expertise could be shared with those who wanted to learn and develop expertise.  This led us into a knowledge sharing exercise as ‘experts’ in certain areas were split on to different tables so that those who wanted to improve their progress in certain areas could learn from those who felt they were doing well in those areas.

Our table was focussed on knowledge strategy where we had a very interesting and lively discussion on best practices for building, developing and implementing a knowledge strategy.   Some of the key learning points were:

• A strategy should be simple enough to be kept in your head and not constantly referred to through a paper document
• A strategy should consider the values, ethos, and policies and culture it wishes to promote
• Advocacy and promotion through champions will aid acceptance of the strategy
• Confidence and building trust important considerations in the development and implementation of a strategy
• Technology, the environment (i.e. building space etc) are all important facilitators in the implementation of a knowledge strategy

It is interesting to note that a lot of what was discussed in this group required the use of the ‘internal consultant’ skills that we talked through at the event at Henley earlier on in the month (see post Jack of all, master of none? )  Clearly, capitalising on the ‘softer skills’ such as influencing, advocacy, and relationship management are important parts of the tool-bag of skills needed today. 

A word from our newest member of the team

Author: Tom Green, Sales Executive Training and Events

As a new member of the training team at TFPL I thought I’d note down a few points gleaned from my work to date.   In particular, Cloud technology and its future impact on organizations has become a regular topic of client conversations. The information, knowledge and records management sector is talking about this revolutionary hosted service and the effects that implementing it will have for their future. What it can provide to their current systems and what it has potential to  has created an excited hype around its revolutionary infrastructure. However, with this air of potential does come challenge. A stigma of unreliability around how connective, compliant and secure it really is still holds prominence within the minds of information professionals faced with the future potential of having to use it.

However, not all information management professionals hold similar speculations or concerns. Some see the Cloud as only a technological change so are not yet focussing on how they will manage information services within it in the future. In fairness, if the intercompany talk which surrounds them only revolves around its impact as a technology, why would they think otherwise. This is however, what we have learned to try to avoid. We are trying to encourage our community to think about its impact and, in turn, fully prepare themselves and their information service for the future. As a recent example, SharePoint had a big impact on information services that were not completely prepared for what it could do and how it should be managed. Like Cloud it was optimistically seen as a revolutionary way to host organisational information yet, through lack of preparation, could not be properly used and in turn became recognised as disruptive. From my own experiences of perspectives toward Cloud this has the potential to happen again.

This is why I feel our future event by discussing Cloud specifically in terms of its impact on information, knowledge and records management professionals is important. By creating a space for organisations to learn, share and discuss about their future in Cloud it will help lay a foundation for it to be efficiently used in the future. Take your opportunity to join the discussion and start thinking about how it will affect you at ‘Sharing Information...re-defined’ on 20^th October

 

Jack of all, master of none? The multi-skilled KM, Library and Information Manager

Author: Claire Valentine, Training Manager

Last night we ran our second joint evening coaching event with the Henley KM Forum.  The evening was hosted by Jane McKenzie, Director of the Forum in the beautiful surroundings of Henley Business School.  Our theme was ‘Jack of all (trades), master of none? – the multi skilled KIM professional’  Ian Wooler, TFPL Senior Associate took the group through his thoughts and experiences working as a consultant and talked about the ‘internal consultant’ that is demanded more and more by the business from the KIM professional.

The idea of the growing need for a more ‘rounded’ and multi-skilled professional was backed by the research that TFPL conducted earlier in the year on the developing roles and responsibilities of the KIM profession.  Ian illustrated this well with the analogies of the Swiss army knife of ‘hard skills’ an individual needs which also need to be complemented with an artist’s palette of ‘soft skills’.  This combination of multi-skilling is seen as more and more important within organisations as KIM professionals are expected to take on an internal consultant’s role.  Ian described 4 ‘internal consultancy’ tools and techniques that he uses on a regular basis and which he felt were key skills important to KIM every role – stakeholder management, workshop design – principles and planning, force field analysis and the Six Thinking Hats from Edward de Bono.  This set the scene for the interactive discussion that followed analysing our own soft skills and what is needed in the roles we perform in our organisations.  The important points that came out of the discussion were:

The different aspects of communication skills – influencing, persuading, listening, leadership

The ability to deliver

Internal networking

Change management

Technology understanding and management

Organisational knowledge and understanding

Benchmarking and success measurement for KM

Evaluation and judgement

Horizon scanning

Management of virtual teams

Staff/HR management

Mentoring

The evening finished with further discussions over drinks and nibbles before the taxis came to return us to our respective train stations for the journey back to London and the surrounding area.  I think all took away a new perspective on their own skills; I certainly did and am looking forward to using the different tools described.

Storing Information in the Cloud – a records management perspective

Author: Claire Valentine, Training Manager

With our Cloud event, Sharing Information Re-defined fast approaching we will be running a series of guest blogs to introduce the speakers and their chosen topics.  Our first guest blogger is Nicole Convery, who will be presenting the findings of her research and the toolkit of best practice that was developed for records management in the Cloud.  What follows below is Nicole's blog:

"In 2009, the Department of Information Studies at Aberystwyth University ran a small research project funded by the Society of Archivists that examined operational, legal and security issues relating to the storage of information in the cloud for access. The aim of the project was to generate debate and to highlight some of the issues surrounding the storage of information in a virtual environment. We have already seen many organisations outsourcing email and data storage to cloud providers such as Google and Amazon for cost and efficiency reasons. Cloud computing can have financial and operational advantages such as reduced deployment cost, increased storage capabilities and scalability. However, cloud computing raises quite a few security and compliance issues that need to be addressed when outsourcing information storage to third parties.

Information professionals whose organisations are about to deploy information into the cloud will need to ask the right questions and identify the right strategies for ensuring that information is kept securely, accessible and in line with relevant legislation. Areas of concern need to go further than IT security and should cover:

• Data protection – how can organisations ensure that they comply with legislation?
• Information classification and retention in the cloud – how can organisations manage information in the cloud in line with corporate policies?
• E-discovery and compliance – how can organisations ensure that they are able to produce information when needed in an accessible format?
• Long-term access and preservation – how can organisations ensure that they can identify and access information in the cloud over time?

These are just a few of the issues that spring to mind and information professionals need to ensure that they get involved in cloud projects from the start to address these issues. Cloud computing is all too often driven by IT departments in an attempt to improve efficiencies and reduce cost and is often seen as a point solution rather than part of a wider IT/IM strategy. Information management, risk and compliance concerns are sometimes not considered properly or at a later stage in the project process. Information professionals have an important role to play in pushing a cloud strategy that addresses information management and security concerns from the start in a coherent way, so that ‘compliance headache’ at a later stage can be prevented. The cloud computing toolkit that we developed for the ARA (http://www.archives.org.uk/images/documents/Cloud_Computing_Toolkit-2.pdf) is just a first step and envisaged to highlight areas of concern and to start the discussion among information professionals about what standards and guidelines need to be developed. Cloud computing offers exciting opportunities for managing information more efficiently, for improving business processes and for fostering collaboration and information sharing – records managers should support such developments but should also be in a position to highlight issues and suggest solutions.

Nicole will be available to speak to directly on her work on 20th October at The Cloud - Sharing Information Re-defined

TFPL Connect – Harnessing the power of networks

Author: Claire Valentine, Training Manager
TFPL Intelligent Resources

We enjoyed an interesting event last night on how best to develop networks both in the traditional sense and also utilising the latest social media tools. Our event was presided over by Iain Simpson who introduced our speakers and provided the continuing thread throughout the evening.

Julia Hordle stood in for the billed speaker Andrew Beurschgens who was unable to attend due to unforeseen circumstances.  Julia has worked closely with Andrew and the UK chapter of the Competitive Intelligence forum (UKCIF) for many years and gave some really good pointers on what it takes to develop a traditional network using the methods they had employed to develop UKCIF. 

The key points that I took away from this were that action is all important, particularly the willingness to give and share information along with an enthusiasm and energy to keep the interaction going.  UKCIF started out with an 8 person group who were not afraid to go out to the rest of the community, through their own individual contacts and try something out.  With very little funding they were able to set up a website and utilising different communication channels, including social media tools.

Following on from this was Jemima Gibbons, a social media strategist.  Jemima introduced the group to several new ways to get the most from the popular social media tools such as twitter and LinkedIn.  She also suggested a 5 point plan on how to develop your own social media communication strategy and develop your own online network.  The most important point for me here I think was to develop your own story and not just use it as a corporate broadcasting tool.  Interact with others, replying to, commenting on others comments and questions.

The aspect that I think brings both of these presentations together is the motivation to act and a key aspect of encouraging others to interact and to share their own thought and information is to start sharing information yourself.  Full details of both presentations will be available in the member's area of the TFPL Connect site very shortly.

The Cloud - An information management dream or nightmare?

Author: Claire Valentine, Training Manager
TFPL Intelligent Resources

We have seen a great deal of hype recently about ‘the cloud’ but what is it exactly?  What does it mean for business and what are the implications for KIM professionals?  These were our thoughts when putting together the programme for our October event.

From my research and the people  I have spoken to so far,  it seems that whilst there are clear advantages in terms of cost savings and efficiencies there are also clear concerns on information security, information management and storage and management of compliance and risk.

Despite these concerns which are the same across sectors, business continues to push forward with the outsourcing and sharing of IT services.  Gartner itself predicts that over $100 billion will be spent by business on cloud services in the next 6 years and indeed I have heard case studies of both local and central government use of the cloud growing.  It is true that there are clear advantages also for collaboration and Gartner again predicts that projects will become smaller and shorter as ‘cloud culture’ takes a hold on organisations.

So it seems that the advantages will outweigh the risks in the end and that this trend will continue to move forward.   All we can do is be ready and ensure that the correct policies are applied when needed.