First Nations Summit
Moving Physical Records Online
About
Founded in 1992, the First Nations Summit (FNS) provides a forum for First Nations communities in British Columbia to address issues related to treaty negotiations and similar matters.
Technology
SharePoint
Collabware
Industry
First Nations
Business Challenge
Cluttered shared drives & physical records
The FNS has been collecting paper records, meeting binders, verbatim transcripts, publications and other forms of documents that are used during treaty negotiations since they were first established. At their current rate of accumulation, they were about to exceed their storage capacity.
Limited access due to physical copies
The FNS legal counsel often require access to treaty records during a treaty negotiation. Since most records were unavailable online, accessing records had to be done in person, which made it difficult for anyone with geographic restrictions.
Solution Highlights
Migration to a Manageable File Plan
We made sure that the FNS system had sufficient content before go-live. This gives users content to interact with and eases the adoption process. We also significantly reduced the total number of categories, from 5000 to approximately 100 main categories. This allows easier file plan management in the future.
Automated Workflows
Collabware and SharePoint provide integrated, in-place Records Management, allowing end users to go about their day-to-day tasks rather than focusing on managing their content.
The FNS leverages automation capabilities for their retention policies. The combination of the content type and metadata is used to automatically classify documents as records without any direct action by FNS staff.
Improved Self-Service and Search
Metadata tags are applied to documents to classify content no matter where it resides, assisting FNS staff with any search, sorting, filtering, or grouping needs.
Also, by indexing the shared drive as an external repository, FNS staff now have the location of relevant records/documents in the complex folder structures. There was no need to invest in migrating everything to the new system.
“Gravity Union helped educate and guide us throughout the entire implementation process. Gravity Union did a really good job in getting us set up, in terms of understanding what our needs and expectations were. Overall, our relationship with Gravity Union was very collaborative.”
— Records and Information Coordinator, First Nations Summit
Benefits and Results
Freed up Storage: Storage limitation issues are now a thing of the past with treaty records and legacy documents digitized
Real-time Access: Previously, all treaty documents had to be searched and retrieved in person. Users can now connect remotely, do a search and find the content
Improved Compliance: FNS designated a core Records Management team who is responsible for adding new content and uploading into SharePoint
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