• The salary for a University Records Manager (admin/professional position) is based on Montana OES data (for 11-3011 Administrative Services Manager) 2011 median salary.  The State Records Manager position is currently paid $72,132. The cost for such an employee will insure the successful candidate has achieved recognized professional competency by the Institute of Certified Records Managers.
• Materials would include annual costs for office supplies and standard records storage containers and OTO costs for container handling equipment, e.g., lifting devices, ladders, and safety equipment.
• Travel would include annual costs to attend consultation meetings and collaborate with Montana Extension Service and Montana Agriculture Experiment Station constituents.
• Contracted Services would include labor for large volume records transfers and periodic disposal/shredding of retired records.
• Capital costs are for records management software, site license for 5 user seats, with bar coding capability, training, computer and bar coder, and annual update fees. (RMS, Archive Manager, multi-user version for unlimited containers, or equivalent) 

The university presently has no set policy for the management and disposition of its institutional paper and electronic records, and although a facilities services employee has the responsibility for the management of the University Records Center, he has no authority to work with various campus offices for the disposition of their records, records that are constantly being generated. Without a written policy for records retention and disposition, the university is under constant threat of adversarial legal action demanding the retention of records potentially damaging to the institution. A clear policy, consistently enforced, would insure the smooth transition of non-current records to their scheduled destruction or their retention within the university archives. The university cannot be held liable for the destruction of potentially damaging information provided such a policy is in force.

The current state of affairs = we have a 6,000 gsf records management facility that contains ~11,000, 3 cubic foot document storage boxes on 101 steel shelf units. The stored records are not actively managed – the operation currently functions as an unmanaged, limited-access, dead storage facility. Materials include records from many university departments. Only limited records documentation is available – much of it handwritten. Departments may access records by appointment only; no additional records are accepted for storage; and, if records leave the facility they are not re-entered into storage.

The impacts/benefits of implementing this proposal include the following:

• Appropriate organization and storage of existing and future university records.
• Management of all records in accordance with federal, state and university records retention, disposition and destruction policies, administrative rules and statutes.
• Avoidance of latent legal liabilities associated with keeping records beyond their mandated retention period.
• Liberation of departmental space for higher priority uses in campus academic and research facilities.
• Efficient storage and retrieval of records for all campus customers. 

The requisite records storage facility already exists and annual building O&M is already covered in the appropriate Facilities Services state budgets. Therefore, implementation consists of the active participation of the University legal counsel, university auditor, university archivist, and CIO.

• Hiring the required University Records Manager (3-6 months)
• Procuring the necessary records management software (3-6 months)
• Researching and following state/federal records management requirements and developing appropriate university records management policies and procedures (1-2 years).  For example, investigate and potentially implement guidelines from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Assessment measures would include:

• Staffing in place and software installed and in operation in first year
• Records management requirements researched and policies and procedures authored, adopted and implemented in second year
• Records managed according to protocols in succeeding years 

I have no suggestion for a "sunset" for this position since records management will be a necessary function of this university as long as it exists. I can see a decreasing need for the management of non-current paper records in the coming decades, and during that time the records manager’s involvement with the Chief Information Officer and the Information Technology Center will increase. Obviously the maintenance of current electronic information is the purview of the Chief Information Officer, and apparently there is no consistent plan in place for its storage once its immediate need for reference is past.  As pressing as this need may become, the present problem centers on the legacy of analog data that begs for proper management.