Adventures in Negligence Document Control

Or Electronic Filing - are we kidding ourselves

How do we deal with our documentation? Its probably the most mundane,
controversial and opinionated part of a project, but possibly the most essential part of a
project and, more often than not, the most delegated. However, documentation is an
essential part of communication. Communication, or rather information logistics, is the
art of ensuring that information is in the right place, at the right time, with the right
people, and in the right medium. Information also needs to be stored and now this is
can be in the cloud, on a remote server, on disc etc etcetc. We tend to be rely on the
computer to do this menial work and also rely on information technology to ensure we
can retrieve this information rather than the old fashioned filing system.
When did the 'filing system' become an 'electronic database management system'?
This evolution took away the push of data to people through a manual distribution
system to a pull system in which people can or cannot ignore an email or electronic
notification. It's difficult to ignore a full in-tray; or are people today more efficient and
handle information overload better than they used to and can they multi-task, be
involved in everything, and even do their own work as well?
In this day of IT solutions for everything and information at the push of a button or a tap
on the screen use are we being fooled when we think this can be applied directly to
projects?
Some time ago I was asked to review a Document Management Plan for contractual
correspondence. As an end user what I need to know is what is the subject, where is
it kept, when was it received / sent and "who is taking care of it". I immediately
recalled a Government system I had used that utilized a relatively simple and, after a
while, memorable numbering system, that could address every subject for an
engineering design or construction project utilizing 3 pairs of digits and a unique
sequential number.
However, to my horror, and shattering any delusions of simplicity and practicality, I
discovered that there were seven fields and a 23 character alphanumeric code. With
such a level of detail retrieval should be easy, I thought, or rather expected somewhat
stupidly. Unfortunately upon close inspection this complicated code just identified
sender, recipient, contract title and a sequential number and that the document in
question would be a letter. The code also advised as to the generic discipline, but in our
multidisciplinary team in multiple locations the code reference was, quite literally, a
waste of space. But the code was incorporated on the top of every letter filling up
space and sparking another debate as to the font size because it took up too much
space.

But why do we, as humans, need this complicated reference? We dont. A person can
quickly assimilate that the piece of paper is a letter, who the receiving and sending
parties are, and its subject in an extremely short space of time. But, the computer,
being a very hard working idiot, needs to be told everything, and every time. What we
do need is a retrieval system and this is where there is a rift between how a digital
system works and human sense.
So why do we fool ourselves that this code is of any use. Only the sequential number
is of any use as it is unique but it tells us nothing about the letter; we need a subject
reference. Unfortunately this means that the Project Manager, or similar, must allocate
a file reference as opposed to classifying the document for the computer to know what
to do with it. The Project Manager may then have to assign an actionee rather than
depend on the generic and decision-free distribution list. Distribution to "all users" may
give the impression of efficiency but is it effective? Is it nice for everybody to know or is
better to have a 'need to know' which focuses the project teams efforts and prevents
the human habit of interfering in other peoples business and possibly adding to any
confusion or inefficiency within the project.
It must be a management responsibility to ensure that correspondence is classified by
subject or discipline or area of work. For the PMPs (Project Management Proponents)
amongst us, WBS (work breakdown structure) could be the start of a filing/retrieval
system and can lend itself very nicely to a DBS (document breakdown structure). With
a few simple modifications this easily becomes a 'filing system' and, hey presto, we
have some semblance of order and structure to our documentation if the management
will is there. After all it was fairly common and rigorous in BC times i.e Before
Computer.
Maybe files and filing systems aren't really needed and the Electronic Systems of the
world are what they are held out to be and can contribute to the successful delivery of a
project. However, one of the main reasons for projects 'failing' or not being as
successful as they could be has been cited as a lack of communication. As I said
earlier 'information logistics' requires the right information, in the right place, at the right
time, and in the right format, and (most importantly) to the right people. We should
really ask the question are Electronic Filing Systems really what they are held out to
be?
In a not too far gone time, and perhaps somewhat politically incorrect time, when filing
was done manually and without computers or spreadsheets an engineer once wrote
filing should be simple unless one has a particularly dim office staffunfortunately with
a computer being defined by some as a hard-working idiot perhaps this is the case?