Focus On: City of Arlington, Texas

The City of Arlington is the home of the original Six Flags Over Texas, the Texas Rangers baseball team, and 320,000 citizens. “The City employees over 2,000 individuals, and they generate lots of records” said Wes Scott, Arlington Records Management Officer. Wes Scott supervises the Office of Records Management/General Services and is a former employee of the Texas State Library. General Services relies heavily on an extensive network of Records Liaisons to coordinate this monumental task, and on key individuals such as Richard McMahan, Records Technician, who has been with been with the City for 25 years. The City maintains records control schedules using Intersect Systems Retention Schedule Master software. The City of Arlington has developed over 72 records control schedules using the Intersect software. “We looked at having a generic schedules for our department’s records but it actually generated more problems and questions then when we used Intersect software to generate specific records control schedules (RCS) for each division,” said Scott. “For example, the Transportation Department has several divisions such as Busing, Airport, Streets, Traffic Lights, and Administration. One generic schedule for the entire department was confusing. The staff was not sure how long to maintain their records. Developing a specific schedule for each work division made good sense and was easy to accomplish using the Intersect software.” “We develop draft records control schedules as a first step,” Scott explained. “The ability to develop draft records control schedules helps each department’s Records Liaison visualize their schedule. By having a rough draft to begin with a department begins with the end result in mind.” Each department’s Records Liaison and Scott work together until they are sure that the department’s schedule will be a working document that is acceptable to everyone. “The schedules are easily modified as they are developed using Intersect software,” Scott adds. “The final draft record control schedule is submitted to the department’s director for approval, and then the control schedule is published using the Intersect software.” Scott points out that “This extra effort to develop and refine control schedules with each department is not necessarily required by state law. However the drafting of record control schedules in this way has had wide acceptance at the City of Arlington. The net result is a records control schedule that is being used by the staff because they had the ability to help in its development at the very beginning and they can see that their department director has place a seal of approval on the schedule as well. “ The City Attorney’s Office is also involved in the process. Each RCS is sent to the City Attorney’s Office for review after being accepted by the department’s director, a procedure required by City ordinance.

The State of Texas, Texas State Library’s approval and acceptance of each control schedule is also required. State law requires that Texas forms or an approved substitute must be used for all control schedules submitted for approval. The State accepts the Intersect software system’s schedule print-outs directly as an approved substitute for the Texas State Library forms. The schedule form developed by Intersect identifies where the record should be maintained and if the record was a vital record. The Intersect Software also has all Texas State Library administrative schedules like GR, LC, and PS already entered into the database which eliminates typing the information into the software. In addition, since the Texas original schedules are included in the software, search functions in the software make review and research of existing items in the Texas schedules easy, supporting convenient and accurate development of final records control schedules. The City of Arlington also uses Intersect’s RCAMS Records Control and Management System software for its records storage and retrieval process. “The RCAMS software is essential to the process of locating documents that have been requested,” Scott said. “Currently we have over 5,000 boxes being housed with General Services, and we average receiving and destroying 100 boxes per month.” The RCAMS software maintains destroy dates for each container, and supports tracking and approvals from the responsible departments for sign-offs and approvals for destruction of eligible containers. “The timely identification of records to be destroyed is important,“ Scott explains. “This procedure actually takes away revenue from General Services, but the other departments appreciate having this service because it saves them money in storage costs and in the long run, when the departments approve destruction of eligible records, this serves as a reminder to send more records to General Services for storage off-site, reducing space required for records storage within each department.” “The City of Arlington’s Office of Records Management/General Services works hard to provide backup and support to other departments at the City,” Scott summarizes. “Intersect software has helped us to deliver a consistent and quality service.”