As 2021 kicks off, it’s a familiar time when government organizations reflect on the activities of the past twelve months and begin thinking about ways to improve processes in the new year. Unlike previous years, 2020 was a year of disruption that forced many Federal Departments and Agencies to adapt and innovate in order to meet their core mission of public service. Despite a global pandemic, organizations have continued to meet their public and legal responsibilities.  

One of the legal obligations of all Federal Departments and Agencies is adherence to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) directives contained in M-19-21. For those who are not familiar, M-19-21 is an OMB/NARA directive that mandates permanent and temporary federal records be captured, retained, and managed in an electronic format. One of the tenets of M-19-21 requires that an organization have its senior official’s emails identified and managed as a permanent record. To help organizations comply with M-19-21, the Capstone approach was created by NARA to streamline the identification, categorization, and management of senior official’s email records, also known as Capstone records. 

Recently, I spoke with a government organization that required its senior officials, known as Capstone officials, to identify and manually categorize email by moving emails into a folder on the organization’s file share. Being part of a company that specializes in records management, I was not surprised to hear this manual approach is still used by many in the Federal Government. Many organizations still follow an inefficient “print and file” method for Capstone because of limited resources, inadequate funding, or lack of knowledge about records management solutions designed to simplify such processes. Leaders within the Federal Government must juggle a significant number of duties that make it difficult for them to spend valuable time and effort manually managing Capstone records. Fortunately, there are a number of certified records management solutions, including Feith’s own RMA iQ, that can ease the burden of managing Capstone records. Some capabilities that an organization should consider when looking for a records management solution to address its Capstone record needs to: 

• Automate to identify and categorize Capstone records;
• Provide records managers with the ability to easily modify Capstone officials and retention schedules;
• Support the integration of existing business processes into management of Capstone records; and
• Leverage a company with a long history of supporting the Federal Government in meeting records management compliance standards, such as M-19-21 and NARA’s Universal Electronic Records Management requirements.

Organizations that use records management solutions, such as Feith’s RMA iQ, benefit from the software’s automation and ease of use to quickly comply with M-19-21 and other standards established by NARA. In addition to compliance with legal requirements, organizations that leverage automated software can also significantly reduce the amount of time that senior officials spend complying with legal obligations for records management. By eliminating the manual tasks of identifying Capstone records, senior officials can focus attention on critical activities that serve the public and meet the organization’s mission.

For Federal Departments and Agencies that still rely on manual processes for management of their Capstone records, now is the time to consider new solutions that reduce the demands of Capstone officials. Using a comprehensive records management solution will increase productivity, improve efficiency, and reduce costs, while meeting legal obligations. As an experienced partner to the Federal Government, Feith is excited about the possibilities that a new year brings. As your organization reflects on what’s worked well and processes that can be improved, reach out to Feith and learn how we can help you meet M-19-21 requirements and other records management needs. 

Organizations today have more information than ever before.  Making sense of large volumes of content and complicated processes is a challenge.  Your staff likely has ideas for apps and business processes that would make life easier.  Unfortunately, many of the apps they need do not exist off the shelf.   Your organization needs a way to leverage technology to run more efficiently.

With Feith’s Low-Code Platform you can configure your own business applications. Visual drag-and-drop tools allow you to piece together apps from scratch and change them as your process and requirements change.   A clean, easy to understand user interface makes apps simple to use and adopt. With browser-based interfaces, what you create works on any device from the get-go, including mobile.  

As your business grows your business apps will too, because Feith’s low-code platform scales to meet your requirements. By integrating new processes with your existing systems, you can unite and give new value to your enterprise data.  Feith’s Low-Code toolkit comes out of the box with hundreds of pre-existing connectors and API’s built into the platform.  For those integrations that are not included, creating the connection yourself is as easy as using our visual builder to point and click one system to the next.  All this can be done with very little code, often without any code at all.