Shared folders – network drives or ‘public’ folders in some email environments – are used by most government agencies as a part of their overall information management strategy. There are many good reasons for this, including facilitating collaboration, disseminating information and storing documents that are difficult to capture into a records management system.

Records management systems are systems (either electronic or paper) capable of capturing, maintaining and providing access to records. They should ensure that the reliability and integrity of records is protected.

From a records management perspective, shared folders can have the following risks:

• It is easy to develop a confused, uncontrolled hierarchy of folders and document titles, which makes retrieval difficult.
• The lack of records management functionality means that documents are not ‘good’ records nor reliable evidence.
• It is difficult to collect records management metadata that identifies, authenticates and describes records in a systematic and consistent way.
• Security settings that permit users to save documents to the folder also give users the ability to inadvertently delete a document.
• Ease of alteration (either deliberate or accidental) makes it difficult to ensure that the version in the shared folder is the same as the ‘official’ version. Audit trails detailing alterations are not usually kept.
• Ease of duplication means that it is difficult to identify where the ‘primary’ record is located. The overall management of documents is generally ad hoc and not incorporated into the overall information strategy of an organisation.
• It is difficult to identify sequences of documents (either within the shared folder or in other systems) that relate to the one business process.
• Not everyone in an organisation has access to workgroup folders, so they might not be aware of the information contained in those folders.
• Limited capacity of information technology infrastructure may mean that there is pressure to destroy documents while they are still useful.

Shared folders are a useful tool, but you need to ensure that proper records are also kept. Some ways this can be done are to:

• incorporate the use of shared folders into your overall information management strategic framework
• provide viable alternatives for staff to use instead of shared folders. These include an easy to use records management system and collaboration tools and the use of an intranet to facilitate dissemination of documents
• ensure that copies of all approved or final versions of documents are placed into your records management system
• ensure that all staff are aware that the ‘official’ version of the document should be obtained from the records management system
• provide links between the shared folder and the records management system
• change work practices to ensure that draft documents are removed from the shared folder after being placed into the records management system
• remove out-of-date or obsolete documents from the shared folders on a regular basis
• enforce security permissions that limit the ability of most users to create folders and delete or amend documents
• ensure that your records management policy and procedures cover the use of shared folders

Most of the advice given is also applicable to scenarios where documents are stored in personal folders or on a local drive.