The Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) has been awarded the Rob Barnett Award for Excellence in Records and Information Management by the ACT Branch of RIM Professionals Australasia.

This Award, named, after the late Mr Rob Barnett MRMA, was provided to AFMA for a solution that integrates Microsoft SharePoint to HP TRIM to establish a best practice enterprise Electronic Document and Records Management System (EDRMS)

The solution, nicknamed SQUID, was implemented with the help of Information Management and Governance (IMG) specialist iCognition. 

 “This solution not only demonstrates the implementation of an innovative solution to records and information management problems, but also the development of new and innovative strategic information management policy, procedures and guidelines”, said iCognition product manager Paul Taylor.

Currently in pre-production and due for its first phased release in early August, the solution has SharePoint as the users’ main interface, Nintex Workflow for added governance control, with HP TRIM sitting behind the scenes transparently capturing and managing records and providing compliance.

“The solution is supported by an innovative information framework, policies, procedures and guidelines, as it not only moves staff from a Print-to-File policy to full electronic records management compliance but, with practical information governance and practices applied to SharePoint, provides staff with the benefits of an EDM such as automatic version control, authorative information sources, dynamic reporting and enhanced information discovery,” said Mr Taylor.

After conducting an information audit to assess AFMA’s information environment, iCognition worked with AFMA to analyse their options for an enterprise EDRMS deployment. Given AFMA’s focus on using SharePoint as a collaborative enterprise platform, SharePoint was chosen as the solution to capture and manage all unstructured information within AFMA.

This solution provides AFMA with compliance with Australian Commonwealth Government regulations and ability to meet the Digital Transition Strategy. The user centric design and philosophy provides AFMA staff with the ability to meet their recordkeeping obligations simply by capturing all of the agencies unstructured information into SQUID and allowing the SharePoint to HP TRIM integration to provide the records management compliance.