This organization is buried in paper...

As mentioned in the thread regarding PDF editors http://captalk.net/index.php?topic=21361.msg392197#msg392197
I'm at the tail-end of a year-long process to rid the squadron of paper.

Over the years I've had the "honor" of being the fixit guy for 3 Charters and a wing staff slot.  My first round resulted in
30+ (yes 30+) 55 gallon trash bags of old documents and junk left at the CDS' curb. Not to mention
a bunch of misc cables, pieces of "stuff" ("we might need it") and general detritus.  A few things went to Wing
for the historian, and a few olde things were sent to people who wanted them.

The second round wasn't as bad, but still had plenty to cleanup and dispose of.

Round three was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5+ trash bags, plus another 5 or so banker's
boxes of documents that went to (thankfully) an annual Spring Cleanup shredder truck.

Round 4 is finally coming to an end, and so far has been probably about 10 trash bags, 4 file cabinets, misc
unusable junk, and in this case, the cleanup of the personnel files in advance of digitization.

So much useless paper...so much...

To the valued Admin, Personnel, PDOs, or just CCs stuck with the job, if you're not considering
digitization, you really should.   It's not a quick fix, especially for a larger squadron, but once done, it's DONE.

In all the rounds above, plus other CAP situations, the level of "useless but kept, just in case" is literally hard to
quantify in a meaningful way.

As of writing this, the vast majority of a member's career is encased in eServices, certainly anything of real significance.
Yes, there are some decorations still not tracked, and there won't be a record of the 20 minutes spent as a TFO in 1974,
but that's likely to change soon.

Regardless, the PERSEC alone is enough to make a corporate auditor run out of the room with their hair on fire.

Social Security numbers & cards, birth certificates, immigration documents, cashed checks (?), fingerprint cards,
credit card receipts, driver's licenses and abstracts, pilots licenses and records, bank deposit slips (for accounts closed by WBP) on and on.

My personal favorite - Form 2s and 2as that were never approved, some not even signed.
Pro Tip: These go in the suspense file until approved, not in the personnel file to die alone.

Five copies of the same Finance committee minutes (OK, really?), untold copies of cash reports from 6 years ago.
(times every month).

The fax (FAX!) cover sheets from various forms and submissions well past their expiration date (not sure
which makes me sadder, keeping them so long, or that some of them are only a year or two old).

Now the grand prize winner, an entire file cabinet from a retired charter that the unit had somehow inherited, where the
charter had been retired 8 years earlier, and every piece of paper in the cabinet exceeded retention by at least 3 years.
"Wait, these are from "XX Squadron?".
"Yes"
"We can burn the whole cabinet without even looking in there..."
"Well, what if a cadet wants their records someday?"  "I have some at home, too, I get a call every now and again..."
"We can't do that, and we're not allowed to do that, certainly not in a member's home."

Then there are the files of the long-term members where everything that passed within eyeshot of the member that had their
name on it and in any tangential way could be connected to CAP or aviation is in there.  6 inch folders dating back 30 years. 
"If you want this stuff, it's yours, but we're not keeping it."  "We don't need to know about the FBO luncheon you hosted in 1982."

The only thing more frustrating are members with 50 years in and an empty folder because they moved around and no one
requested their files.  Presumably they went to destruct at the old unit because no one followed up on either end.

There's the box of misfit folders - another retired charter that the unit inherited (no idea how they kept getting stuck like this
but I wouldn't just take responsibility for an old unit's stuff "because").  Clearly there were issues with this old charter, probably
part of why they "aren't" anymore.  Lots of folders with amorphous destruct dates, 1-2 pieces of paper total in the file, and in
some cases, no CAPID anywhere.

The mountain of this stuff times the 1300+ charters CAP currently has should give everyone pause. 
Take the time during meetings starting this week and start cleaning this stuff out, or better start running
it though that fancy scanner NHQ issued your squadron and get rid of it altogether.

Don't leave it for the next guy.

TL:DR Start cleaning out your files this week, there's a lot of useless paper in there.

We should get together at some point so I can get some pointers in how /where you've digitized your files.

We should get together at some point so I can get some pointers in how /where you've digitized your files.

Anytime - always happy to cause problems.  :-)

I have converted a Group, Squadron, and Wing to paperless in the past few years.  The hardest part was convincing people to let go of paper records.  If you don't have a sheet fed scanner, a smartphone and free document scanner app makes quick work of converting files.  As of last year there were still people in my wing that would MAIL things like a CAPF120 to Wing for approval.  We now have a strict policy of only accepting documents electronically. 

[a lot]

I agree 100% with you. With last squadron I converted to electronic records, it was a lot of purge and a lot of redacting SSNs in Acrobat, but it's entirely worth it to not have the filing cabinets and paper records to contend with; especially since at the time, the filing cabinet was in a separate hangar from the building where the squadron met.

I'd be remiss if I didn't underscore the necessity to make sure the data is backed up well since vital records are now electronic only. I shoved all the stuff for my squadron into the squadron's Google Drive domain and kept it synced on at least one computer so we had two places to go to recover the files, but any way of achieving two copies with one geographically separate from the other is good enough.

But Bob, thanks for bringing up the subject. It really is an important subject going forward, supports the corporate records retention strategy, and makes life for inspection teams easier.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Coast Guard Aux is entirely paperless in so far as as personnel records are concerned. Everything is electronic.  You have to file a paper application to join but that disappears into the system. 

That being said, there is a fairly constant stream of paper certificates and awards from National or District coming back to the members but the flotilla doesn't retain copies or anything. 

That being said, I would not be surprised if some flotillas still have paper personnel files for some older members from back before everything was electronic.

Two more to add to the hit parade.

I'm now finding records retained for 5 years of members who are still active and transferred to other squadrons.
At a closer look they appear to be copies, not originals.  !@#$!
For those scoring at home, there is no retention requirement for members who are active and transfer - the file is hand-carried
by the member (cadet or senior) and the former unit does not retain the records (you can make a copy as a CYA for the
transit time, but once you confirm they have been received, shred).

Imagine the geometric progression of retention this would (and probably does) cause for members who are actively mobile.
My personal file, pre-digital, was legitimately about an inch thick. If retention from former charters was required, there would be at
least 4 copies of the file in various places.  It isn't and there isn't.  Bear that in mind.

One document I recently added to our digital file plan is a spreadsheet of destruct dates - this at least tracks that a file existed,
who destroyed it, when, and if necessary "why".  For future reference you'd at least have a CAPID to go by if nothing else.

My other whiny complaint comment today - nothing says "legit org" like official documents and reports printed on the reverse side
of an internet recipe, or other print out.

One document I recently added to our digital file plan is a spreadsheet of destruct dates - this at least tracks that a file existed,
who destroyed it, when, and if necessary "why".  For future reference you'd at least have a CAPID to go by if nothing else.

Funny, I was thinking about that when you started the thread.  The destruction record was my best friend back in my A/F communications days.  The file cabinet was very sparsely filled but the "destruct" records went back 10 years, and didn't take up a lot a room at all. An excellent addition.

We should get together at some point so I can get some pointers in how /where you've digitized your files.

What he said....probably by PM in my case due to the distance involved but I'd like to hear and understand more of how you did what you did.  Not a Google Drive fan - my wing uses that extensively and it never works for me.  Ever.   

All that being said...if we digitize the records...is there really a need to destroy them? With paper, you run into the "boxes and boxes" issue. But in electronic format? I know it may NOT impact a lot of people, but we do see former active members return after the destroy dates regularly enough.

All that being said...if we digitize the records...is there really a need to destroy them? With paper, you run into the "boxes and boxes" issue. But in electronic format? I know it may NOT impact a lot of people, but we do see former active members return after the destroy dates regularly enough.

A fair question, but that also calls to the why and what of the records to start with.
There's also the non-trivial issue of no standardization of online records, and that the idea is still
"new", with the majority of squadrons still wanting to touch paper.  Until we get to a point where every member,
or at least CC's and major staff, have corporate groupware accounts, and spend more time online then they
do resetting their password, or complaining about "my machine crashed and I lost everything", there will be
"pockets of success and pant-legs of inertia^®".

IMHO, everything should be in eServices and there should be no local records whatsoever.  Frankly there's nothing in
these files that really needs to be kept, especially if we get all Decs, PA's, activities, and anything else online.

CS hours - enter, click, shred. If the CC approves the hours, do we need the letter after approval?  No.

Sorties?   Should be tracked in WMIRS, and it shouls be automatic, ground and air - then most decs for
operations are automatic.  The data is already there, just no one parsing it.

Etc., etc.

"pockets of success and pant-legs of inertia^®"" is a registered trademark of eClipseco Mining and Heavy Machinery Consortium.  All Rights Reserved.  Let eClipseco service all of your rhetoric and propaganda needs!

Make upload and folders on eservices. Staffers upload their papers. Sort to proper folders...done.

Make upload and folders on eservices. Staffers upload their papers. Sort to proper folders...done.

Certainly 1 fairly simple and already (apparently) partially implemented way to do it.

"But what about drive space?"

Cloud space is all but free these days, especially for an organization with contacts like CAP.  Between limiting
formats and file sizes, and perhaps specifying what is needed vs. "everything", drive space should literally
be a non-concern for this.

I just checked, and the total storage space for my unit is less then 675Mb.

A 5Kb tier of AWS (if I did the math right) is only $150 a month.

Think of that - under $2K a year to rid this organization of paper once and for all.

Add $100K for the dev work to implement and there's something to use that VG money on
that has some value to everyone.

The 30GB per person tier of Google Apps costs $0.  Sell CAP as an "educational" institution instead of a non-profit and voila, unlimited storage for $0.

Absolutely - that's what many wings are doing now, one 30 GB account is 15 times what the average unit would need.

Just making the point that if NHQ were to implement a national records system, cost should not be the limiting factor.

Absolutely - that's what many wings are doing now, one 30 GB account is 15 times what the average unit would need.

Just making the point that if NHQ were to implement a national records system, cost should not be the limiting factor.

Yep, and NHQ could implement a system giving every member 30GB of storage for no cost, except some volunteer time to scale up existing wing-level provisioning systems to national scope.  My guess, <80 hours of time would do it.

I will, however, note for the record that we have one unit that I have had to provision a couple of "photo" accounts for their rather massive unit photo collections.

Absolutely - that's what many wings are doing now, one 30 GB account is 15 times what the average unit would need.

Just making the point that if NHQ were to implement a national records system, cost should not be the limiting factor.

Yep, and NHQ could implement a system giving every member 30GB of storage for no cost, except some volunteer time to scale up existing wing-level provisioning systems to national scope.  My guess, <80 hours of time would do it.

I will, however, note for the record that we have one unit that I have had to provision a couple of "photo" accounts for their rather massive unit photo collections.

Photos are nice, but of no importance for things we're trying to digitize.

Absolutely - that's what many wings are doing now, one 30 GB account is 15 times what the average unit would need.

Just making the point that if NHQ were to implement a national records system, cost should not be the limiting factor.

Yep, and NHQ could implement a system giving every member 30GB of storage for no cost, except some volunteer time to scale up existing wing-level provisioning systems to national scope.  My guess, <80 hours of time would do it.

I will, however, note for the record that we have one unit that I have had to provision a couple of "photo" accounts for their rather massive unit photo collections.

Photos are nice, but of no importance for things we're trying to digitize.

Yes, but if you're defining a storage platform for unit files, they need to be considered, because they will consume FAR more storage than any documents.

Yes, but if you're defining a storage platform for unit files, they need to be considered, because they will consume FAR more storage than any documents.

Google photos = free unlimited storage under 16Megapixels and 1080 video.  15Gb for full-res (if needed),
and then the pictures show up in drive as a folder, uber sweet.

Moving all my photos over there will probably give me back 40Gb+ in my paid Gdrive storage, not to mention the
great features like "rediscover this day".

In fact, now that it's been mentioned, I need to do that for the squadron.

One issue to be careful of when using Docs is file ownership.  Files should preferably be "owned" by a few people as possible, and those accounts should be corporation controlled whenever possible.

As it stands today, when I move on from my current posting as CC (whether voluntarily or voted off the island), Wing can take ownership of the files and transfer them to the new CC, etc., from the admin side with little drama, including recovering things should I go rogue.

If you allow members with non-CAP emails to "own" the files, they can disappear without warning with no
way to recover them - we had that issue a year or so ago with our master ES status board that was owned
by a personal Gmail and a user cleaned up some files and inadvertently deleted it.

Much better to have the .gov accounts "own" them and then share out to Gmail when necessary.