45/365 What do you do all day?

My official title with the city is Program Manager. I have never ever used it though. I have been the Administrative Support Manager, Information and Support Manager, and currently I am the Citywide Record Manager. What do I do all day? Well lots of things - I handle media inquires, media outreach, oversee record destruction, and help departments with filing systems. I assist citizens with public record requests, clerk the Law and Legislation Committee, update our webpage, put out fires (figuratively), and oversee the business side of our electronic document repository. A weird little variety of things I like.

However one of the things I love the most is working to preserve valuable records and tossing out the ones that aren't (I also write the City's Record Retention Schedule). Unfortunately most employees and departments think ALL records are valuable and should be kept forever and ever. They don't realize how much records cost to maintain (floor space, file cabinets, staff time filing, staff time retrieving, don't even get me started about the cost of storing records with a 3rd party company).

So I took this picture today to add to my records pictures I pull out every so often to prove a point. I remember my dad telling me once if I like my toys so much I should take care of them. I actually told a staffer today, if this was such a crucial important record why did you treat it like this. I about died when I opened the box and this is what I saw. The box was so stuffed the files were bursting out. I was even more impressed with the coffee stained stuck together report, but it was the lone kernel of corn stuck in one of the files that made my day!