Spotlight

Earlier in the year we put ‘Should we be measuring the impact of records management?‘ under the Spotlight, this blog post referred to a selective literature review ‘An assessment of the current evidence base demonstrating the benefits of investing in the improvement of records management’ undertaken by JISC infoNet during 2009.

As a result of the discussions initiated by this review, JISC infoNet have developed an Impact Calculator; launched last week.

The Impact Calculator is a freely-available downloadable tool, that provides a mechanism for measuring the actual impact of a change initiative. The Impact Calculator has been developed to measure the wider impact a change initiative has on an organisation, not just the impact of records management.

Using the premise that most change initiatives have an effect on an institution’s administrative processes, the Impact Calculator uses process redesign as its focus for measuring impact. The introduction of a new student record system, a move to the centralised storage of records, or a move to use collaborative tools in the workplace, are different examples of change initiatives that can occur within an institution. Although these examples are very different they will all, to varying degrees, have an effect on the administrative processes within the institution. Focusing on the changes in these processes provides a mechanism for identifying the impact that such change initiatives have on the institution, whilst also placing the changes in its appropriate broader institutional context.

Here a methodology of deconstructing the process before and after the change initiative has occurred provides a systematic way of identifying the different ways and degrees that the change impacts on the institution. Deconstructing the process and comparing the before and after states assists in determining individual discrete areas of change. These areas can then be assessed for their potential for measurement. However, without a consideration of the costs incurred to achieve the benefit realised it is impossible to fully appreciate their significance, so the Impact Calculator allows you to record costs too.

This tool includes the means by which any organisation considering or currently engaged in a change initiative can capture and measure three distinct sets of data: performance information before and after completion of the initiative and the costs of implementation, thereby allowing an accurate calculation of its measurable benefits to be achieved that can be quantified in both monetary and non-monetary terms.

Using the Impact Calculator is primarily an exercise in collecting and recording information. Depending upon the scope of the initiative in question this could involve a significant amount of effort. Although there is a minimum amount of data required without which the Impact Calculator simply cannot function, we have also tried to design the tool to be flexible, allowing the user to define the level of granularity of data they wish to capture and subsequently generate via the tool depending upon their specific requirements.

The Impact Calculator and associated guidance is now available for download from www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/impact-calculator

JISC infoNet is also pleased to announce that it will be providing funding for a small number of UK further and higher education institutions to pilot the Impact Calculator within their institution. These pilot projects will suggest improvements to future versions of the Calculator, report back on their experiences of using it within their institution and publish the data they produce through its use. The pilots will be run between January and June 2010 and further details regarding how to formally express an interest in taking part will be announced in November.

We look forward to hearing about the experiences of anyone using the Impact Calculator and would be grateful if anyone blogging or tweeting about it could use the tag ‘impactcalc’ to allow us to track any such comments.