[Sigia-l] Seeking Best Practices: order for chaos

[A.F. Cossham]

Organisational structure is just the latest best idea about how the company
should be arranged. It isn't the only way of structuring, ever, and it isn't
necesssarily the  best, and the best will change over time. What matters is
the FUNCTIONS of the company, what it actually does.

Org structures are useful - as Andrew Boyd said, "IMHO the org chart should
always be one browse facet, especially on government jobs, but never the
sole one" - but what does the company actually do, and how?

A website would be better representing those functions (as would a records
classification system - and indeed, this is the aim of many records
systems), because functions are more stable over time.

Users don't give a damn what's going on behind the scenes. In my case,
teaching in a distance education institution, they don't care that I am not
responsible for posting out of course materials, cashing their cheques,
changing their address in the records system, logging in their assignments -
for them that's part of being a student. They want a one-stop shop. In the
same way, it really isn't any use structuring our website to reflect the
various elements of the organisation if those elements don't mean much to
those using the website. (and that doesn't even touch on the learning design
teams, the enrolments section, the Workplace learning section, the
Commonwealth of learning, Academic registry, Academic office .....)

Amanda Cossham
(former cataloguing librarian, now lecturer in LIS and consultant in records
management)