A non-profit client that has had many changes of administrator in the last few years is now left with a hotch-potch of paper and digital data, dating over at least 10 years. The digital data, confined to one USB stick on handover, contains much duplication of folders as the baton was passed on from one administrator to another.
There are files for which I don’t have a program capable of opening them. Documents with inadequate file naming and dating. Fairly important information about the organisation is spread throughout, with no cohesive repository showing both current information for the year, and useful information from past years.
Consequently, a simple request for “the winners of an annual award for the last 3 years”, has left me scrambling to find the details. And in fact it wasn’t in the digital files at all – the required information had been distributed in a plain text email, which I didn’t have access to as it was ‘before my time’, and the emails were not able to be migrated across to me in a legible format during the handover.
Next: the plan to tidy it up
PS: this event looks relevant: Heritage Preserve
