How to work with filing at AU

This page describes how to work with filing at AU. This includes:

  • Responsibilities of the employee and the manager in relation to filing
  • How frameworks and principles are translated into a specific registration practice in daily work
  • The scope of filing
  • How the work on supporting and developing filing efforts is organised in a programme with a steering committee

Filing responsibility

The employee

The individual employee is responsible for ensuring that all case-relevant material received/sent/created is processed and filed in Workzone in accordance with the filing practice of the area.

If several employees work together on a task, they must agree who will do the filing. The same applies if a task consists of several sub-tasks divided between different employees or different levels in the organisation.  

AU applies the single-case principle, and therefore several cases may be linked to the same task/project. As an employee, you are responsible for keeping track of the cases and documents for which you are responsible. 

Managers at AU

The managers in the individual areas are responsible for ensuring that filing is in accordance with legislation, and that a filing practice is established for the case portfolio of the area, based on the overall frameworks and guidelines.

The managers are responsible for ensuring that the employees of the area are instructed in the filing practice and that this practice is followed.

The manager is therefore responsible for data quality as well as integrity and confidentiality of the data stored by the manager’s area in Workzone. 

From framework and principles to registration practice

Filing framework

The overall framework for filing is described in these filing guidelines.

As a general rule, the framework cannot stand alone, as the individual areas may have specific legal or procedural requirements that entail a need to supplement the overall framework with a more detailed registration practice.

This may be due to

  • Requirements for documentation in connection with research collaborations with external parties
  • Stricter requirements for documentation in connection with cases in the environmental area
  • Stricter requirements in relation to documentation of EU projects in the financial area
  • Needs for management information in connection with decision practices for dispensations in the education area

Local practice

To support work on definition, description and system support for the area-specific requirements, the different areas have superuser groups who coordinate across the area and develop registration practices on the basis of specific knowledge about needs, legislation and processes within the framework of the filing guidelines.

The group's job is not to be experts on all practices and processes, but the group will work on how this can be supported in Workzone. If the superuser group needs help in connection with legal clarification, the group can contact the superuser group for the relevant area or HR Data and Digitalisation, who can provide a contact.

This could be:

  • A faculty in which the superuser group describes how best to handle research administration in Workzone; or processes for how consultations are handled in Workzone 
  • In the financial area, where the superuser group describes how research funding is best handled in Workzone
  • Or in the education area, where the superuser group describes and defines how new requirements in connection with the study progress reform are to be documented and handled in Workzone 

 

The figure below shows an example of the relationship between the overall framework and the administrative-specific registration practice in the administrative areas Finance, department/school secretariats and dean’s secretariats as well as research administration. 





The scope of filing

AU's activities are extensive and complex, and therefore contact a superusers and superuser groups within the individual areas for a more specific definition of what is to be filed. The guidelines for filing are stated below.   

Scope of filing

Documents are filed on cases. A case constitutes documentation of administrative case processing in connection with AU's activities, where there is either an obligation or a need to file.

The scope of filing for each case type, i.e. which documents should, as a minimum, be added to a case, is assessed by the superusers in the areas/units/teams that typically process such cases. This could be whether drafts or email correspondence concerning a presentation should be added to a committee meeting case, or whether the final presentation is sufficient. As a rule, all correspondence with external parties should be filed.

If you are in doubt as to whether a specific case should be filed or not, you can clarify this by involving your local superuser, who can get help from HR Data and Digitisation.   

Documents on the case

The documents of the case are documentation of the situation – rather than actual documents. This means that all documentation important to a case must be filed, irrespective of format (e.g. MS Office documents, emails, text messages, photos, maps or telephone memos).

Parties to the case

All correspondence with external parties must be linked to a party.

Exempt from filing

Some of the documentation that occurs in connection with the practical operation of the university must not be filed in Workzone. For example, this applies to the actual conduct of research (research data), teaching, cleaning, building operations, cafeteria operations, department/school-specific holiday plans, etc.

Case material is exempt from filing if it is stored in a system with a submission agreement with the Danish National Archives or if there is an integration with Workzone. The system owner can provide information about whether the system’s data is submitted to the Danish National Archives. A system could be STADS in the education area or Emply in HR.

Note that folders in Outlook, private drives, shared drives, Onedrive, Office 365 Teams, USB flash drives, etc. are NOT approved systems. Case-relevant emails and documents from these drives should therefore also be stored in Workzone if they fall under the filing obligation or filing need. 

Do you have any questions? 

If you are in doubt as to whether a specific case should be filed or not, you can clarify this by involving your local superuser, who can get help from HR Data and Digitalisation.

Working with filing at AU

 

To support filing and ESDH work at the university, LEA (the administration's management team) has set up an ESDH programme authorised by the senior management team.

The programme is responsible for ensuring progress in the implementation of ESDH. The steering committee for the programme manages and coordinates projects and initiatives related to ESDH to work towards the shared vision and the strategic goals.  

The vision is to promote efficient administration with focus on correct case processing and cohesive processes.

The steering committee works according to a principle of creating learning-based, proactive and receiver-oriented solutions.

Steering committee:

Highest body for decisions regarding ESDH work at AU. All initiatives and objectives are approved by the steering committee.

Members: Arnold Boon, university director (chair); Anne Lindholm Behnk, deputy director at AU HR; Kristian Thorn, deputy director at AU Student Administration and Services; Peter Bruun Nielsen, deputy director at AU IT; Ole Jensen, administrative centre manager at Arts; Malene Stjernholm, secretariat manager at the Department of Animal Science   

Programme management:

The programme management is responsible for ensuring progress and coordination in ESDH work on behalf of the steering committee, and for ensuring that the objectives set by the steering committee are achieved within the given time frame. The programme management is responsible for providing all communication from the steering committee to superuser groups and the product owner group, and vice versa.

Programme director: Eva Vestergaard Kristensen, AU HR HR Data and Digitalisation.

The advisory product owner group:

The advisory product owner group gathers requests for specific development initiatives and improvements. The advisory product owner group reviews all proposals, describes development requests (userstories) and then recommends a prioritisation of joint resources to the steering committee, which will then make the final decision.

The coordinators from the different areas are members of the product owner group.

Superuser groups:

The purpose of the superuser groups is to support digital case processing and a common practice in case and document management in their area. The superuser groups map ESDH workflows and develop uniform ESDH processes as well as prepare necessary user guides based on their insight into, and knowledge of, Workzone as a system. In cases of doubt, HR Data and Digitalisation.can be involved.  

When a process has been finalised, approved and documented by the superuser group, the individual super user is responsible for communicating the processes and for training users linked to the super user.

The group's task is to gather and mature development requests from their area, and to report these to the advisory product owner group.

The individual super user is also responsible for providing 1st level support to the users linked organisationally to the super user.

HR Data and Digitalisation.

HR Data and Digitalisation manages the programme on behalf of the ESDH steering committee, and HR Data and Digitalisation is also the system owner and system manager of the ESDH system Workzone. HR Data and Digitalisation is responsible for ensuring that the filing instructions have been approved by the Danish National Archives, and that AU's overall framework for filing has been approved.

HR Data and Digitalisation supports and guides the superuser groups, provides 2nd level support and provides expert assistance for Workzone as a system as well as ESDH and filing as a method.