The financial mismanagement at TNA that has necessitated the proposed cuts is probably linked to the high turnover in personnel occupying the position of Director of Finance and Performance. There has been no stability since Nick Worrall left the organisation, and the new appointment will be the fourth individual to take charge since the start of the 2008-09 financial year.
The vacancy is being advertised on TNA’s website at the moment, at £90,000+ with various benefits. The job description is revealing, and contains an introduction written by the CEO. In this letter, the question is posed: ’so what do we do? We are Government’s information managers. We publish UK legislation and official publications, whilst advising the Government on how to manage their information, exploit it for wider access, and use and keep the records that matter.’ The opening statement is key to how TNA now views itself.
In the description of TNA’s funding, we learn that ‘TNA runs trading services, which are mostly cost recovery. The largest (in revenue terms) is the copying service, which turns over around £1m per year and charges to cover its direct costs. The licensing programme makes a positive net contribution, whilst the bookshop and publishing programmes are currently just short of covering their direct costs.’ Another way of writing this would be that ‘record copying currently makes a large loss, as does publishing; and we are not prepared to give a figure for net profit from the proceeds of digitizing genealogical resources’.
Probably the most alarming statement concerns future plans. ‘The financial settlement allocated by Treasury to TNA to 2011 is flat cash. The public sector funding climate over the coming few years will be extremely tough, with the likelihood of flat cash funding being a best cash for the next 5-10 years, necessitating not just ongoing efficiency savings, but radical restructuring of the organisation. It (TNA) has just announced a 10% cost savings programme and is also working on a radical look at its business model for 5-10 years time, which should be ready in early 2010.’
You have thus been warned!
Every user group should be alarmed by the message coming out of the briefing notes for the Director of Finance and Performance – it is a mandate for further cuts.
The proposed direction is clear – information management and online development are specified as key area for TNA in the years to come.
So if money is to be diverted to increased online access and services – information management – who are the losers? The user trends, outlined in the document, suggest that 20% of all users are academics and ‘very few of the academic resources are online, and the costs of digitisation mean that this will be true for many decades, if not permanently.’ Sorry, folks.
What about genealogy? Most of the online sources are geared for a genealogical audience – census, wills, military service records – particularly since the majority of search engines are surname based, excluding a range of other users from ‘browsing’. Yet it was suggested in a meeting with representatives from the academic sector on 8 September that the revenue from digitisation had reached its height, with the implication that the major datasets had been exhausted from a commercial perspective. So that’s all, folks.
It is easy to criticise, and whilst the financial mess that TNA have created for themselves is exacerbated by the economic crisis and impact on public sector finance, the problem remains real.
We do need to come up with viable alternatives. However, the limited and fixed resources available to TNA need to be allocated with a greater emphasis on what we, the users, expect and require. This requires a balanced strategic approach, considered through full consultation with the stakeholders, and guided and advised by professionals who understand and are senstitive to the challenges of running an archive – not an Information Management service.
