Needs Assessment:

387th Communication Groups

Records Management Office

Signature Assignment: Needs Assessment Cycle

CorLencia D. Johnson
CUR 528
Justin Atwood
February 5, 2017
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Needs Assessment Cycle

The 387th Communications Groups Records Management Office (CGRMO) will conduct a
needs assessment on the groups three subordinate organizations. A needs assessment will help
the organization to prioritize their needs and it will help with resource allocations (Royse, Thyer,
& Padgett, 2010). In particular, the needs assessment is imperative to preparing the organization
for an upcoming inspection from higher headquarters. In efforts to create an effective needs
assessment, the information presented in this document will detail how the CGRMO should
complete the assessment.

Purpose of Assessments:
Whether its training, supplies, manpower, etc., the purpose of the needs assessment is for the
CGRMO to determine what is necessary to get the records of each of these offices at a minimum
in satisfactory condition for an upcoming inspection and beyond. Since the assessment will be
conducted within an organization on a military base, the assessment will be conducted at the
neighborhood level. The CGRMO is responsible for ensuring that records are maintained in
accordance with the federal government. In many organizations, it is one of the most neglected
and overlooked programs. This is no fault of the CGRMO, instead it is difficult to get
commanders and other organizational leaders on board to take the program seriously. The
subordinate organizations have a total of 25 offices combined and each office must maintain their
own set of records. These records maintain the lifecycle of information for the office. If one of
these offices has to relocate, whether due to a fire, natural disaster, reorganization, etc., these
records will be the foundation on which the office can rebuild. The current state of the records
maintained in majority of the offices is unsatisfactory. Appointed records custodians in many of
the offices are not maintaining records according to regulation.

The Stakeholders:
The primary stakeholders for the assessment are the organizations commander, the flight
commanders, the office superintendents, and the records custodians. The organizations
commander holds the most legal responsibility for the records and is ultimately responsible for
making sure that a Chief of Office of Records (CORs), the Functional Area Records Managers
(FARMs), and records custodian is appointed in each office. The flight commanders and the
office superintendents will act as the CORs and the FARMs. They are responsible for ensuring
that the records custodians are doing their duties. The records custodian maintains records as an
additional duty and not a primary duty. The secondary stakeholders are all of the personnel in the
organization. These individuals have the responsibility of giving any record, such as
memorandums, duty list, rosters, emails, appointment letters, etc., that they create in their office
to their appointed records custodian. If the needs assessment is not conducted, this can cause the
organization to fail its records inspection and ultimately cause the organizations commander to
loose their job.

The Budget and Available Resources:

The budget for getting the records organized and setup in each office will not be astronomical.
The current budget is projected at $1,000 or less. The funding has already been obtained from the
money received from the end of fiscal year funds. The biggest cost will be for supplies such as
file folders, folder labels, external hard drives, and file cabinets. These items will be priced
through General Services Administrations. Some of these items may also be acquired from the
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bases records management office and the bases reutilization office. These offices typical have
extra supplies on hand to give to organizations in need. The main resource needed will be
personnel. Personnel manning is short throughout the organization due to deployments,
members changing duty stations, retirements, and manpower authorization cuts. Many office
leaders have a difficult time letting their personnel take time to receive training and work on
records.

The Time Allotted for the Project:

Time is of the essence when dealing with military organizations, especially when inspection time
is near. The time allotted to conduct the needs assessment is two weeks. This will give personnel
in the CGRMO an ample amount of time to give each offices records process a thorough review.
The time allotted will also consist of getting the primary stakeholders retrained in the three-day
records management course and personnel from CGRMO personally going around to each office
to giving hands-on assistances to the CORs, the FARMs, and records custodians, on the
remainder days. There will be a schedule created so that offices will know when the managers
will be coming to their particular areas to assist them.

Specific Information Being Measured in the Needs Assessment:

The specific information to be measured for this assessment to be successful is as follows:
The number of appointed records custodians, FARMs, and CORs and a listing of when
they last received records management training.

The number of the offices that need supplies such as file folders, folder labels, external
hard drives, and file cabinets.

The current state of each offices records. This includes determining which parts of the
process are in excellent, good, fair, or needs improvement condition.

The manpower of each office; due to personnel shortages, different ways for FARMs,
CORs, and records custodians to better manage the upkeep of the records needs to be
determined.

Does This Information Already Exist or Must It Be Obtained:

There are different methods to determine if this information already exists or must it be obtained.
For example, the organizational orderly room keeps a record of all of the original appointment
letters for the organization. The CGRMO can check the appointment letters to see if they are
current. If they are not current the CGRMO can request that the letters be updated. From the
appointment letter, the CGRMO can determine who has had training and who has not. Along
with who is appointed, their date of training is also on the letter. The number of offices that need
supplies must be obtained. This information can be obtained in two ways. The CGRMO can send
out an email to each office asking them which supplies do they need. Since they are the subject
matter experts, they can also personally go to office to determine which supplies are needed. The
current state of each offices records must also be obtained. The best way to gather this data is to
go to each office and conduct a simple rating of their processes. This rating can be conducted and
achieved with the following scoring sheet:
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Date: ________
Office: _________________________________________________

Needs Fair Good Excellent

Improvement

Setup:
Office has
records setup
according to
regulations.
Organization:
Office records
are setup to
match their file
plans.
File Coding:
Office has
records file
coded correctly
Notes:

Lastly, the manpower of each office already exists. This information can be obtained from the
Manpower Authorization Office. This office keeps an up to date listing of the number of
personnel each organization has. They can let the CGRMO know when personnel are coming in
and leaving the organization. The information that manpower provides will also help the office to
better manage who they have appointed as CORs, FARMs, and records custodians. In some
cases, more records custodians may be needed and some offices may need to make records
managing a primary duty for personnel.

Methodology or Instrumentation to Determine Training Effectiveness:

The effectiveness of the three-day records management course will be measured in two ways.
First, the students will complete a formative assessment on day two of the course. A formative
assessment can be used to monitor the students learning to determine if there needs to be
changes in the teaching approach and for students to see how they are progressing in their
learning (Carnegie Mellon University, 2015). Before the assessment, students will review the
procedures for setting up records in accordance with government regulations. This review will
also include going over what constitutes a record and the steps to collecting, setting up, and
maintaining records. After the review, students will complete a written self-assessment to help
the CGRMO determine if they know the material. This assessment will also help students to
think deeply about and expand more on what they know on the topics. Second, students will
complete a summative assessment to evaluate what they have learned at the end of the course
(Reddy, 2016). Students will create presentation to explaining key topics on what they have
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learned about records management. It is a better form of an assessment than a memorized,

multiple question test. The presentation gives the CGRMO an opportunity to see how students
have applied what they learned. These presentations can also be use as quick guides to help
students with their records when they return to their duty stations. After the course, the CGRMO
can use the information from both assessments to help the offices setup their records.

Collect and Analyze the Data:

The data analysis will help to answer questions that were considered the catalyst for the
investigation (Royse, Thyer, & Padgett, 2010). The data gathered from both assessments will
help the CGRMO to interpret what areas they need to focus on when they give hands-on
assistance to each office. The insight is necessary because it will also help to determine the level
of assistance each office needs. It is imperative that the analysis is conduct for the future success
of the programs. For example, some office will need only minimal assistance in certain areas and
other offices may need to start completely over in their records managing process. The data from
the assessments will ultimately further help the CGRMO come to a conclusion on what gaps are
preventing the offices from having an effective records management program.

Prepare the Report and Disseminate Preliminary Results to Key Stakeholders:

The best way to create a report of the assessment findings is put all of the data in a spreadsheet.
The spreadsheet will have a break down of each office and display the findings of the collected
and analyzed data. The findings will be presented to the stakeholders in the weekly staff meeting.
Each week, the spreadsheet will be updated and shown in the staff meeting displaying the
progress of how each office is repairing their records. Preparing the results and disseminating the
results to key stakeholders in the weekly meeting garners attention that many offices prefer not to
have. These offices will have to provide feedback to the organizational commander on status of
their records. This typically will also force each office to want to be more proactive in getting
their records organized because they do not want to have to constantly deal with providing
feedback on the status. The status of each offices records will be displayed each week in the
staff meeting until the inspection from higher headquarters. After the inspection, the status of
each offices records will be displayed on a monthly basis. This will keep the program on the
shareholders radar and aid in preventing the program from once again becoming neglected and
overlooked. The feedback from the stakeholders can also help the CGRMO to better assist those
offices in obtaining their goals. The feedback can help the CGRMO better understand some of
the challenges these offices face in setting up their records. Lastly, the CGRMO will need to
meet with the organizational commander to reiterate the importance of this program and what all
vested stakeholders must do to manage the organizations records.

Formally Disseminate Results:

The results of the assessment will be disseminated to everyone in the organization. Maintaining
records requires a joint effort from all organizational members. Members will see the status of
their office and see how they play a role in the records management process. This not only helps
the organization to be more effective but it will increase productivity because it will cut down on
the time required to have to focus on records. In all, a needs assessment of this nature will not
only be beneficial to the CGRMO, but other offices can use the assessment to improve their
programs as well. A needs assessment fosters change and that change is necessary for many
organizations to grow.
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References
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Reddy, K. (2016). Retrieved from http://content.wisestep.com/advantages-disadvantages-

summativeevaluation/

Royse, D., Thyer, B., & Padgett, D. (2010). Program evaluation: An introduction (5th ed.).

Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.

What is the Difference between Formative and Summative Assessment? (2015). Retrieved from

https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/formative-summative.html