Both organisations should undertake a joint appraisal of storage costs once records have been identified for transfer. The aim of this should be to find the most cost-effective option.
The appraisal exercise should identify the costs of the current storage arrangements, which may take a number of forms:
- one or both organisations store files on their own premises
- both use the same third party contractor to store files
- they use different third party contractors
The appraisal should look at a range of solutions, for example:
- moving documents to the storage used by the receiving organisation
- leaving documents in their existing location
- the possibility of continuing with existing contracts, for example the transferring organisation passing parts of its contract to the receiving organisation
- any cross-governmental savings that can be made by sharing storage services
Costs to consider:
- removal from storage – as well as the costs of the physical move, most storage contractors impose a charge to remove boxes from storage
- indexing – removal of a file to a new location will involve updating location indexes