Member interview with Kathryn Ratcliffe

 

Kathryn Ratcliffe – Head of KIM, Intellectual Property Office

 

Could you tell us about your background and how you became involved in the information profession?

 

I am the Head of Knowledge and Information Management for the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), which is a role I fell into by accident.

 

The IPO had struggled to find the right place to ensure effective management for our information and records management for a while. On one occasion I was in a meeting where the issue was being discussed, and the decision was made that I could have responsibility for it. However, at this time I was Head of Secretariat, and the decision was I would look after information management too!

 

Unfortunately, this proved to not be an effective way of solving the problem of not effectively managing our records and information. So after a few years the decision was reviewed again and I moved away from Secretariat to just focus on the KIM role instead. And since then, I have never looked back!

 

 

 

Where have you worked and in what sorts of roles?

 

To be honest, I have been about a bit. I started my working life as a Personnel Clerk in my local Asda Store, and decided HR was the career choice for me. After staying in retail for a while I moved into Local Government before becoming Head of HR for British Airways for their Maintenance Base at Cardiff Airport. That was a fascinating role – I have crawled through bits of airplanes I never knew existed!

 

From British Airways in 2006 I moved into a HR role at the IPO and have been with the organisation since. I moved from HR to Secretariat in 2011, was given information management alongside the secretariat role in 2016 and moved into the KIM role on 01 April 2019.

 

 

What are you mostly excited about in our profession? Are there any challenges or success stories you would like to share with us?

 

One of things that most excites me most is the opportunity to drive the profession forward and ensure it is seen as one of the most important and fundamental skills for organisations. I feel the growing recognition of the benefits of managing information, records and knowledge properly is a huge positive step. In my organisation we have seen a wave of change in the understanding of the need to management information and knowledge, and the level of engagement in our work is significant.

 

The biggest challenge we have is getting senior leaders to prioritise this work, particularly when there are many other competing priorities to manage. To help with this we have taken the approach of trying to get ourselves involved in the work going on across the organisation at as early a stage as possible, so information and knowledge management activities are considered from the start, as opposed to being an add-on at the end or not included at all. This means information and knowledge management are not seen as a separate priority we need to achieve, but an integral part of the existing priority for the organisation.

 

To achieve this, we talk to people ‘in the know’ of what is going on, e.g., the project office, planning teams, etc, and persuade them to invite us to their kick-off meetings for as many pieces of work across the organisation as they can. We join various groups and committees where decisions are made and ensure their template for papers being discussed include information management requirements such as retention & disposal.

 

Basically, we have been bugging people to include the team in conversations and are as annoying as possible until they relent and include us. And it has worked far better than expected.

 

 

What advice would you give to someone starting their career as a librarian/information professional?

 

Never underestimate your value to organisations.

 

I think the librarian or information professional role is one that often goes unnoticed or unrewarded. When the organisation is under pressure and needs to deliver, it is easy to forget about the “unsung heroes” who deliver the fundamentals for that organisation. These roles are absolutely critical to the organisation in achieving its objectives and people in these roles should feel proud of the part that you play.

 

 

What are your (personal/professional) plans and expectations for the future?

 

Currently we are delivering a project for the organisation to improve the way we manage records and information which includes educating the business about why managing records and information properly is important and automating our retention and disposal processes. We are also reviewing our data loss prevention approach, our knowledge management activities and data governance to ensure these are all fit for the future.

 

Alongside this, my team are going through some changes currently and will be part of the Data Team going forward, so I am currently broadening my data literacy and looking at the opportunities we will have when covering the full data, information and knowledge spectrum.

 

Personally, I have just completed my MSc Information Management, so am going to take a little bit of time over the summer to enjoy some holidays, camping and festivals with the family before deciding what the next personal development challenge will be.

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