Federation Of Family History Societies

TNA Production Targets

Following a change in practice on 20 April, the TNA came under attack for the time being taken to produce documents. This stemmed from poor communication both within TNA and from TNA to its customers. A special meeting was called for 7 May at which Jeff James (Director of Public Services) explained that there had never been an intention to increase the average delivery time from 35 to 60 minutes. The confusion arose because the old standard of an average of 35 minutes was withdrawn on 20 April leaving just the other standard of virtually all documents (99.98%) to be delivered in 60 minutes. Unfortunately, the staff operating the display terminals simply changed the 35 minutes to 60 minutes without apparently realising that these were two different measures. As a result, the public were seeing the average time shown as 60 minutes whereas the average has become about 40 minutes during the twelve days from 20 April. The average has increased due to new practices behind the scenes aimed at improving the care with which documents are handled.

For a fuller explanation see the letter from Jeff James following the meeting on 7 May.

Roger Lewry
FFHS Archives Liaison

12 May 2009