Job Description

The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) protects public health and the environment by supplying clean drinking water, collecting and treating wastewater, and reducing air, noise and hazardous materials pollution. The Department manages the City’s water supply, which provides more than one billion gallons of high-quality drinking water daily to more than half the population of New York State. It builds and maintains the City’s water distribution network, fire hydrants, storm and sanitary sewage collection systems and Bluebelt and green infrastructure systems and manages 14 in-City wastewater resource recovery facilities as well as seven wastewater resource recovery facilities in the upstate watershed. DEP also implements federal Clean Water Act rules and regulations, handles hazardous materials emergencies and toxic site remediation, oversees asbestos monitoring and removal, enforces the City’s air and noise codes, bills and collects on approximately 836,000 water and sewer accounts and manages citywide water conservation programs.

Records and Archives Management (RAM), within the Bureau of Business Information Technology, oversees the agency records management program in compliance with citywide policies and in coordination with the NYC Department of Records and Information Services. RAM also oversees the DEP Archive which collects, organizes, protects, and provides access to records having long-term business and historical value to the agency and the City of New York. It is a valuable resource for information about DEP including the work of predecessors that planned and built the city’s water supply and delivery systems dating back to the 19th century. The team’s ongoing projects improve access to information and facilitate the planning of billion-dollar capital construction and rehabilitation projects, as well as land use activities, facilities maintenance, and other operations.

Reporting to the Director of Records and Archives Management, the Associate Public Records Officer will administer the agency’s records management program. Major responsibilities include supporting the agency and its employees to manage their records in compliance with agency and citywide policies by providing guidance to agency Record Coordinators and employees, managing commercial records storage activities, updating the records retention schedule, and coordinating the disposal of eligible records.

The Associate Public Records Officer is the chief liaison between DEP and the NYC Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS), the oversight agency for records management policy and guidance. The Associate Public Records Officer may assist or direct special projects such as surveying and appraising backlogs of paper records and converting paper records to digital. As part of an agency team, the Associate Public Records Officer will support a pilot project to implement Records365 in conjunction with a citywide initiative led by DORIS. They will also support a project to apply retention policies to email as part of a team that includes IT and General Counsel.

This position will be based at the DEP Archive in Manhattan with the requirement to travel periodically to DEP headquarters in Queens and occasionally to offices and plants around the city and upstate to meet with record owners and to survey records. RAM uses Microsoft Teams for remote meetings and maintains a workstation at DEP headquarters.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the daily operation of the agency records management program in compliance with agency and city policies and procedures.

• Disseminate and coordinate the adoption of new citywide policy and initiatives to employees within the agency.

• As part of an agency team and in coordination with the NYC Department of Records and Information Services, support a pilot project to implement Records365 to manage a subset of agency

  records.

• Acquire subject matter expertise about DEP bureaus and their records.

• Update and improve the agency records retention schedule.

• Process annual records disposals.

• Update and develop standard operating procedures, policies, and other tools to support records management activities and workflows.

• Provide formal and informal trainings on relevant records management topics and projects to agency employees.

• Manage commercial records storage contract activities including annual funding.

• Track and audit agency’s inventory of records in commercial storage.

• Survey and appraise legacy records in storage and DEP work locations; make recommendations for disposal and scanning. Existing goal is to reduce our inventory of stored records.

• Review requirements for records scanning projects to be undertaken by vendors or inhouse.

• Prepare status reports and metrics for unit meetings and weekly check-ins with supervisor.

**Ability to remain stationary for extended periods of time, operating computers and possibly scanning equipment.

-Ability to meet typical records management physical requirements such as to push, lift and shelve boxes of records up to 30lbs.

-May on occasion be required to use personal protective equipment (PPE) such as hard hat, eye protection, and/or gloves when surveying records at some DEP facilities.

-Archive is located in a warehouse environment with collection storage and offices.

Qualifications

1. A master's degree from an accredited college in Library Science, Archival Science, American History, Political Science or a related area, plus two years of full-time experience in archival or library science, one year of which must have been in a supervisory capacity of incumbents performing at a professional level; or

2. Education and/or experience equivalent to "1" above. However, all candidates must have a master's degree from an accredited college and the one year of supervisory experience as described in "1" above.

Additional Information

The City of New York is an inclusive equal opportunity employer committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and providing a work environment that is free from discrimination and harassment based upon any legally protected status or protected characteristic, including but not limited to an individual's sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, veteran status, gender identity, or pregnancy.