Documentation and monitoring

What your week looks like

You sit with people on the worst days of their lives, and then you have to turn what they said into something that will still stand up in two years. Recordings pile up faster than anyone can type them. The names in your notes are the reason the notes matter, and the reason they are dangerous. Being careful is not the same as having a rule.

Start with these three tasks

Three, not eleven. Learn them in this order: each one makes the next one safer.

1. 1Transcribing testimonies and interviews
2. 2Translation into and out of local languages
3. 3Protecting sensitive information

Tools you can actually afford

Price is not your first question. Where the file goes is: a tool that runs on your own laptop never sends the recording anywhere.

Your first hour

If you have two hours a week, this is the first one. Do it on one laptop, with one test file, before anyone else in the office starts.

1. 10 minutes. Write down the three kinds of file you hold that would hurt someone if they leaked. Recordings, names, locations, whatever yours are. That list is your rule.
2. 20 minutes. Take one recording of something already public, a press conference or a training session, and transcribe it with a tool that runs on your own computer.
3. 15 minutes. Read the transcript against the audio and mark every name and number it got wrong. That error rate is what you know about the tool, not what a vendor claims.
4. 15 minutes. Decide who in your office is allowed to do this, and write it in one sentence. One sentence beats nothing.