Public Sector Records Management

A Practical Guide

Kelvin Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317073352
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Affairs & Administration
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Records management has undergone significant change in recent years, owing to the introduction of freedom of information legislation as well as the development of e-government and e-business and the need to manage records effectively in both the private and public sector. There are very few purely practical texts for records managers and this book aims to fill that gap. The author has spent his entire career in public sector records management and has contributed to records management standards for governments around the world. The text is wholly practical and written at an accessible level. Although the author discusses legislation and examples from the UK, the book is relevant to public sector records management at an international level. It will be essential reading for professionals in record management posts as well as anyone who is responsible for record keeping as part of their operational duties.

1 The records management function

AIMS

This chapter takes an overall look at the function of records management. It examines its organisational context and the key principles such as the life-cycle concept and policy development.

Inevitably, we have to start with a little theory…

RECORDS AND INFORMATION

There have been many debates – academic and otherwise – on the definition of a record, and on how records differ from information and knowledge. For you, the practitioner, the most important distinction is probably between documents and records. The difference between these two is a matter of context. A document can stand alone; it does not depend on other relationships; it can be identified and interpreted without having to see it in the context of its relationship with other documents. Thus, documents are records without context and records are documents with context.

Records are essential to the business of all organisations. They document the work of public authorities and private companies, support their operations and form the basis for the many services that are provided by them. They are essential to effective operations in several respects:

Supporting the delivery of services – you will want to document how policies and statutes are carried out, what services were provided, who carried out the work and how much it cost, and, in the longer term, your organisation’s accomplishments.

Supporting administration – by providing information for the direction, control, decision-making and coordination of business.

Documenting rights and responsibilities – your organisation needs to provide evidence of the scope of its terms of reference, evidence of what it owns and evidence of its obligations. Records are important also in documenting the rights of corporate bodies and individuals in matters such as ownership, legacy, etc.

Legal documentation – many records comprise formal legal documents – regulations, local orders, etc. – or formal documentation of the relationship between governments and people or institutions. They may, in this respect, be used in legal undertakings or be required for evidence in a court of law.

Evidence of the work of public authorities – your organisation needs to document the decisions, actions and obligations that it undertakes, and in this way provide accountability measures.

Future research – some of the records your organisation creates and uses will be preserved and will form the contents of archival establishments, providing important historical information on political, social, economic and other issues.

Records are therefore created or received in the conduct of business activities and provide evidence and information about those activities. They come in all kinds of format and media. A formal definition of a record might be:

Recorded information produced or received in the initiation, conduct or deletion of an institutional or individual activity, and which comprises sufficient content, context and structure to provide evidence of an activity, regardless of the form or medium.¹

In the United Kingdom central government all departments and agencies are moving quickly towards the creation, storage, maintenance and retrieval of their records and information solely in electronic form. Paper files and folders are becoming increasingly rare in these organisations. In other areas of the UK public sector, however, while many records are created electronically they are maintained in paper form – often filed systematically but just as often managed in personal systems. Records may also be created on media other than paper or electronic – microfilm, microfiche or computer output microform (COM); or as photographs (prints, negatives, transparencies and x-ray films), sound recordings on disk or tape or moving images on film or video. In some cases records might be in the form of three-dimensional models, scientific specimens or other objects. A set of records, in context, may be in more than one of these formats or there may be close organisational relationships between records in different formats.

THE MANAGEMENT OF RECORDS

Records management provides a framework that aims to ensure that:

The record is present – your organisation should ensure that it has the information that is needed so that it can reconstruct activities or transactions that have taken place. This ensures that the organisation is accountable to its stakeholders (whether they are citizens, parliament or shareholders).

The record can be accessed – the people in your organisation must be able to locate information when required. This is vital in areas where there is freedom of information legislation but just as important to support the efficient operation of the organisation’s business.

The record can be interpreted – if required, your organisation must be able to establish a record’s context, who created it, as part of which business process and how it relates to other records. This is a vital part of the organisation’s accountability and transparency.

The record can be trusted – when you and your colleagues are consulting a record, you need to be assured that it reliably represents the information that was actually used in or created by the business process, and its integrity and authenticity can be demonstrated. Records provide the ‘official’ evidence of the activity or transaction they document and must therefore be reliable and trustworthy. The reliability of a record is linked to its creation. Who generated or issued the record and under what authority? Can this authority be proved? Not all records have official stamps or seals. The continuous safekeeping of records will also protect their reliability. For example, if the official version of the minutes of a meeting is filed by the records manager and thus protected from change, the unauthorised version will not form part of the official record. This issue of reliability is especially important in the context of electronic records and information.

The record can be maintained through time – your organisation will need to ensure that the qualities of accessibility, interpretation and trustworthiness can be maintained for as long as the record is needed. During its creation a record will develop and change. For example, minutes of a meeting will be produced in draft form and reviewed by the members of the committee before being approved. Once this process of creation is finished the record must be fixed and must not be susceptible to change. If a record is changed or manipulated in some way, it no longer provides evidence of the transaction it originally documented. For example, if someone alters the minutes of a meeting after they have been approved, the minutes can no longer be considered an accurate record of the meeting. This is another issue that becomes more important in an electronic context.

The record will be disposed of as part of a planned system, through the implementation of disposal s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The records management function
• 2 Compliance and regulation
• 3 Record creation and classification
• 4 Records maintenance
• 5 Records appraisal
• 6 Archiving
• 7 Access to records
• 8 Roles and responsibilities
• 9 Training and development
• 10 The future: developing an integrated programme
• Appendix 1 Codes of practice
• Appendix 2 Model action plan
• Appendix 3 Acts and regulations (UK)
• Appendix 4 Bibliography and other sources
• Index