What is Records Management?
The ISO 15489 Records management standard is an international standard which defines good records management practice. The National Archives and Records Service of South Africa (NARS), in terms of its statutory mandate, requires governmental bodies to put the necessary infrastructure, policies, strategies, procedures and systems in place to ensure that records in all formats are managed in an integrated manner. Private companies do not have to comply with NARS records keeping rules but the NARS record keeping principles can be used as a guideline in any business sector.
Key requirements for a record to retain its value to the business are:-
Authenticity (Can it be proven?)
Reliability (Can it be trusted?)
Integrity (Is it complete and unaltered?)
Usability (Can it be found and interpreted?).
In layman’s terms records management means:
Having solid policies and procedures in place which are enforceable and enforced;
Capturing of authentic and reliable records;
Developing and implementing a classification system (file plan);
Storing records in such a way that they cannot be tampered with (and being able to prove it);
Identifying the retention periods for the different types of records, and storing them for that period;
Disposing of the records when they no longer have value (or transferring them to an archive);
Long term preservation so that they can be readable for as long as required (regardless of format).
In summary, records have to be kept and maintained for the entire 'lifecycle' of each record - from the point of creation right through until their eventual disposal - and supporting policies and procedures must be in place to achieve this.