MODERN OFFICE RECORD IN ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT

OVERVIEW
Records Qualities of an Office Record Records Management Life-Cycle Model of Office Records Management Purpose and Importance of Managing Office Records Office Records Management Process Aligning Modern Office Records Management with Effective Service Delivery.

Definition of Records, It is defined as,

...recorded information produced or received in the initiation, conduct or completion of an institutional or individual activity and that comprises content, context and structure sufficient to provide evidence of the activity.

Content: Content is the text, data, symbols, numerals, images, and sound that make up the substance of the record. Context: Context is the organizational, functional, and operational circumstances surrounding a records creation, receipt, storage, or use. Structure: Structure refers to a record's physical characteristics and organization of the contents. A records structure is the form that makes the content tangible and intelligible.

TYPES OF RECORDS Meeting minutes Policy document Accounting records Personnel records Payroll records Procurement records Fixed assets registers Property registers Pension records Loan agreements

Qualities of a Record
Authenticity: It should be possible to identify, and preferably prove, the process which created
the record and who its authorized creator was.

Completeness: A record should contain all of the content required to act as evidence of the
transaction it is documenting.

Reliability: content of the record can be relied upon as an accurate representation of the
transaction it is documenting.

Fixity: Once declared as a record its content should no longer be altered or changed in any way.
It is in this way that its evidential value is preserved (by ensuring that the content of a record remains exactly as it was at creation).

Record Management

According to International Standard ISO 15489: 2001, records management is defined as:
...The field of management responsible for the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of records, including the processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of and information about business activities and transactions in the form of records.

The Life-Cycle Model The concept of the records life cycle model, which sees records having a series of phases from creation to distribution to continuous appraisal to final disposition ultimately resulting either in their controlled destruction or being retained on a permanent basis as an archival record.

PURPOSE OF MANAGING RECORDS

To preserve records and archives in an accessible, intelligible, and usable form for as long as they have continuing utility or value.
To make information from records and archives available in the right format, to the right people, at the right time.

IMPORTANCE OF MANAGING RECORDS

Meet all internal business needs: Organisations and their staff are under pressure to do more for less. Creating accurate, reliable records; providing controlled, ready access to them are all part of the essential infra-structure necessary to meet these challenges.
Increased staff turnover and regular organisational restructuring: it becomes less and less possible to rely on the knowledge and experience of individual members of staff. The records an organisation creates now represent its 'collective memory' to a far larger degree than ever. To Learn from past experience: holding records on lessons from past experiences, allows organisations to learn both from their successes and their failures. As a means of competitive advantage: For a knowledge-rich, research-driven organisations, a competitive advantage or even commercial gain can be acquired through the effective exploitation of their information assets. As the evidence of activities: Effective records management ensures that the organisation can call upon a body of reliable evidence if required to justify its actions, or defend its position. Meet regulatory requirement: Organisations are also under ever-mounting pressure to proactively demonstrate their accountability and good standards of corporate governance. This may take the form of internal audit, submissions to bodies like Corporate Affairs Commission or public scrutiny through legislation such as the Companies and Allied Matters Act.

The practice of records management Involves: a) Planning the information needs of an organization b) Identifying information requiring capture c) Creating, approving, and enforcing policies and practices regarding records, including their organization and disposal d) Developing a records storage plan, which includes the short and long-term housing of physical records and digital information e) Identifying, classifying, and storing records

f) Coordinating access to records internally and outside of the organization, balancing the requirements of business confidentiality, data privacy, and public access.
g) Executing a retention policy on the disposal of records which are no longer required for operational reasons; according to organizational policies, statutory requirements, and other regulations this may involve either their destruction or permanent preservation in an archive.

The Records Management Process

Records Inventory

Records Retention Schedules

Records Disposition

Records Inventory An inventory consists of a complete listing of records by record series, together with descriptions and supporting information . It provides for the identification of record medium (e.g. paper, magnetic tape, floppy disk), size, filing method, reference rate, current volume and annual accumulation. Records Retention Schedules A records retention and disposition schedule is a management tool used to prescribe the time to retire records to inactive status and eventually the time to destroy or dispose of the records. Every record series on a schedule must be evaluated for its purpose and value before a retention period is assigned. Evaluation for retention periods is based on: Statutory or regulatory requirements: Infrequent, only by need to provide evidence of a particular action. Audit requirements: usually apply only to financial records. Practical need or value: determined by specific values (i). Administrative value (ii) Evidential value (iii) Informational value

Records Disposition

Disposal of records does not always mean destruction. It can include transfer to a historical archive or private individual, paper shredding and incineration under secure conditions. Destruction of records must be follow an operating policy and procedure that have been approved at the highest level, and done with care to avoid inadvertent disclosure of information. An inventory of the records disposed of should be maintained, including certification that they have been destroyed.

MANAGING PHYSICAL RECORD

1. Identifying records

2. Storing records: A typical paper document may be stored in a filing cabinet in an office. However, some organisations employ file rooms. Vital records may need to be stored in a disaster-resistant safe or vault to protect against fire, flood, earthquakes and conflict.

3. Circulating records: Tracking the record while it is away from the normal storage area is referred to as circulation. Often this is handled by simple written recording procedures.

4. Disposal of records

Managing E- Record
Identify records management roles Successful records management requires specialized roles: Records managers and compliance officers to categorize the records in the organization and to run the records management process. IT personnel to implement the systems that efficiently support records management. Content managers to find where organizational information is kept and to ensure that their teams follow records management practices. Analyze organizational content records managers and content managers survey document usage in the organiza

Develop a file plan generally the describe the kinds of items the organization acknowledges to be records, indicate where they are stored, describe their retention periods, and provide other information, such as who is responsible for managing them and which broader category of records they belong to. Develop retention schedules Evaluate and improve record management practices Make sure that required policies are being applied in record repositories. Design the records management solution Based on the file plan, design the record archive, or determine how to use existing sites to contain records.

Plan how content becomes records creating a custom workflows to move documents to a records archive. If you are using either SharePoint Server or an external document management system, you can plan and develop interfaces that move content from those systems to the records archive, or that declare a document to be a record but do not move the document. Create a training plan to teach users how to create and work with records. Plan e-mail integration Determining whether you will manage e-mail records within SharePoint Server 2010, or whether you will manage e-mail records within the e-mail application itself.
Plan compliance for social content If your organization uses social media such as blogs, wikis, or My Sites, determine how this content will become records.

Plan compliance reporting and documentation To verify that the organization is performing its required records management practices, and to communicate these practices, you should document your records management plans and processes.
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