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Records Management Roundtable Records and Information Management Primer
This page offers an overview of core records management principles, products and services.
To read up on the various aspects identified in this primer, see the Bibliography compiled by the Records Management Roundtable, available as a .pdf.
Basic Definitions
Advantages of Good RIM Programs
Organization and Structure
Managerial Support
Partnerships
Forms Management
Records Inventory and Appraisal
Retention Schedules
Electronic Records Management (ERM)
Vital Records
Active, Inactive, and Archival Records
Program Training and Auditing
Risk Management
Legal Issues
Digitization Programs
Standards
Professional Associations
Basic definitions
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Advantages of Good RIM Programs
- Records kept too long legal and financial liability (space, storage, productivity)
- Easier and faster response to records requests (internal and external)
- Legally defensible
- Usually cost savings, store less, less open to court costs, etc.
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Organization and Structure
- RIM controlled and supported by the "right people"
- Try to place RIM program as close to top management as possible --greater support and fewer levels of bureaucracy
- Try not to be put in a department/unit unrelated to what you do, as you will be the "other"
- Know how your organization works
- Tables of Organization
- Work flow - do departments match up with functions?
- All facilities (including storage) and their records identified
- Existing RIM program
- Retention Schedule(s), forms, etc.
- Departments/units might already have created internal inventories, developed forms, designated records coordinators, etc.
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Managerial Support
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Get backing and really educate top management to importance of RIM
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Records Committee - composed of representatives from major units of your organization (such as IT and Legal) to foster good RIM
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Assess Program
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Identify and prioritize RM needs
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Develop policies and procedures
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Annually review program -- inventory, retention schedules, taxonomy, etc.
- Training -- often management mandate will ensure success
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Partnerships
- Internal
- Management
- Records Coordinators
- Records/Taxonomy Committee(s)
- Subject matter experts (SME) -- people in the organization that work with and really know the records
- IT
- Legal
- External
- Collaborative projects (ex. Industry research group to identify laws relevant to your organizations)
- Colleagues and professional organizations
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Forms Management
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Capture pertinent information
- Standardize across organization
- Ensure forms reflect current business processes
- Update as needed
- Regularly evaluate (depending on organization, monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc.)
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Records Inventory and Appraisal
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Comprehensive inventory of all records in your organization to determine records series, including vital records
- Can immediately identify records ready for destruction in a preliminary purge (ex. drafts, junk mail, duplicates, etc.)
- Include all records, regardless of format - content is the key to records status and series determination (ex. electronic, microfilm, video, audio, film, etc. can all contain or be records)
- Identifies office of record
- Knowing location of original helps with destroying duplicates and disaster planning
- Update regularly
- Find new or obsolete series
- Affects retention schedule and disaster planning
- Society of Rocky Mountain Archivists' brochures
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Retention Schedule
- From information gleaned in inventory, determine length of time to retain records series
- Legal issues will vary depending on organization, industry, etc.
- Must be vetted through management and approved by legal; if a governmental agency, probably going on to a regulating body (e.g. state archives) for final approval
- Types
- Functional
- Big Bucket trend
- Departmental
- Coordinated with file plan
- Society of Rocky Mountain Archivists' brochures
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Electronic Records Management (ERM)
- No silver bullet
- ERM systems are not replacement for RM - you must have intellectual control
- Software/hardware
- System must allow for declaration as record, retention, destruction and legal holds
- Vendors
- AIIM
- Long-term storage
- Migration
- CD/DVD, spinning disk, PDF-A
- FRCP - meet and confer
- Society of Rocky Mountain Archivists' brochures
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Vital Records
- Identify
- Only 3-7% of an organization's records are vital
- This can be tricky at a collecting institution (archivists), as you may have your own and others' vital records
- Make sure your people understand the concept of vital records - not vital to just individual, but to the operation/success of the organization
- Can be on any medium (content not format) - ex. Microfilm, electronic, paper, etc.
- Disaster recovery plan/implementation
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Active, Inactive and Archival Records
- Active
- Assist with filing systems, space allocation, housing (shelving, boxes, etc.)
- Central Records function?
- Identify how/when records become inactive
- Inactive
- Off-site storage?
- Central Records function?
- Archival Records (our specialty!)
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Program Training and Auditing
Train people in the RIM program
- Classroom, webinar, etc. options
- Keep records to show you have properly trained employees in using RIM tools, so errors are at the single employee level rather than a program level
- Auditing
- Assess how well program is going - are people using filing systems, taxonomy, etc. sporadically, regularly, or never
- Shows continued interest in proper records stewardship, making your program more defensible in court
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Risk Management
- Destruction
- Ensure only done per thoughtful procedures
- Certificates of destruction
- Proper authorizations - signatures or other means of verifying proper people have approved destruction
- Follow guidelines of proper destruction for your location or industry
- Some mandates for how, such as cross-cut shredding, no/yes burning, grinding of electronic hardware, etc.
- Holds - usually legal or audit, related to ongoing investigation of lawsuit
- Can affect all extant records
- If hold is in place, normal destruction processes must be suspended
- Risk Evaluation
- Issues: security (who has access to your records?), litigation (are you doing things with records leaving you open to lawsuits), regulatory non-compliance, criminal activity (are your records easily stolen or hacked?), piracy
- Disaster: attack/terrorism, natural (fire, water, etc.), human error
- Disaster Planning
- Records and business - ideally integrated
- Fire is the greatest risk for most organizations
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Legal Issues
- Government
- Federal
- State
- Political Subdivisions
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Digitization Programs
- Go Paperless?
- Centralized function?
- Migration issues
- Convert microfilm, film, audio to digital?
- Preservation scanning (replace other format) or access scanning (for easy reference/retrieval)
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Standards
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Professional Associations
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This RMRT page updated by: Mahnaz Ghaznavi
Last updated: October 30, 2008
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