Managing Personnel Records - International Records Management ...

The consequences of inadequate care of electronic records may include the following:
? increased risk of wholesale, unsystematic and possibly illegal destruction of
records
? loss of valuable business records and archives
? increased risk of security breaches
? unauthorised alteration or deletion of records (loss of evidence)
? public embarrassment
? unnecessary delays or breakdowns in the business process
? lack of public accountability
? system paralysis or, at the very least, difficulties in accessing information.
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF
ELECTRONIC RECORDS MANAGERS
Although the fundamental principles for keeping records in an electronic environment
are more or less the same as in a paper environment, the skills required to manage
them may be different. As the Canadian archival writer and educator Terry Cook has
noted:
…for the first time, [records managers and archivists] are not
producing, managing, and saving physical things or artefacts, but
rather trying to understand and preserve logical and virtual patterns
that give electronic information its structure, content, and context, and
thus its meaning as a ‘record’ or as evidence of acts and transactions. 3
In general, the decision to introduce a computerised personnel information system
will be taken by senior managers, with technical advice from information
technologists. The development and introduction of computerised personnel
information systems should involve collaboration between all key individuals,
including personnel managers, information technology (IT) staff and records
managers.
Managing records within an electronic system or in a mixed
paper/electronic environment requires new partnerships
between information professionals.
3 Terry Cook, “Electronic Records, Paper Minds: The Revolution in Information Management and
Archives in the Post-Custodial and Post-Modernist Era,” Archives and Manuscripts 22 (November
1994): 302.
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