managing electronic records in governmental bodies - National ...

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o identifying records that are due for disposal and managing the disposal
process;
o associating the contextual and structural data within a document;
o constructing and managing audit trails;
o managing record version control;
o managing the integrity and reliability of records once they have been declared
as such; and
o managing records in all formats in an integrated manner.
Integrated Document Management Systems consist amongst others of electronic
document management systems that support the immediate operational
requirements of an office by helping governmental bodies to exploit their information
resources more effectively, and electronic records management systems that
support the medium to long term information requirements of an office by capturing
electronic records and managing them according to records management principles.
The records management functionality covers the following:
4.1.1 Classification Systems
To support the continuing conduct of business and provide accountability,
governmental bodies should create and maintain authentic, reliable and usable
records and protect their integrity by capturing them into recordkeeping systems that
routinely capture all records, organise the records in a way that reflects the functions
of the office, protect the records from alteration and/or unauthorised disposal, and
provide ready access to the information contained in the records.
Records can only be interpreted if the underlying relationships between the records
is understood. To provide the underlying relationships it is crucial that the records
captured into the recordkeeping system should be classified intelligently by
organising them into categories/subjects through which users can navigate to find
individual documents. Classification refers to the process whereby electronic
documents stored in the electronic repository are assigned subjects in the
classification system that match the document's subject. If this is done consistently
for all electronic documents, the disposal and retention decisions will be properly
applied to the right documents, and they will be archived/destroyed at the right times.
The staff will also spend less time looking for information and more time actively
acting on the information.
The functional subject file plan prescribed by the National Archives and Records
Service organises documents into categories that reflect the functions/business
of an office. Disposal instructions with retention periods are then determined for
each unique subject. The classification system with the disposal instructions and the
retention periods attached is called a disposal schedule/disposal authority.
Managing electronic records_Policy Guidelines.doc
First Edition
Version 1.1
April 2003