RECORDS AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

RECORDS AND INFORMATION MANAGEMNT

A record is a document or other electronic or physical entity in an organization that serves as evidence of an activity or transaction performed by the organization and that requires retention for some time period. Records management is the process by which an organization:

• Determines what kinds of information should be considered records.
• Determines how active documents that will become records should be handled while they are being used, and determines how they should be collected after they are declared to be records.
• Determines in what manner and for how long each record type should be retained to meet legal, business, or regulatory requirements
• Researches and implements technological solutions and business processes to help ensure that the organization complies with its records management obligations in a cost-effective and non-intrusive way.
• Performs records-related tasks such as disposing of expired records or locating and protecting records that are related to external events such as lawsuits.
• Determining which documents and other physical or electronic items in your organization are records is the responsibility of corporate compliance officers, records managers, and lawyers. By carefully categorizing all enterprise content in your organization, these people can help you ensure that documents are retained for the appropriate period of time. A well-designed records management system helps protect an organization legally, helps the organization demonstrate compliance with regulatory obligations, and increases organizational efficiency by promoting the disposition of out-of-date items that are not records.

A records management system includes the following elements:

• A content analysis that describes and categorizes content in the enterprise that can become records, that provides source locations, and that describes how the content will move to the records management application.
• A file plan that indicates, for each kind of record in the enterprise, where they should be retained as records, the policies that apply to them, how long they must be retained, how they should be disposed of, and who is responsible for managing them.

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