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Setting the record straight
Written by Samuel Blue   

Records management is a vital function of any business or organization. Good records management can add to profitability through greater efficiency, help avoid costs and help businesses and organizations meet legal and regulatory standards.

Records can be anything, including billing invoices, dental x-rays, company e-mail, claims tickets, etc. A good records management program aims to coordinate information in a way that makes it up-to-date, correct, comprehensive, accessible, cost-efficient and easy to use. Easy access to relevant and accurate information can be vital to the operations of just about any business or other organization. Identifying and getting rid of obsolete or unnecessary records is also an important task.

Although records management usually isn't the primary function of most businesses and organizations, these groups do tend to spend a considerable amount of effort, time and money in records management because of cost-factors, operational needs and the various legal responsibilities these entities may have.

What records management does

An effective records management program has five basic goals:
  1. Controls records creation and growth: Records can grow to become unmanageable unless specific guidelines are enacted to control when records should be created and when they should be disposed of.
  2. Cut costs: It costs money in storage space, materials and labor costs to keep and retrieve records. A well designed plan that makes records easily and efficiently accessible can reduce these costs. According to Coopers and Lybrand, office workers use about 20 to 40 percent of their time searching for records manually. A good records management plan can reduce the amount of time workers spend digging through records, thus improving productivity.
  3. Ensures legal and regulatory compliance: Many businesses and organizations have responsibilities mandated by the law or by regulatory agencies with regard to record keeping. Failing these responsibilities can be costly or may even result in the shuttering of the business or organization. A good records management program can keep legal and regulatory records keeping headaches to a minimum.
  4. Protection against identity theft and other privacy matters: Some businesses and organizations deal with sensitive information, which, if allowed to fall into unscrupulous hands could result in losses to both the organizations and the people and other entities they interact with. A proper records management system safeguards sensitive information.
  5. Fostering better decision making:  With quick and convenient access to the institutional memory of a corporation or organization, management has a wealth of experience and data to draw upon to make decisions.

Making a plan

While no two organizations will have the exact same records management plan, there are some commonalities as the goals of all records management plans are the same.

When drafting a records management plan, management should identify what the information needs of their organization is, and how best to meet them. They should then identify the information they wish to record. Once this is done, policies regarding the records and how they'll be gathered, organized and disposed of need to be formulated and implemented.

The next step is to come up with an access plan. Because of the sensitive nature of some records, and the need to keep records from being lost or misplaced, managers must determine what members of their organization have access to what records. This is a difficult balancing act for most organizations, particularly ones that must provide records to the general public. Managers should be careful to maintain all legal and regulatory standards regarding privacy and confidentiality.

The final step is to draft a retention policy, which spells out how long records are to be retained, which records need to be eventually disposed of and how they should be disposed of.

Records Management Systems

There's two basic types of records management systems, paper based and electronic. Paper based records are gradually being phased out in many organizations in favor of electronic records management systems, but a lot of groups will maintain paper records in order to preserve an original hardcopy of the record, or for reasons specific to that organization. Cybersecurity becomes a major issue with electronic records, as computer hacking and identity theft through electronic records is a growing problem.

Training

While not every organization that has a records management plan will need personnel who have professional training in this discipline, some will. There are a variety of library science programs in universities throughout the world who sponsor records management training programs. Professional records management training programs are likely to become more widespread and necessary as electronic records keeping broadens the scope of records management, and requires new skills for successful implementation.
 
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