Records Management ensures the creation and maintenance of authentic, reliable and usable records which document the University's activities and meet legal, regulatory and operational requirements. In practise it will:
- Support ease and efficiency of working because you can find the information you need, when you need it.
- Protect you and the University. It provides evidence of people's rights and entitlements, showing what the University did and why it did it.
- Save time by ensuring you can find the information you need easily.
- Reduce costs, particularly space costs, by ensuring you don't keep any more records than you have to, and that you know when you can delete or destroy them.
- Provide records you can rely on, both by helping you to find the appropriate version and, by giving records a high value as evidence if they are needed in a court of law.
Responsibility for records lies at all levels of the university. If you create a document, use a document, store a document, then you have a responsibility for that document and its content. It may not be enough that you can find it on your hard drive, or in your drawer. What happens if you are on holiday and someone needs it? If you hold data that others might need, it needs to be secure, but it needs to be findable too!
What do I need to keep?
There is a retention schedule, which lists the types of records created by different parts of the University and how they should be treated.
Records need to be kept for either legal or operational reasons.
The retention schedule lays out the periods for which these records should be kept. If you can't find what you are looking for on the retention schedule, please contact Vanna Leathart.
What about email, electronic documents and databases?
It is the content of the record that is important, not its format. Data held electronically should be treated in the same way as paper records.
I haven't got space for all this!
If you are short of storage space, contact Vanna Leathart. She can provide advice on storage space, scanning and offsite storage.