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Records management checklist

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Step 1 of 4: Management and organisational records management

1.1 Records management organisation

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You should assign lead responsibility for records management at a senior enough level to be able to change policy, process and culture.
Where resources are available, you should nominate an appropriately skilled lead to coordinate records management within your business. You may combine this with other roles within your business.

Where resources are available, you should nominate an appropriately skilled records management lead to coordinate the management of records within the business. This may be combined with other roles within the organisation.

* [Organisational arrangements to support records management](

You should assign lead responsibility for records management at a senior enough level to be able to change policy, process and culture.
Where resources are available, you should nominate an appropriately skilled lead to coordinate records management within your business. You may combine this with other roles within your business.

Where resources are available, you should nominate an appropriately skilled records management lead to coordinate the management of records within the business. This may be combined with other roles within the organisation.

* Organisational arrangements to support records management The National Archives website

 

1.2 Records management policy

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A policy will address how records are used within your business in a consistent manner. This can be part of a general policy or a standalone policy statement that is supported by specific records management procedures such as storage and maintenance or disposal of records.

The policy should clearly set out your approach to records management and should address your overall commitment, the role of records management, references to related policies and documents, staff roles and responsibilities and monitoring of compliance.

1.3 Records management risk

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You should carry out regular exercises to identify, assess and manage records management risks. This review should identify what might go wrong with a process and why. You can then put measures in place to mitigate these risks.

If you already have a corporate risk register, you can use this to include risks to records management functions. These might include records not being either updated, destroyed in a timely manner or held securely.

1.4 Records management training

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You should brief all new staff on their responsibilities for the creation, use, maintenance and eventual destruction of records with regular refreshers to maintain levels of awareness. Awareness materials might include posters, office-wide emails, intranet updates and records management content in newsletters.

You should give specialist training to staff with specific records management responsibilities such as management of disposal schedules, monitoring of data quality or oversight of records management practice in order to allow them to carry out their role effectively.

1.5 Monitoring and reporting

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You should develop ways of checking staff compliance with policies and procedures; eg after hours desk sweeps to ensure adherence with clear desk policy and checks of disposal procedures to ensure that confidential waste is being disposed of correctly.

Performance measures might include progress against a records management action plan, archive retrieval rates measured against a service level agreement (SLA), progress regarding deletion of records against requirements of a retention schedule or data quality and accuracy. You should report on performance to key performance indicators (KPIs) periodically to management to provide assurances on compliance.