Analyse business activities and recordkeeping requirements

Use risk assessment techniques

Examine surveys and other records of performance

Be aware of business problems and concerns

Before embarking on strategies for promoting records creation and capture, you may wish to examine your organisation’s existing practices to determine whether appropriate records are being made and kept. Undertaking such an assessment will enable you to identify whether any of the strategies proposed in Part 3 is necessary or relevant in your organisation. There are a number of mechanisms you can use to determine whether your organisation is appropriately making and keeping records of its business.

Analyse business activities and recordkeeping requirements

A comprehensive method for determining whether appropriate records are being created and captured in your organisation begins with analysing the business activities your organisation performs and identifying the recordkeeping requirements that relate to these activities. These requirements usually come from business processes, legislation or accountability needs. Once these requirements have been identified, you are in a better position to assess whether existing systems satisfactorily result in the necessary records. 

Analysis of business activity and identification of recordkeeping requirements are fundamental steps in the methodology for designing and implementing recordkeeping systems. This methodology is described in the Manual for Designing and Implementing Recordkeeping Systems (DIRKS Manual).

Use risk assessment techniques

Risk assessment techniques can be used to determine the areas of your organisation’s business that are, or would be, particularly at risk from poor recordkeeping practices. You may discover, for example, that one area of your business which is frequently subject to litigation has sound processes and systems for records creation and capture, while another equally litigious area has poor recordkeeping practices and systems which has cost the organisation dearly. In this scenario, it may be necessary to only target the high risk area with the poor recordkeeping practices. 

Examine surveys and other records of performance

It is a requirement under the State Records Act that each public office in NSW complete an annual Records Management Survey, as distributed by State Records. Specific questions within this survey relate directly to record creation and capture. Your responses to these questions should indicate whether the creation and capture of records have been identified as problematic for your organisation.

If your organisation undertakes benchmarking or other assessments of recordkeeping practice (note that this is a requirement under the Standard on Records Management Programs – Principle 9, Measured), these too can be used to help identify whether strategies are needed to improve records creation and capture. 

Be aware of business problems and concerns

An awareness of issues and challenges faced by your organisation can be useful in identifying recordkeeping failures. For example, if there are frequent complaints or queries about records that cannot be located, it could be that the records were not captured into official systems or even not created in the first place. Furthermore, if you are aware that your organisation lost a legal challenge because it was unable to provide records that adequately defended its position, you could use this information to identify areas to focus on improving record creation and capture.