State Records NSW

The New South Wales Government's Archives and Records Management Authority

Create and Capture - Guidelines on better recordkeeping
Section 3 - Strategies for promoting record creation and capture

3.3 Design systems and processes to require or encourage record creation and capture
Where possible, organisational systems and processes should be designed, or redesigned, to ensure appropriate record creation and capture occurs automatically or routinely.

System design


Information systems must be designed to create and capture essential records of the business supported by the system. This is a requirement of State Records' Standard on Recordkeeping in the Electronic Business Environment.

Increasingly, business information systems are being automated. The processes of designing, building or acquiring new and updated information systems provides an opportunity to ensure those systems make and keep appropriate records as a part of their standard operation. To achieve this, it is essential to collaborate with IT managers and professionals, including contractors and consultants.

State Records' Strategies for Documenting Government Business: The DIRKS Manual provides more guidance about how business information systems can be designed or redesigned to better meet recordkeeping requirements.

Process design

Business processes can be highly structured, comprising a number of discrete steps and actions, or quite unstructured and unpredictable. Nevertheless, records creation and capture is ideally an integral part of any business process. Creating and capturing records should become second nature, and a part of the process, rather than an additional, burdensome activity.

Structured business processes tend to be controlled by rules and procedures. If such rules and procedures are documented, such as in procedure manuals or instructions, it may be possible to include specific references to the need to create and capture records during the process. In cases where workflow systems are being introduced, you should aim to ensure that requirements to make and capture records are included at relevant points in the workflow process.

Unstructured business processes are those with less predictable tasks and outcomes and they are often not as tightly controlled by standard operating rules. Some control over record creation and capture can however be achieved through the use of templates. Templates can be designed to prompt staff to create appropriate records of a broad range of transactions that occur within unstructured processes, such as receiving enquiries or sending information by fax. Not only does the existence of the template encourage creation of a record, but a requirement to include the file number when completing a template can also promote the capture of the record on a physical or virtual file.

Click here to see examples of templates.

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