|
The Australian Standard functions as a voluntary code of practice. There is no general obligation on organisations to keep or manage records and the Standard does not impose such an obligation. Rather, organisations are subject to recordkeeping requirements that stem from their environment: the industry or jurisdiction in which they operate, the laws to which they are subject and the risks that they face. Consequently, the role of the Standard is to distil current and progressive best practice which will help organisations of all types to identify those recordkeeping requirements and the means to satisfy them.
We should note here also that the Standard does not necessarily reflect common Australian records management practices. It reflects what the Committee believes to be best practice, incorporating the far-reaching developments in theory and practice that have taken place in the last few years, both in Australia and internationally.
Finally, the Standard was also designed to play a special role for organisations certified, or seeking certification, under the AS/NZS ISO 9000 series of Standards for quality systems. Under these Standards, quality records must be kept to show conformance to specified requirements and the effective operation of a quality system. Quality records represent a crucial source of evidence for the certification process and the quality systems Standards impose stringent recordkeeping requirements for this purpose. The Australian Standard is intended to serve as the benchmark for the management of quality records.
The Standard has many features that are worth noting. (5) The following are among its principal features:
The fundamental starting point for the Standard is the recognition that records are more than just data or information. They are kept to provide evidence (in the broad sense) of business transactions and are inextricably linked with those transactions, and with the broader business functions and activities, that they document. These attributes of evidential purpose and transactional context distinguish records from other types of organisational information and have a profound impact on the requirements for their management and use.
The Standard uses the following definition of a record:
'recorded information, in any form, including data in computer systems, created or received and maintained by an organisation or person in the transaction of business or the conduct of affairs and kept as evidence of such activity.' (AS 4390.1-1996: General, Clause 4.21).
This definition and the concepts associated with it suffuse the entire document.
It is worth noting that early drafts of the Standard used the term 'transactional record' to emphasise this concept, but this would have implied that there are other kinds of records, thereby perpetuating the old confusions between records and information. The Standard operates from the position that, for the discipline of recordkeeping, it is these attributes that make records records.
The popular perception of records management is all too often associated with paper records - and probably limited to file-based systems. The Standard has been formulated to address the management of electronic records as much as conventional physical records. Moreover electronic records are not approached as a peculiar type of record that requires special treatment: they are treated as mainstream, just as the conduct of business by electronic means is now mainstream.
At the same time, it may be argued that more specific attention needs to be paid to describing and codifying electronic recordkeeping best practice in standards documents. The Australian Council of Archives' common position statement on electronic recordkeeping, Corporate Memory in the Electronic Age calls for the development of 'a national electronic recordkeeping standard, probably as a development of Australian Standard AS 4390, Records Management' (6). This is likely to be on agenda for the IT/21 Committee later in 1997.
The Standard is built around a comprehensive methodological framework for the systematic design and implementation of recordkeeping systems. Clause 6.2.2 in Part 3 of the Standard outlines a methodology for the design and implementation of recordkeeping systems derived from a model developed at a workshop, 'Understanding Recordkeeping Systems', led by David Bearman at Monash University in July 1993. (7) The methodology forms the 'golden thread' running through the Standard and involves the following steps:
The methodology plays an important part in policies and strategies proposed for electronic recordkeeping in the New South Wales and Commonwealth (federal) Governments.
Records management tends to be seen as the means of controlling and managing the large quantities of records produced by modern organisations. In the past, business processes resulted naturally in the accumulation of records. Today we recognise that modern business technologies and practices can easily fail to create and capture the records that are needed to document business activity to meet operational and accountability requirements. The Standard includes a whole Part - Part 3: Strategies - primarily concerned with strategies for ensuring that such records are indeed created and captured into recordkeeping systems and that those records possess the attributes necessary to function effectively as evidence.
The Standard adopts a concept of appraisal that involves making decisions about what records need to be created and captured, as well as how long they need to be retained.
Appraisal is defined as:
'the process of evaluating business activities to determine which records need to be captured and how long they need to be kept, to meet business needs, the requirements of organisational accountability and community expectations' (AS 4390.1-1996: General, Clause 4.3).
Thus, appraisal is concerned not only with determining how long to retain particular records or classes of records, but what records should be captured from business activity in the first place.
We should also note that appraisal involves the appraisal of business activity, not of records per se. This means that appraisal decisions can be made when designing recordkeeping systems, can apply to records not yet created and can remain valid when the form of the records changes. This understanding of appraisal places it in stage (c), (Identify recordkeeping requirements), of the methodology for designing and implementing recordkeeping systems outlined in Clause 6.2.2 of Part 3 noted earlier.
The records management function of classification has tended to be associated specifically with language controls for titling and indexing and, in some traditions, with numbering systems. Thus developing a classification scheme has been seen merely as a step in compiling a thesaurus or a classified file numbering system.
The Standard recognises that classification schemes based on an analysis of business activity are used in practice as the basis of more comprehensive management regimes, covering how long a record should be retained, how it should be handled and stored and who should have what kind of access to it, in addition to language controls.
As with appraisal, the Standard adopts a concept of classification that involves '…devising and applying schemes based on the business activities which generate records…' (AS 4390.1-1996: General, Clause 4.8).
Both of these last two features depend heavily on a third: a focus on business functions and activities as a basis for analysing records. Specifically, this involves analysing business activity as stage (b) of the methodology for designing and implementing recordkeeping systems described in Part 3. This analysis is used to develop a business classification scheme, which is described in Part 4 (AS 4390.4-1996: Control, Clause 7.2), but can be used for other purposes, as we have seen. Its use in appraisal is described in Part 5 (AS 4390.5-1996: Appraisal and Disposal, Clause 6.2.2).
In many ways these approaches are not new: records managers and archivists have been appraising and describing records in terms of their functions for many years. (8) Rather we are now recognising them explicitly and building them systematically into our methodologies and tools. The growing interest in functional analysis as an archival management tool - particularly for strategic appraisal, as pioneered by the Dutch PIVOT Project and others, and as an element in descriptive practices and intellectual control systems - offers exciting possibilities for combining these approaches with their equivalents in records management as described in the Standard.
The Standard is, of course, concerned with records management. It recognises, however, the close connection between records management and archives management, implicitly rejecting the artificial distinctions of traditional life cycle models. It assumes a continuum-based approach, defining the records continuum as covering:
'the whole extent of a record's existence. Refers to a consistent and coherent regime of management processes from the time of the creation of records (and before creation, in the design of recordkeeping systems) through to the preservation and use of records as archives.' (AS 4390.1-1996: General, Clause 4.6). (9)
In total the Standard is a relatively long and complex document. This is only to be expected: records management is a mature and sophisticated discipline, especially when practised in large, modern organisations. It is important, however, that a records management Standard be able to be used by people without specialist expertise in small businesses and organisations. The Standard has been structured to start with an introductory Part - Part 1: General - that is intended to meet this need, followed by a series of Parts that deal with each major aspect of records management in more detail. The idea is that the user can start with the first Part and need only buy the others if and when needed.
In the event, the success of Part 1 in meeting this objective is probably limited. It functions as a useful summary of the content of the remaining Parts but, by itself, would not provide adequate practical guidance to set up small scale recordkeeping systems and practices.
The IT/21 Committee, along with its sub-committees, contained records management and archives practitioners from both the corporate and public sectors, as well as consultants and providers of other records management services with extensive experience in both sectors. As in other areas of management, there is now far less difference between typical records management practice in corporations and public sector bodies and the drivers for innovative solutions in recordkeeping operate equally in each sector.
5. For further discussion of the significance of the Standard, see David O. Stephens and David Roberts, 'From Australia: the World's First National Standard for Records Management', Records Management Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 4, October 1996, pp. 3-7, 62. Return to text
6. Australian Council of Archives, Corporate Memory in the Electronic Age: Statement of a Common Position on Electronic Recordkeeping, May 1996, p. 12. Available from the ACA, Suite 4, 12 Illingworth Parade, Box Hill, Victoria, 3128, Australia. Return to text
7. David Bearman and Margaret Hedstrom, 'Reinventing Archives for Electronic Records: Alternative Service Delivery Options', in Margaret Hedstrom, ed., Electronic Records Management Program Strategies, Archives and Museum Informatics Report No. 18, 1993, p. 97. Return to text
8. See, for example, T. R. Schellenberg, Modern Archives: Principles and Techniques, 1956, p. 55. Return to text
9. This concept of the records continuum should not be confused with the more sophisticated model developed by Frank Upward of Monash University. See Frank Upward, 'Structuring the Records Continuum - Part One: Post-custodial principles and properties', Archives and Manuscripts, Vol. 24, No. 2 (November 1996), pp. 268-285 and 'Structuring the Records Continuum - Part Two: Structuration Theory and Recordkeeping', Vol. 25, No. 1 (May 1997), pp. 10-35. Return to text
[Home] [ServiceNSW] [Privacy Policy] [Disclaimer & Copyright Notice] |
|||||
© Government of
NSW Please make
queries or comments respecting the State Records Website |
|||||