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Practical guidance and tools

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As noted earlier, making rules is not enough to build an effective recordkeeping framework. Indeed, by itself, it may be a futile and even counter-productive exercise. Consequently, a key strategy is to provide the practical guidance and tools required by agencies to achieve the outcome - improved Government recordkeeping - that State Records, the Government and its agencies desire.

Guidelines & manuals

Pyramid Guidance and Tools

In the pyramid model, the layer below codes of best practice is that of 'guidelines and manuals'. State Records has a long tradition of producing materials of this kind. The classic Publications on Records Management series, published originally from 1978 to 1985 by the then Records Management Office of NSW, was highly influential both within the New South Wales Government and beyond it.

The release of the Australian and International Standards on records management provided a new impetus for practical guidance about their application. A central feature of both standards is the methodology for 'Designing and Implementing Recordkeeping Systems (known as the DIRKS methodology), which was originally derived from a workshop, 'Understanding Recordkeeping Systems', led by David Bearman at Monash University in July 1993 The methodology is an exceptionally valuable tool in any environment, but is seen as particularly crucial for the electronic environment. It was adopted in the policy and strategy approaches developed for electronic recordkeeping in New South Wales Governments in Documenting the Future: Policy and Strategies for Electronic Recordkeeping in the New South Wales Public Sector, July 1995, pp. 32-34.

To help public offices to use the methodology in practice, we have developed a manual - known as the Strategies for Documenting Government Business: The DIRKS Manual - which is designed to expand and provide practical advice on the methodology. An important feature of the manual is the relationship between the comprehensive DIRKS methodology and specific records management processes, such as developing a disposal schedule or a keyword thesaurus, which use elements of the methodology, draw on products from those elements and produce components of the larger recordkeeping system.