Records Management Plan

Records Management Plan

By: Nor Izzati Binti Nadzarudin

1.0 Abstract     

Purpose – The purpose of the article is to analyze the elements need to be considering records management plan.

Design/methodology/approach – The article is based on the approach taken in a business field. This paper presents the records life cycle concept where it is necessary to implement in each of the organization.

Findings – The records management expertise should know how to handle the records management plan in an organization. This paper will discussed on the elements, and records life-cycle phase that should consist when implement a good management plan. All the standard of procedures needs to standardize suits to the technological changes.

Practical implications – How will the records management plan can be maintained forever? The answer lies in an organization of business process, procedure standardization of records life-cycle where can be used for long term framework.

Originality/value – This paper reflects practical lessons learned and will help other professionals who are considering records life-cycle in business records.

Keywords – Life-cycle, Record management, business, plan, create, dispose, use and maintenance.

2.0 Introduction 

Business is an organization where goods and services are exchanged for one another or for money. Every business requires some form of investment and has targeted customers to whom their good and services can be sold on. Business are divided into three ways which are can privately owned, not-profit or state-owned. There are a lot of major challenges in a business environment. Mental and physical preparedness to conduct the big business entity should became the main thing need to consider as there are a lot of highly expertise competitors to grab any chance of  opportunities in this field. An organization needs to have their own unique goals or objectives of business entity to differentiate from other companies in order to compete with other competitors. 

Records can be defined as a unit of recorded information. It is a document that memorializes and provides objectives, events occurred, result achieved, or statements made. Records are created or received by an organization in daily routine transaction of its business or in pursuance of its legal obligations. A record may consist of two or more documents. All documented information, regardless of its characteristics, media, physical form, and the manner it is recorded or stored. Records include accounts, agreements, books, drawings, and letters and so on. Generally speaking, records function as evidence of activities, whereas documents function as evidence of intentions.

Records management is something that we can call as a guideline where it is a process of maintaining and controlling all records life-cycle stages. It is important to manage the records effectively to ease access and retrieve when needed. There are four stages in records life which are records creation, records use and maintenance, and records disposal. In the stage of use and maintenance, there are two (2) types of records need to be appraise which is active records and inactive records.

3.0  Content

Management is about planning for the future. In a business entity, the first thing need to consider is organizational workflow management. Generally, this is basic task need to be done before the organization starts to move their operational business. The management plan on the records is vital as to track the movements of the records in an organization where it is consists of a few departments such as finance department, human resource department, marketing department and many more. This plan enable records are being classified accordingly and systematically. The records management expertise in an organization should aware this management plan where they should know what records are useful and need to be kept and what records need to dispose. Records known as a backbone to an organization and without them, the organization cannot function successfully. Within organization, the records managers will work on operating in a multidimensional environment in terms of document creation structures, workflow procedures and enterprise control (Marjo Rita Valtonen, 2007). In the organization, the records life-cycle will lead the records manager to handle all documents workflow smoothly from the beginning of creation until dispose stage. Therefore, records manager play vital part in managing the records. See figure 1 below is example of records life-cycle.

 

Figure 1: Image records life cycle

           3.1 Create

In a business, the organization should hire a professional staff to control and handle the records. Usually, they will hold the records manager position where they already graduated in Records Management field and have been trained to masterly records life-cycle management plan. In the other words, management plan is in line instructed of suitable standards and procedures for the effectiveness to control the records and records systems from their creation to their disposal stage (Catherine Hare Graham Southwood, 1995). Generally, there are many types of documents transaction in daily operation in an organization. According to the Ronald Tumuhairwe Arthur Ahimbisibwe , (2016), he said obtaining the records management system including of documents created at various stages within the process consists of the procurement plan, requisition, purchase order, specifications/terms of reference, tenders documents, correspondences, minutes of proceedings, notice of contract award and publication and contracts, among others. 

The records management system helps to smooth the movements of documents. Any activities of records transaction are being track into system. Therefore, the creation is accommodating records management system in any organization is necessary for the organization to manage all records and information related activities within organization proactively and progressively (Mountain, 2005). Other than that, to start the early stage of records life-cycle, there should be a brief planning and analysis of the records. The early basis for planning the schedules is a functional and contextual records survey for example an analysis of the functions and tasks of the records creators who produce the records in an organization. The importance of records life cycle can be seen where decisions made at the conception and creation stages of records influence the whole lifecycle (Marjo Rita Valtonen, 1999).

            3.2 Use and Maintenance

In the records life-cycle, this stage plays crucial part from other stages where many perspectives in organization to look for to enhance and improve the maintenance of records. According to the Rasha Abd El Aziz Rasha Fady , (2013), she said that to maintain the records in an organization, there should consists of three  development and improvement elements which are restructuring roles and interactions, flow-wise improvements and point-wise improvements. Difference opinion stated that, information and communications technology (ICT) is therefore a main of basic importance for the implementation of an efficiency of maintenance management structure (Garg and Deshmukh, 2006, Marquez and Guptab, 2006). This statement also has been add on and supported by British Standard BS EN 13306-2010 where maintenance is the combination a few thing including of all technical, administrative and managerial actions during the life cycle of records, intentional to preserve it or reestablish it to, a state in which it can continue to implement the certain function (Venkatraman Narayan, 2012). 

Other opinion stated that many of the maintenance related decisions ultimately depend on the trustworthy and timely exchange of data between operations and maintenance and higher management and strategic organization layers (Murthy et al., 2002). Among all these importance to consider, there must be a standard used as a guidelines to maintain the records. One of it, there is a standard that can be used to maintain the records such as the ISO 15489 (2001) and International Organizational for Standardization (2015) 9000 guidelines specify how product development procedures are documented and how records are maintained (Read et al., 2002; Saffady, 2011). This guideline enable the organization to follow in order to do the appraisal all the records. 

           3.3 Dispose

There are two choice needs to consider when the records are ready for destruction. In this phase, the records manager should identify the proper way to dispose whether the records are still have its value or not after reached their retention period. There might be some different of dispose procedure between private institution and government institution. For government, there are a lot of policy and standard used when to dispose a documents especially importance documents. In government procedure, various laws and government regulations specify that certain types of records need to be retained for a minimum period (Saffady, 2011). For instance, according to Kangave (2005), records required to be maintained by any business entity or responsible person for tax should be retained for at least six years after the end of the period to which they relate. In addition, a few authors also support these statements as besides compliance with the records retention schedule, other records management procedures and activities such as composition and structure, access, alteration, destruction and disposition of the record need be done in accordance to the governing records guidelines (Egbuji, 1999; Kyobe et al., 2009; Myler and Broadbent, 2006). As above mentioned, there is specific procedure need to be taken when dispose records that related to government issues. 

4.0  Conclusion

As a conclusion, there are numerous challenges for records management plan projects. There is no doubt that we are in the midst of a technological revolution and as such, the exponential advancement of technology over the past few years has meant that the way many organizations look and operate now, is not going to be what they will look like in the future. Records life-cycle is not left behind from being influence by these changes. In the other hand, the technology itself is being bound to create, distribute and manage the records. Standard commercial packages, such as spreadsheets, databases and word processing, probable to be readily available in organizations, still can play their phase but they are now being added by a whole range of software types. But this technology has not disposed of the need to use basic records management principles and techniques (Catherine Hare Graham Southwood, 1995). The challenges in records life-cycle open the opportunities for records manager to contribute, experience, and learns to enhance their skills as well. An organization should know what records need to kept, what technological issues in records management plan need to consider. 

5.0  References

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Garg, A. and Deshmukh, S.G. (2006), “Maintenance management: literature review and directions”, Journal           of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, Vol. 12, pp. 205-38.

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Kangave, J. (2005), “Improving tax administration: a case study of the uganda revenue authority”, Journal of                Africa Law, Vol. 49 No. 2, pp. 145-176.

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Murthy, D.N.P., Atrens, A. and Eccleston, J.A. (2002), “Strategic maintenance management”, Journal of                   Quality in Maintenance Engineering, Vol. 8, pp. 287-305.

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Narayan, V. (2012). Business performance and maintenance. Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering                   J of Qual in Maintenance Eng, 18(2), 183-195. doi:10.1108/13552511211244210.

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