In the Australian Government context, a record is created when people document their work. A record is evidence of a business transaction or decision.
The key distinction between records and other types of business information is that records provide evidence of business activities. Records can be created in all formats. They can be paper or electronic and include reports, minutes, email and spreadsheets. A record does not have to be finalised. Drafts and working papers are records too. Records may relate to critical agency business or they may document routine administrative matters. Information received from other organisations may be evidence of their business activities, but doesn’t need to be managed as a record by your agency. If in doubt, treat information as a record and manage it according to your agency’s business needs.
A record is evidence of a business activity from the time it is first created. If it documents your agency’s work it is a record regardless of its format and where and when it is filed. Records are sometimes kept in email folders, shared drives, and on laptop computers or in systems with records management functionality.
Although records that are being developed are subject to comment and change, they are still records of the process up to that stage. It’s important to know the status of a record – is it the final version, has it been approved yet, or is this an earlier version with the final stored elsewhere? Some agencies develop records in electronic systems such as shared drives, content management systems, or electronic document management systems. In some cases documents are developed in systems that manage versions, in other cases the agency requires only the final version to be stored in a system with records management functionality.
Agencies need to account for records that have been destroyed or deleted, including both records disposed of under a records authority and records disposed of under normal administrative practice (NAP). Some agencies keep all drafts; others allow deletion of drafts when a final version is stored. Your agency should document decisions on keeping or destroying drafts in a policy or guidelines.
The amount of effort invested in managing records should reflect their importance to your agency. By determining what records are required using a work process analysis, you can put more effort into managing the records that your agency needs to maintain and records of your high risk functions.
Post-2000 records authorities and general disposal authorities are available for download from this website. You may also purchase a hard copy of the Administrative Functions Disposal Authority.
The National Archives has copies of all of the records authorities that it has issued. Older authorities, which were not based on functions, have not been published on the website. For copies or information on older RDAs please contact the Agency Service Centre.
Information on National Archives digital preservation software can be found on our website at the following address. As you can see from this website, you are welcome to download the product from www.sourceforge.net.
We are always looking for organisations to partner with us to build a community of users around our digital preservation products. If you are interested in using our software, or would like to discuss your digital preservation needs, please contact the Agency Service Centre and we can organise for one of our experts to talk to you about preservation in your organisation.
Keep the Knowledge was developed specifically for Australian Government agencies. If you are an Australian Governement organisation, feel free to use the package. While we are aware the training materials are used more widely, for copyright reasons we are unable to make them more freely available. If you are a Commonwealth agency, you are welcome to use the cartoons to assist you in records training within your organisation. However, they should not be used for commercial activities such as providing training for a fee. The cartoons are copyright to Hinze!/Scratch Media and if you wish to use the cartoons for other purposes contact the Agency Service Centre and we can put you in touch with the artist.
Computer system back-up tapes can be disposed of when they are no longer required under Normal Administrative Practice, NAP. NAP provides for the destruction of records which are either:
Computer backup tapes fall into the first and third catagories.
If you are planning to destroy computer back-ups under NAP, you need to ensure that you maintain the original record (i.e. you should only destroy redundant copies) and that destruction is undertaken appropriately. The National Archives has released information on destroying digital records in Digital Recordkeeping: Guidelines for Creating, Managing and Preserving Digital Records.
Your organisation is responsible for creating records that are full and accurate reflections of its work, and maintained over time. For ease of accessibility and reuse as well as to gain efficencies in storage your organisation may decide to digitise its records. The National Archives has not released any specific advice in this area, because how you manage digitised records will heavily depend on why you digitised them in the first place.
If your organisation is considering digitising hard copy records, some of the issues you need to consider:
While you are considering these issues you may wish to consult the following resources on this area:
The National Archives has two companion publications that provide policy and advice on recordkeeping for web-based resources:
Important information about how long you need to keep websites can also be found in the Administrative Functions Disposal Authority (AFDA) – particularly Classes 1933, 1935, and 1938.
The Australian Government Information Management Office has also published Better Practice Checklist No.7, Archiving Web Resources.
We suggest that your agency to take a risk management approach to deciding how often to take snapshots of public websites.
Things that you should take into account include:
Taking a snapshop of a static websites is relatively simple. However, even if you take regular snapshots you will also need to maintain records of any changes made between snapshots.
You also need to think about the individual pieces of 'static' information provided on a website. Have these been captured into a recordkeeping system, with appropriate metadata that indicates when they were publicly available on the website? If so, there may be less need to take snapshots of the website itself.
But at the very least, it would be useful to snapshot a website prior to major changes being made, and certainly prior to the decommissioning of a website.
Dynamic pages are more difficult to deal with. Web content management systems (WCMS) and many databases have some form of 'rollback' facility, whereby it is possible to replicate a website as it was at any given point in time. If your systems have this functionality, then the ability to replicate and take a 'copy' of the replication could be considered a form of snapshot.
A feature of some dynamic websites is to present the user with specific information from a database relevant to their request. Examples of this type of service include search results and some web 2.0 features. In these instances it may also be important to make a record of what information was presented to your client as well as metadata such as the time and date it was requested, the search terms used and the IP address of the requester.
Whether a website is static or dynamic (or a combination of the two) makes no difference to how long you keep the content. If individual content 'components' (such as advice relating to a particular area of the business) are captured as records into a recordkeeping system, then these will be covered by the relevant classes in your RDA. However, public website snapshots are currently, under AFDA, considered RNA and so must be maintained and eventually transferred to the custody of the National Archives.
Folioing a record means to number all of the paper records within a file. The practice of folioing originated from the need to:
Folioing is no longer necessary for records in electronic records management systems. These systems can be configured to apply document numbers to records automatically as they are entered in the system. If your organisation still has some records in paper, and if you need to refer to specific pages within a file, or if the file documents a high risk activity and you need to account for every page, you should folio.
To folio you should annotate each new paper that is added to the file with a consecutive number starting from 1 – note that the first sheet in the file is at the bottom. The folio number should be recorded on the top right-hand corner of each sheet of paper containing information, so for example if you have papers which are double sided, each side should recieve a folio number. The folio number should be recorded in ink, not pencil. If pages are removed from a record, a folio removal sheet should indicate why the record was removed, by whom, when and the fate of the record, eg if the record was removed to another file, this should be recorded in the original.