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A version of this infoKit is available for download as a printable version in pdf format. (The Adobe Acrobat Reader to allow viewing of pdf files is available for download here).
Introduction
Welcome to the Records Management infoKit. This infoKit is aimed at people in Further and Higher Education (FE and HE) who are new to the discipline. It is not a comprehensive guide to becoming a professional records manager but it does provide some guidelines to the issues you will face and some of the techniques for overcoming these. The infoKit provides a framework based on a simplified version of the Australian National Archives DIRKS programme for managing business information. If you come from a library, information or archives background some of the elements will be very familiar.
If you are a professional records manager in a large institution the basic reference material may add little to your knowledge although we will be updating the reference material at regular intervals. Your needs are better met by joining one of the JISC list-serves, keeping an eye on records management matters on the main JISC website, and participating in existing practitioner groups in FE and HE and the Records Management Society of the UK. You may however find the infoKit material useful in raising awareness about records management issues amongst non-specialists in your institution.
Even if you are new to all of this you will find a ready welcome in each of the above. Records Management is a relatively new formal discipline. Practitioners come from a range of different backgrounds, are well aware of the size of the mountain a newcomer may face working on their own, and are good at sharing help and advice informally. You can find help on specifically legal matters from the JISC Legal Information Service, and general advice on records management from ourselves at JISC infoNet. Both of these services are available freely to all FE and HE institutions throughout the UK.
Records management is a wide-ranging management discipline. The necessary skills include ensuring that your institution is compliant in a very practical way with all the legislation and regulation that affects its operations, staff and students. Other elements range from the development of 'good housekeeping' of information and records to long-term preservation (10 years+) of electronic data, and the selection of records for eventual inclusion in the historical archive of your institution.
As records manager you are in an interesting situation in your institution. This could be characterised as 'pig in the middle'. With organisational change being the norm, as records manager you may rapidly become the one person who has an overall appreciation of how your institution actually works and therefore a valued source of practical advice to all. Above all your success will depend on persuading both:
senior management in your institution that the job is worth doing well
Your colleagues, for whom records are a secondary matter to their prime purpose of teaching and administration that there are positive benefits to their working situation of 'getting it right'.
Records Management policy and operations, which form the core of this infoKit, are discussed in later sections. Ideally these should sit within an overall institutional Information Strategy framework and be closely aligned to its other elements such as IT Policy and development. In practice many educational institutions in the UK have not developed such a strategy. Even where they have, the ability of the newly-appointed records manager to directly influence it will be limited until they have a recognised and positive 'track record'. This infoKit details technical aspects of the role but also emphasises that much of your time will be spent on communication, negotiation and persuasion. This is not a role for the terminally reticent - if after reading this you find that you need more training or would like to proceed to a formal qualification you will find the possibilities detailed in the final section.
To sum up, Records Management is intrinsically unglamorous but vital to the efficient running of your institution's daily operations. It is also the essential tool which underpins your institution's legal and regulatory compliance.
The Freedom of Information Act, 2000 and The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, along with the revision of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the new Environmental Information Regulations all came into full force on 1 January 2005. These are just the latest and most stringent demands being made on record keeping practices in FE and He institutions in the UK. The link between records management and this legislation is now explicit. Both FOI Acts contain Codes of Practice which although not mandatory will become the standards by which all public sector record keeping practices will be judged. These are -
for the UK: http://www.lcd.gov.uk/foi/codemanrec.htm
and for Scotland: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/FOI/18022/11334
JISC have produced guidance on all these matters which may be found at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications and http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk.
Under your guidance your institution will need to develop record creation and information management polices which are carried through thoroughly and consistently. The basic concept is that information which is captured as a record on paper, microform or in an electronic system requires consistent, systematic and active management from the time it is created until it is disposed of, either by a controlled destruction process or to an historical archive. This process is usually known as the record or information lifecycle.
