Responsibilities of Records Management
Records Management is responsible for the development and implementation of policies and procedures, including electronic systems, to:
Enable Lancaster University to manage its records effectively and accountably
Facilitate university wide compliance with information legislation and regulatory frameworks including the Freedom of Information Act and the Environmental Information Regulations
Develop a university archive, for the preservation of the institution's cultural memory
Provide staff training on Records Management and information legislation compliance
What is Records Management?
Records Management is the discipline and organisational function of managing records to meet operational needs, accountability requirements and community expectations.
Records Management incorporates the practice of identifying, classifying, providing access to archiving, and sometimes the controlled destruction of records. While the definition of a record is often identified strongly with a document, a record can be any tangible object, or digital information which has value to an organisation. For example, birth certificates, medical x-rays, museum artefacts, ordinary office documents, and e-mail are all examples of records.
Staff around the University create, access and manage institutional records every day in the ordinary course of their work, making decisions about how to classify and store records, whether to keep or destroy records, and access records for use by themselves and others. There are strong arguments for pursuing institutional practices and standards for these seemingly routine activities.
Why is Records Management important?
Without institution-wide records management procedures, each department would continue to follows their own practices. Whilst each department's practices may seem to be based upon a common sense approach, an unco-ordinated approach to managing the University's records could lead to:
Failure to comply with information legislation
Risks to institutional accountability
Inefficient use of staff time
Poorly informed decision-making
Loss of institutional memory
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