Records

management
What is a record?
• Is any recorded information, in any
format, that allows an office to
conduct business
• Does NOT include unofficial records:
• Drafts and Informal Notes
• Routing Slips
• Personal Correspondence
What is a record?
• A record can be either a tangible
object or digital information: for
example, birth certificates, medical x-
rays, office documents, databases,
application data, and e-mail.
Records Management
• Systematic administration of records
and documented information for its
entire life cycle, from
creation/receipt, classification, use,
filing, retention, storage, to final
disposition.
Records Management
• Records management is primarily
concerned with the evidence of
an organization's activities, and is
usually applied according to the
value of the records rather than
their physical format.
Examples of official records
• policies,
• final reports
• Work plans
• Schedules
• performance results.
• Materials that document a business
decision
• business transaction or the position of the
department.
Examples of official records
• Agendas and meeting minutes.
• Business deliverables.
• Materials of historical or research
importance.
• Information and deliverables from
outside sources.
• Administrative value
• help employees perform office operations
• knowledge management
• decision support
• Fiscal/ Financial value

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• keeps transactions, funds, and other financial processes
• business intelligence / analysis / decision support
• Legal value
• evidence of business transactions
• law compliance
• Historical value
• to achieve records of an organization
• intellectual property
Filing systems
• Filing is the process of classifying,
arranging, sorting, and storing
records so they may be easily
located and retrieved when needed.
• Filing means keeping documents in a
safe place and being able to find
them easily and quickly. Documents
that are cared for will not easily tear,
get lost or dirty.
Filing systems
• A filing system is the central record-
keeping system for an organisation.
• It helps you to be organised,
systematic, efficient and transparent.
• It also helps all people who should be
able to access information to do so
easily.
Lack of enough space
• One of the major problems or
challenges is that of space. When the
organization has little space compared
to the amount of records to be kept,
some records can be destroyed even
when their period is not over so as to
utilize the available space for all
records required to be stored
Filing equipments
• Filing Cabinet - It is used to keep flat files
and suspension or hanging files
• Steel Cabinet - It is used to keep big files
that need to be locked up
• Date Stamp - It is used to date stamp
documents that are received on daily
basis so that they are filed in chronological
order and so we have a record of when
we received the document
Filing equipments
• Register - It is used to record files
taken out and files returned
Filing shelves - It is used to file box
files
Box file - This is a big file that is used
to keep big documents that cannot go
into a filing cabinet. They are kept in
shelves.
Methods of filing
• Filing by Subject/Category
• Filing in Alphabetical order
• Filing by Numbers/Numerical order
• Filing by Places/Geographical order
• Filing by Dates/Chronological order
Symptoms Signs of Poor
Records Management
• The following are various indicators
that there are records management
problems in an organization as
follows
Delay in filling Records
• This a failure to the documents
immediately at a specific time and
when required hence can led to loss
of the records or being accessed by
unauthorized people and bad
arrangement of paper on the working
desks
Bulk log of Records
• When the records are over duplicated
appeared on time then even the
useless records can still be retained
and increase the amount of records in
the records storage area, such as in
Registry, Records center as well as
Repository.
Misfiling of documents
• This is a failure to manage records
properly lead to inappropriate
allocation of papers or incoming
mails, when records are kept on
wrong files
Lack of ability to provide real
information to the general public
• The public fail to get information on
time or sometimes they may
completely fail to get information
when records are not properly
controlled by the organization
Poor performance
• This is the situation of being difficult
to monitor or assess organizational
performance because there are no
records as the bases to evaluate the
past performance of the organization
and identify the problems
Loss of trust to an
organization
• The public can not trust the
organization because their records
are not maintained well or due to
poor performance. Difficult to protect
Rights of the organization and
individual
Inadequate storage facilities
• Records offices in ministries,
independent departments and regions
administration including local
government authorities are still having
inadequate storage facilities,
accommodation and supplies. It is
common to find both active and semi
active records are kept in one and same
storage area, poor storage equipments
and environment.
Inconsistency in decision
making
• Without proper management of
records no any kind of decision will be
done consistently and with a stable
manner, always will be done in
different way because there are no
records to refer.
Increase of customer
complaints
• This is the situation whereby
customers are complaining on the
information they tend to receive as
their records are not be traced easily
when required.
The End