Records Management

Records management

Efficient records management is a challenge to any organisation.  Broadly speaking, records fall into three main categories: current, i.e. still of use to the originating office, and therefore kept there; no longer current, i.e. records which need to be available to the originating office, but not necessarily stored there until disposed of or identified as archival; and archival, which need to be permanently stored either in an archival space in the institution, or remotely, such as in PRONI or in a commercial store.

In order to determine how to deal with records it is necessary to have a retention and disposal schedule, and in the autumn of 2003 such a schedule was adopted by the University.  The Retention and Disposal Schedule appears at Appendix 2 to this Report.

The University will be obliged to comply with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI), which comes into effect at the start of 2005.  In order to achieve compliance a Working Group on FOI has been established, chaired by Mrs I Aston, Director of Planning and Governance Services, of which the Archivist is a member. This group has been meeting throughout 2003 to ensure compliance by or before the due date.  It has been agreed that responsibility for records management under the terms of FOI should devolve to AGARM, but the two groups have much common ground, reflected in their memberships, and the Retention and Disposal Schedule has also gone to the FOI Working Group for continuing consideration.