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Official Record? Or Non-Official Record???
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Top level
Regional Initiatives
Adequate Records Management
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For many people, the difficulty with records management begins with being able to determine whether a specific record is classed as an 'official' record, or whether the record can be destroyed according to 'normal administrative practice'...
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According to the Australian Standard ISO 15489-2002, an 'official' record, is classed as ‘Information created, received and maintained as evidence and information by an Agency or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transaction of business’. One good way to think of whether something is an 'official' record or not is to consider whether you would possibly need that record in the future to show how something was done (i.e. evidence required to justify transactions in the future).
It is imperative that staff have an understanding of how to differentiate official records from non-official or normal administrative practice records, as otherwise staff will be retaining either too much, or too little information and either way, there are liabilities for doing so.
Official records must be retained according to the retention period set out within the General Disposal Schedule or relevant Operational Disposal Schedule. Any official records destroyed prior to their retention date can incur penalties for doing so.
Non-official records, or normal administrative practice records, can be destroyed once their administrative use has ceased. This means that these records can, and should be destroyed once they are no longer required. If such records are kept too long, this can cause serious storage issues and can become a nightmare when it comes time to do the annual office clean out!!!
Examples of normal administrative practice records could include:
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Any duplicates (the 'original' is classed as the official record)
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Transitory or short-term items (e.g. phone messages, notes, office notices etc)
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Rough working papers and/or calculations created in the preparation of official records.
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Drafts not intended for further use or reference.
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Published material that does not form part of an agency transaction.
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System print-outs used to monitor data or to answer ad-hoc queries.
Attached is a flow-chart to help determine whether or not your record is classed as 'official' or 'normal administrative practice'.
Normal Administrative Practice Flow Chart.pdf
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Attached files
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