Statement of a Common Position on Electronic Recordkeeping
May 1996
Common framework for electronic recordkeeping
- Creating electronic records and capturing them into electronic recordkeeping systems
- Designing, building and using electronic systems that keep records
- Maintaining and managing electronic records over time
- Making electronic records accessible
This is a statement of an agreed position produced by a meeting
of key industry participants, individual practitioners, and organisations,
sponsored by the Australian Council of Archives in Sydney on 23
October 1995.
The purpose of this statement is to provide a common basis
for Australian organisations - in the private or public sector,
for use within the organisation or across a whole jurisdiction
- to establish policy, standards and practical strategies for
electronic recordkeeping. The organisations that have endorsed
this statement believe that such a common position is essential
for the development of an effective, coherent and consistent set
of solutions to making and managing records in the electronic
environment.
As a summary of our common position, the statement provides
evidence that initiatives consistent with it conform to widely
accepted best practice in this area. It can be used or drawn on
when developing submissions, business cases, policies, procedures
and explanatory materials relating to electronic recordkeeping.
This statement will help your organisation to establish policy,
standards and practical strategies for electronic recordkeeping.
It can be used or drawn on when developing submissions, business
cases, policies, procedures and explanatory materials relating
to electronic recordkeeping.
All organisations need to document their activities: records provide
evidence of business activities of all kinds. Accountabilities
to shareholders, customers, regulators, ministers or the public
are all documented through records.
While paper still forms the most common medium for records, electronic
media are replacing paper as the preferred means of conducting
business transactions. Electronic transactions are no different
in nature from their paper counterparts: they need to be recorded,
captured in a fixed form, maintained and made accessible as records.
Electronic records need to provide the same degree of evidence
of business activity and the same level of accountability, and
be able to function as social resources in the same way, as paper
records, for the immediate and future needs of organisations,
individuals and society. The role and purpose of recordkeeping
in the electronic environment - electronic recordkeeping - are
the same as in the paper world.
Innovative use of information and information technology is supporting
social and organisational change. The process brings many benefits
and opportunities to business, government and society. Inevitably
it brings risks. Electronic recordkeeping seeks to address the
risk that there will no be sufficient evidence of business and
social activity conducted in the electronic environment to meet
organisational and individual needs. This involves meeting the
challenges of recordkeeping in the electronic environment: to
find the most effective means to create and capture electronic
records, protect and manage them, and make them accessible for
as long as they are needed.
This statement is the product of a workshop attended by Australia's
leading practitioners in electronic recordkeeping form the public
and corporate sectors and representatives of the professional
associations in the areas of recordkeeping, information management
and computing. The organisations that have endorsed this statement
have committed themselves to working towards the vision that:
By the year 2000 all Australian organisations will follow guidelines
and standards for the management of electronic records which are
based on common principles, concepts and criteria.
The statement describes principles and strategies for pursuing
this vision under the following headings:
- Creating electronic records and capturing them into electronic
recordkeeping systems
- Designing, building and using electronic systems that keep
records
- Maintaining and managing electronic records over time
- Making electronic records accessible
The strategies can be pursued by programs implemented in organisations,
by the work of archives institutions, by research projects and
by the efforts of individuals in their lives and work. Using this
statement will help your organisation keep its corporate memory
in the electronic age.
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Records are so ingrained and implicit in our methods of doing
business that we are in danger of overlooking their importance
and unique role in the electronic age. The electronic revolution,
being experienced by all organisations, offers the opportunity
to re-design business processes and methods. It provides a vision
of easy access to all information across all the systems in our
organisation and available from the wider world. But in seeking
comprehensive corporate knowledge, we must also guard against
the possibility of losing our corporate memory, that is, the trail
of evidence of action that is provided by records.
All organisations, whether private or public, and individuals
in their working and personal lives, need records to document
their activities. Records provide evidence of business activities.
Without records, people and organisations cannot prove that actions
have been taken, commitments entered into or obligations carried
out. But records have a broader purpose than the immediate objective
of getting business done: organisations exist within regulatory
frameworks which impose various degrees of accountability for
their activities. Accountabilities to shareholders, ministers
or the public are all documented through records.
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Increasingly the world is conducting its business electronically.
Businesses are seeking competitive advantage by using new technology
to reduce costs, enhance products and develop new markets. Governments
are seeking to give better value to citizens by using new technology
to improve service delivery and the quality of public administration.
Consumers increasingly expect products and services of all kinds
to be available in electronic form. More and more, individuals
expect to be able to conduct their business using electronic tools.
Innovative use of the information base within all organisations
is enabling major social and organisational changes which are
reflected in opportunities such as:
- radical restructuring of organisations
- outsourcing and diversification of management of previously
core business activities
- the emergence of new organisational forms
- re-engineered work processes, and
- the anticipation of the virtual office.
The process brings many benefits and opportunities to business,
government and society. Inevitably it brings risks. One of the
risks is that there will not be sufficient evidence of social
and business activity conducted in the electronic environment
to meet organisational and individual needs.
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Records document social and business activity. They function as
evidence of that activity which is captured, maintained and delivered
for a whole range of current and future accountability and information
purposes - personal, corporate, legal, social, democratic and
cultural.
Records are used by government administrators and business people,
social watchdogs and regulators, auditors and legal professionals,
and individuals in the full range of their roles, such as citizens,
family members and researchers.
This complex and diverse, yet essential, set of roles for records
and recordkeeping may be summarised as comprising:
- the business domain: records are principally kept by
any organisation or individual to support their business activities.
Decision makers need records to provide precedent for subsequent
decisions, to provide details of actions undertaken in case of
challenge and to prove that required action was actually carried
out. Service providers need records of dealings with customers
to support claims for payment and to support further service.
Individuals need records to ensure their entitlements and the
obligations within and between organisations and families. Records
support the furtherance of all business activities undertaken
by organisations or individuals.
- the accountability domain: records are an indispensable
ingredient in organisational accountability, both internal (such
as reporting relationships) and external (to regulators, customers,
shareholders and the law). Records show whether the organisation,
or individuals in it, have met defined legal, organisational,
social or moral obligations in specific cases. In all accountability
forums, records are consulted as proof of activity by senior managers,
auditors, Royal Commissioners, concerned citizens or by anyone
inquiring into a decision, a process or the performance of an
organisation or an individual.
- the cultural domain: when used for any purpose beyond
the support of the business activity which created them, or accountability
for that business activity, records may be regarded as becoming
part of the resources available to society to account for its
collective behaviour. The uses of records as social resource encompasses
research into public health, environmental concerns, scientific
endeavours or sociological questions. Records are also used as
a social resource to support the study of history and historical
trends as a part of public education or private research.
Records are created and used by everyone in our society. While
paper still forms the most common medium for records, electronic
media are replacing paper as the preferred means of conducting
business transactions. Electronic transactions are no different
in nature from their paper counterparts: they need to be recorded,
captured in a fixed form, maintained and made accessible as records.
Electronic records need to provide the same degree of evidence
of business activity, the same level of accountability and the
same social resources as paper records, for the immediate and
future needs of organisations, individuals and society. The role
and purposes of recordkeeping in the electronic environment -
electronic recordkeeping - are the same as in the paper
world.
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For any organisation, good electronic recordkeeping presents many
opportunities, including:
- maximising business opportunities
- minimising the risks and liabilities associated with failure
to capture and maintain the evidence needed to meet business and
accountability requirements, by automating part of the capture
and management process
- helping organisations and society move from paper-based to
electronic ways of working, bringing environmental benefits, cost
savings and improved accessibility, services and accountability.
The challenges that must be faced to achieve good electronic recordkeeping
include:
- ensuring that electronic business processes routinely involve
the capture of the records necessary to document them
- designing electronic systems that will capture reliable and
authentic records
- ensuring that the integrity of electronic records is securely
maintained
- ensuring that electronic records created and captured now
will remain accessible and useable for as long as they are needed.
- building a culture of recordkeeping among managers and workers.
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Information professionals from a range of disciplines will play
key roles in the success of the electronic recordkeeping endeavour.
Archivists, records managers and information technology professionals
will contribute expertise in such areas as:
- the identification of recordkeeping requirements
- the specification, building and, in some cases, the operation
of electronic recordkeeping systems
- the development of recordkeeping standards, and
- the establishment of improved recordkeeping practices.
Collaboration and cooperation with professional colleagues will
be required to progress our endeavour. Such colleagues will include:
- lawyers
- auditors
- business analysts
- operational managers, and
- senior managers.
Successful implementation of principles and strategies for electronic
recordkeeping will require the informed support of senior management
of all organisations. All individuals in organisations will be
involved in electronic recordkeeping, responsible for ensuring
that evidence of their business activity is created. From there,
the recordkeeping professionals will be responsible for ensuring
that records are successfully managed for as long as they are
required.
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Organisations endorsing this statement commit themselves to pursuing
our shared vision for ensuring evidence through electronic recordkeeping
into the 21st century to be achieved through the broad
strategic framework outlined in the rest of this statement.
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The organisations that have endorsed this statement have committed
themselves to working towards the following vision:
By the year 2000 all Australian organisations will follow guidelines
and standards for the management of electronic records which are
based on common principles, concepts and criteria.
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The principles and strategies outlined in the remainder of this
document from a guide to enable pursuit of our shared recordkeeping
vision. The strategies can be pursued by archives institutions,
by research projects, through education, by programs implemented
within organisations and by the efforts of individuals in their
lives and work. They imply the need to involve many other professions
and recognise the interdependence of recordkeeping with other
information professionals.
Every organisation will have its individual goals in relation
to electronic recordkeeping and will choose to pursue these goals
using different strategies. In some cases, these strategies will
be affected by external factors, such as policies and standards
adopted across a whole government. As an industry group, our immediate
aims are:
- to progress the work being undertaken around Australia to
achieve effective electronic recordkeeping
- to support our shared endeavour in pursuing this vision, and
- to project our professional commitment to the issues and challenges
of electronic recordkeeping to others in our organisations and
to the wider community.
Regular reporting, the sharing of progress and the continual modification
of our strategies in the light of experience will enhance the
long term validity of these initial steps.
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Principles:
- Each organisation's business processes and systems shall
operate to capture records which provide evidence of its business
activities conducted electronically.
- Responsibility for creating and capturing records shall
rest with individuals nominated as responsible at all levels of
the organisational structure and with the organisation as a whole.
Strategies:
- Each organisation should identify relevant and accountable
recordkeeping requirements to determine what records are to be
created or captured and how long they should be retained.
- Each organisation should determine, through risk assessment,
the degree to which its different activities need to be supported
by reliable and authentic records.
- Each organisation should define its own statement of the boundaries
of business processes and systems, and the legal and other requirements
that affect them, to facilitate the capture of business communications
as records when entering or leaving the specified domain.
- Archives institutions should establish documentation strategies
focusing on organisational recordkeeping approaches.
- Archives institutions should promote themselves to targeted
records creators, demonstrating the benefits of documenting their
work through electronic recordkeeping.
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Principles:
- The major objectives of electronic recordkeeping systems
shall be to manage the content, context and structure of records
as a whole and to ensure that records are reliable and authentic.
- Electronic recordkeeping systems shall facilitate the reuse
of information contained within records while securely maintaining
reliable and authentic records.
- Each electronic recordkeeping system shall be designed
to comply with relevant national and international standards and
best practices.
- Electronic recordkeeping systems shall provide one corporate
interface to all records relating to a particular business activity,
regardless of the media in which the records are created and kept.
Strategies:
- Each organisation should identify recordkeeping requirements
to be satisfied by electronic recordkeeping systems, including
operational business needs, legal requirements, industry best
practice and the expectations of society.
- Each organisation should determine whether its requirements
should be satisfied by one or more than one electronic recordkeeping
system.
- Recordkeeping requirements may be satisfied through dedicated
electronic recordkeeping systems or by designing and implementing
recordkeeping functionality into systems not primarily designed
for recordkeeping.
- Electronic recordkeeping systems should operate to comply
with Australian Standard AS 4390, Records Management, and
other relevant standards.
- Electronic recordkeeping systems should be regularly audited
for compliance against the specified recordkeeping requirements.
- When implementing electronic recordkeeping systems, organisations
should ensure that such systems are recognised and used as the
authorised organisational recordkeeping system/s.
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Principles:
- Electronic records shall be maintained for as long as they
are needed.
- Electronic records shall be maintained in electronic form.
- Each organisation shall maintain electronic records to
ensure that the evidence is accessible, comprehensible and managed
for as long as it is required.
Strategies:
- Each organisation should migrate electronic records of continuing
value through successive upgrades of hardware and software in
such a way as to retain the full functionality of the preceding
systems and the integrity of the electronic records created in
them.
- Each organisation should use each such migration as an opportunity
to re-appraise the decisions to retain or delete electronic records.
- Appraisal should be undertaken rigorously at the time of designing
the recordkeeping system or as early in the life of the records
as is possible, to mitigate the need for continual migration of
records at migration.
- Each organisation should identify, capture, maintain and migrate
the metadata required for electronic records and the systems that
create them, including contextual information about the records
and the activities that they document, in conjunction with the
records themselves.
- The connection between the records and the metadata should
be should be maintained for as long as the records, including
through migration of hardware and software systems.
- Each organisation should identify and adopt relevant technological
standards that will help ensure that electronic records will be
available and useable for as long as they are required.
- Each organisation should determine who will maintain and manage
its electronic records of continuing value in an environment that
is able to support the content, context and structure of the records
over time. This may be the organisation itself, an archives institution
or another organisation, that is, the custody of electronic records
may be distributed, rather than in centralised archival custody.
These decisions may be affected by external policy or other requirements.
- Each organisation should establish standards and procedures
to ensure the integrity of its electronic records over time.
- Electronic records management should employ sound data management
techniques.
- A variety of information management tools should be explored
to facilitate the goals of electronic recordkeeping, including
electronic document management and workflow tools.
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Principle:
- Each organisation shall aim to provide appropriate electronic
access to records irrespective of their location, both within
and beyond the boundaries of the organisation.
- Each organisation shall protect its electronic records
from inappropriate access.
- Each organisation shall be able to provide access to electronic
records in ways that will present meaningful evidence of the business
activity that they document, in addition to presenting their information
content.
Strategies:
- Electronic recordkeeping systems implemented within organisations
should facilitate appropriate remote electronic access to records
by employees and authorised external users.
- Archivists should work with custodians of electronic records
to develop networked access systems that are available and easy
to use, while protecting the custodian's operational systems from
unauthorised access.
- Governments and other organisations should consider the requirements
for and provide access to electronic records in the development
of information locator and 'one stop shop' services and systems.
- Archival information systems should serve as hubs for networked
access beyond organisational boundaries.
- Archival information systems should provide on-line finding
aids, standardised records searching and retrieval tools and compliance
with access policies.
- Archives institutions in partnership with other organisations
should pursue opportunities to enhance access to electronic records,
including value-added services, through entrepreneurial and co-operative
ventures.
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Published by:
Australian Council of Archives
Suite 4, 12 Ellingworth Pde.
Box Hill VIC 3128
Australia
Email: acarchiv@ozemail.com.au
May 1996