Note for file: A report on recordkeeping in the Australian Public Service

Executive summary

What is a record? (chapter 1)

Records are defined in the Archives Act 1983 (the Archives Act). Records include papers and documents, emails, spreadsheets, information in business systems, notebooks and diaries, and even Post-it® notes. Records also extend to formats such as photographs, films and sound recordings.

Essentially, if you can read it or obtain information from it, then it is a record.

Commonwealth records are records created or received in the course of APS employment. They can be:

low-value records which should be disposed of when they are no longer current or useful
useful or important records which should be retained as long as there is a business or legislative need
useful or important records that need to be kept indefinitely by the National Archives of Australia (National Archives). These are known as retain national archives (RNA).

Focusing on the right records (chapter 2)

To achieve efficient and effective recordkeeping APS agencies need to focus their finite resources on managing only the useful and important Commonwealth records.

Useful records help the organisation do its business; important records assist the organisation to meet its obligations. However, not all records need to be kept indefinitely.

Good administrative practice dictates that APS employees should be able to dispose of low-value records as soon as their usefulness expires. Continuing to keep low-value records in an agency impinges on efficiency and effectiveness and unnecessarily complicates the task of finding the more valuable or useful records.

Every APS employee has an obligation to ensure that their records are kept appropriately and that useful or important information is available to other staff in their agency.

The Management Advisory Committee encourages agency heads to implement recordkeeping policies and practices that ensure the most appropriate holding of records to maximise their value.

Legislation governing recordkeeping is not prescriptive—at the end of the day, we must use our judgement about when to create records and where to store them. The value of a record is not dictated by its format, but rather its content (e.g. whether it is trivial or important) its scarcity (e.g. whether it is unique, or one of many copies), and its context (e.g. the considerations that gave rise to its creation).

Even though a record has been created, this does not mean that the record needs to be kept. Agencies can dispose of non-essential records as part of normal administrative practice and records of short-term value via record disposal authorities approved by the National Archives.

The Management Advisory Committee notes that the processes needed to allow agencies to gain approval to dispose of non-essential and short-term records have been cumbersome and complex, and understands that the National Archives has developed more practical and straight forward processes for agencies to follow.

The case for recordkeeping (chapter 3)

The Public Service Act 1999, the APS Commissioner’s Directions and the APS Values and Code of Conduct consistently carry the message that public servants are accountable for their actions and should be able to account for those actions. Effective recordkeeping is key to meeting these obligations, as well as assisting us to quickly and accurately respond to requests from Ministers and the Parliament.

The business case for good recordkeeping is clear—records are valuable assets and good recordkeeping supports improved productivity because it enables easy access to the information we need to make the right decisions at the right time.

Legal considerations, such as potential liability resulting from poor decisions and duty of care, also impact on recordkeeping obligations in the APS.

Supporting good recordkeeping (chapter 4)

Agencies can support good recordkeeping by making it as simple as possible for all APS employees to be good recordkeepers, and by rewarding good recordkeeping practices.

The Management Advisory Committee considers that staff contributions to effective recordkeeping practices should be a part of an agency’s performance assessment systems.

Agency heads are strongly encouraged to implement recordkeeping systems and processes that support general APS employees to get recordkeeping right, with a minimum of fuss. Recordkeeping is more likely to be done to the required standard if agencies recognise and encourage good recordkeeping and discourage poor recordkeeping.

The Management Advisory Committee notes that the DIRKS (Designing and Implementing a Recordkeeping System) process to obtain a records authority is relatively complex and resource intensive, and considers that a simplified version would be more widely accessible across the APS. The National Archives has acknowledged these issues and has developed an approach that will be much quicker and more practical for agencies. The new approach is a one-step process that will comply with the International and Australian Standard (AS ISO 15489) and should halve the net time it currently takes to obtain a records disposal authority. Agencies will have greater flexibility to target their effort towards disposal of records that provide the greatest concern. It will be much easier to do and be less resource intensive.

Effective recordkeeping can also be supported as part of an agency’s broader information and knowledge strategy or framework.

Considerations that support good judgement about record creation and recordkeeping include the context and financial value of the event or decision, and the benefits (versus potential liability and cost) of creating the record.

How recordkeeping interacts with information collection, use and disclosure obligations (chapter 5)

Under the Archives Act, the Commonwealth owns Commonwealth records including their inherent intellectual property.

Commonwealth records can be used only as authorised by the Commonwealth or by the law, and information contained in Commonwealth records may only be disclosed with authorisation or in accordance with the law.

There are several other Acts which also set out how Commonwealth records should be used, disposed of or disclosed. These include the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997, the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997, the Freedom of Information Act 1922, and the Privacy Act 1988. APS employees may also be required to provide Commonwealth records under a valid subpoena, other court-ordered discovery process of a valid statutory notice.

Assessing the current and future recordkeeping environment (chapter 6)

Understanding impediments to recordkeeping is a critical step in identifying effective strategies to improve recordkeeping.

This includes being clear about the context in which agencies operate and the major factors that influence their need to create and maintain records. It also includes assessing recordkeeping capability and existing business systems.

Lifting the burden of recordkeeping for general APS employees—for example, through good systems designs that introduce common, simple and automated processes for creating and managing records—will result in higher quality recordkeeping.

Addressing other challenges will also raise the quality of recordkeeping, such as:

ensuring that recordkeeping is managed strategically and viewed as part of the broader information and risk management frameworks
supporting recordkeeping with effective and user-friendly processes and incentives
focusing corporate resources on managing only the important and useful records
integrating recordkeeping more effectively with IT and other functions
keeping pace with technological change including emerging approaches to records management architecture, especially developments that can automate the recordkeeping process.

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