Practicing Records Management

We are talking here Document management. We talked different aspect related with document management in our previous post. In last post we started talk on Record management. We talked RM is the practice of identifying, classifying, archiving, preserving, and destroying records. It includes creating, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of records. Today we are going to talk about how to practice records management.

Records management (RM) practice involves following steps.

• Creating, approving, and enforcing records policies, including a classification system and a records retention policy
  
• Developing a records storage plan, this includes the short and long-term housing of physical records and digital information
  
• Identifying existing and newly created records, classifying them, and then storing them according to standard operating procedures
  
• Coordinating access and circulation of records within and even outside of an organization
  
• Executing a retention policy to archive and destroy records according to operational needs, operating procedures, statutes, and regulations.

Often, a records management system helps to aid in the capture, classification, and ongoing management of records throughout their lifecycle. Such a system may be paper based (such as index cards as used in a library), or may be a computer system, such as an electronic records management application.