Records Management

Records management is the management of information in an organization throughout its life cycle, from the beginning to the end. This includes identifying, classifying, storing, securing, retrieving, tracking, and destroying or permanently preserving records. (Wikipedia)

Records management is the supervision and administration of digital or paper records, regardless of format. Paper records may be stored in physical boxes on-premises or at a storage facility. Digital records may be stored on storage media in-house or in the cloud.

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Goal of records management

To protect institutional information resources throughout their life cycle.

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Dhaval's experience with records management

Dhaval shared his records management experiences from his previous jobs. In terms of handling information and records, each institution has its own policies regarding how to store, retrieve, and delete files, as well as those that must be handled confidentially. He says that most physical records are kept in numerically or alphabetically arranged cabinets, and confidential files are stored in fireproof cabinets with locks and keys.

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As for electronic records, he says most are protected by firewalls on the computer. Computer firewalls protect information from being compromised without the right permission by preventing it from being accessed without authorization. He emphasized the importance of storing electronic records because, without them, the personal information of patients, students, or clients may be unlawfully obtained. When retrieving electronic records, users are made sure that they are an authorized party that is allowed to retrieve the records.

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Which is better: Physical or Electronic?

Dhaval favors electronic records over physical records.  According to him, it improves employee productivity since it saves them time in finding and accessing needed documents, enables them to easily back up documents in times of disaster, provides a more secure storage environment for confidential files, and results in fewer lost documents. One day, he recalls, he was looking for a physical file and took 45 minutes to find it (one of his worst days).