Records and Archives Management Policy

Primary policy aims

The policy will provide guidance, state principles, rules and authenticate structures for appropriate digital records creation, management, and preservation of a business enterprise. The records include business transactions, employment contracts, minutes, and memoranda. The policy communicates the importance of record keeping and fulfills legal obligations. The policy will make sure that the business adopts digital archival of its records for reliable and long-term accessibility and provides an avenue for performance monitoring (Bwalya, & Mutula, 2015).

Risk Assessment

The business’s current records and archive management system face high risks of data loss. Primarily, records have been stored in hard copy forms which presents risks of destruction hence the loss of the business’ crucial information. There are also risks of anonymous tampering of these records as the business lacks proper organization of handling these records, and their exposure to the personnel increases this risk (Dearstyne, 2006).

Needs Statement

There is a need for following a good recording and archiving strategy for this business’ efficiency, transparency and future accountability. There is also the need for the business to develop a much more strongly founded digital preservation resource as a part of the business’ record preservation collection. A developmental policy is needed to lay down programs for selection, retention, and preservation of the business’ records (Franks, 2013).

Purpose Statement

To develop a well-founded digital preservation solution that will assure long-term accessibility to the collection of records, continuous monitoring of business performance, and promote accountability to facilitate actions and decision-making.

Objectives

2016. Create a digital archive to store and maintain the business’ records before the summer of 2016.
2017. Delegate the digital archive’s key responsibilities of record management and systems administrators before the commencement.
2018. Develop a digital preservation solution to assure long-term accessibility of the business’ records by summer of 2016.

Projects to Undertake

The business’ accounting documents, expenses and income lists will be the prioritized materials for long-term preservation. According to the risk assessment, these documents would give the business a huge blow in case of loss or tampering. The director of archives will see to it that this information is recorded for preservation correctly before the end of summer 2016.

Organizational Commitments

Prioritized commitment needs anticipated include a guideline from the manager of archiving on the estimated time and budgeted costs of preservation. Time commitments from the system specialists at the earlier stages of system development is another additional organizational commitment.

Financial Commitments

Financial commitments anticipated are costs for additional computers that will support the complexity of the preservation system. Additional expenses also constitute the salary of specialists for extra time they put into this work.

Personnel

The key personnel involved in the development are:

1. Manager of archiving: The manager of archiving will be the head of the development process. His responsibilities will include overseeing the development process, overseeing records management, and ensuring that members of staff comply with the legislations of the preservation process.
2. System specialists: The system specialists’ key responsibility will be developing the preservation system. They will also be responsible for testing and troubleshooting to ensure that the system works without glitches.

Preservation and Quality Control

This project will preserve the business’ files of all types including email and text files, and record data in video and audio formats.

Preservation Metadata

This project will achieve its obligations for accountability per relevant legislation while protecting the rights and interests of the government, the business, clients and staff.

Roles and Responsibilities

The manager of archiving will hold long-term responsibility of records management. Management-level staff will be responsible for implementing and maintaining accurate record keeping practices in their departments with the help of their staff.

Training

The business will invest in training the essential staff to ensure that they meet the needs of the digital preservation system. They will in turn train individual staff on the various aspects of digital preservation.

Evaluation and Updating

The businesses’ digital preservation plan will be updated monthly and revised twice annually.