What is Records Management?
Records: All documentary and data information, regardless of format, made or received in connection with Brandeis activity and reflecting University functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and research. Examples of records include student transcripts, invoices, reports, deeds of gift, research data, and licensing agreements.
Records Management (RM): The responsible and consistent management of an institution’s records according to a retention policy that determines how long different records are kept, based on outside laws and regulations and legitimate internal needs, as well as the implementation of records management best practices.
Why Manage Records?
"We can’t keep everything forever."
- We assume legal & reputational risk by keeping obsolete personal information.
- It costs the institution to store, manage & backup unnecessary information.
- E-Storage may be “cheap,” but the rapidly growing scale of information drives total costs of ownership.
- Abandoning old files fills up search results with “garbage,” and it takes longer to find what we need.
- “Just in case” is not a legitimate retention need by itself.
"We can’t destroy everything tomorrow."
- Regulations require us to keep some records for a long time - think tax forms and the IRS.
- In the event of litigation or audit, we have a responsibility to produce certain records promptly and efficiently.
- We have ongoing operational needs for some older documents.
- We need to keep a record of our products for reaching back into the institutional knowledge base: Memory and history.
Recordkeeping Principles
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Accountability
Integrity
Protection
Compliance
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Availability
Retention
Disposition
Transparency
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