Records Management, An Introduction

Records affect our human life

The ability of governments to protect the rights of its citizens and to improve citizen-government interaction is a critical issue. The rights and entitlements of citizens are based on records, and the ability of a government to continue to respect these rights and entitlements is based on the quality of the policies, standards, and practices employed for the care of those records. 

Records are entirely dependent upon technology, both for their creation and their storage. As a result, they must be managed over time in a computerized environment.

 What would happen to any human if their records gone missing

Records get lost on a regular basis or they get destroyed as part of the normal records management process. In local government, if the documents are not part of the official decision process, then there is no reason to keep them or provide them to the local Records Office. If a few files get lost, that is the cost of doing business.You need to be deeply concerned for three main reasons. The first reason is that lost records affect the organizations and the employees that manage the records. The second reason is that the flawed records management, which allows records to be lost, undermines democratic and historical accountability for a community and for the individual.

Every day lots of data and information being generated by various transactions

Society is experiencing unprecedented growth in the number and variety of data collections as computer technology, network connectivity and disk storage space becomes increasingly affordable. Data holders operating autonomously and with limited knowledge are left with the difficulty of releasing information that does not compromise privacy, confidentiality or national interests.

Growth in supermarket transaction data

Private sector information about individuals has expanded also. For example, supermarket transactions consisted only of summary price information in 1983 and were not identified to individuals.

Supermarket loyalty cards

As Catalina Marketing began its data collection, awareness arose among retailers that with the help of personally identifying cards and state-of-the-art database technology, retailers, such as supermarkets, could analyze millions of transactions quickly to identify their best customers and build loyalty through special rewards such as discounted prices.

 National Directory of New Hires

The goal of these newly created worker-specific data collections, at their inception in 1996, was and remains to monitor all individuals with jobs in order to better track down parents who owe child support.

 Summary

As a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult to produce anonymous and declassified information in today's globally networked society. Most data holders do not even realize the jeopardy at which they place financial, medical, or national security information when they erroneously rely on security practices of the past. Technology has eroded previous protections leaving the information vulnerable.