Principle of record

management
1. Principle of purpose
While maintaining the record, the purpose of record keeping should be clear. Records without purpose are a waste of
time, labor and money. The purpose of record keeping should not be unsuitable for organization
2. Principle of verification
There must be evidence of all the documents which are preserved in an office. If the verification is not possible, it
has no value as proof in court. The hear say at should not be recorded are protected.

3. Principle of classification
All the records should be classified on the basis of nature of documents. Proper classification of records helps to
avoid confusion. It helps in proper evaluation of business performance.
4. Principle of reasonable cost
While maintaining the record, the cost factor should be considered. Therefore, the valuable information should be
recorded systematically and useless information should be disposed.
5. Principle of elasticity:
The process of record management should be elastic in capacity i.e. it should be capable of being expanded or
contracted according to requirement.

6. Principle of retention of records

The main objective of record management is to preserve the required document for future reference. The
unnecessary document should be disposed. Therefore, according to value and importance of records should be
preserved.
7. Principle of availability
Records are preserved for future reference. It should be protected in such a way that required information should be
easily available. The records are useless if they are not available in the current time

Back to Basic Principles

On the Wikibon Peer Incite call February 16, 2010, the primary organizational message was get back to the
basics of principles of records management and use these principals as the basis for sound information
governance. These principles, originally defined by ARMA International, a not-for-profit professional
association and the authority on managing records and information are expressed and embellished on
below (see [ARMA] for the official versions):
1. Accountability - Assign a senior executive who will oversee and be accountable for record keeping
program (aka information governance program, or IGP) and delegate program responsibility to
appropriate individuals; adopt policies and procedures to guide personnel, and ensure program
auditability. Make all business managers accountable for information governance and the records
management principles, policies, and costs.
2. Integrity - Construct an IGP so that records generated or managed by or for the organization have
a reasonable and suitable guarantee of authenticity and reliability. Identify technologies and
processes that can provide suitable and reasonable guarantees. To do this of course requires an
organization to first define and classify the difference between official records and business
information.
3. Protection - The IGP must ensure a reasonable level of protection to records and information that
are private, confidential, privileged, secret, or essential to business continuity. These attributes are
the core differentiators when comparing content management to records management systems.
4. Compliance - The IGP must be established to comply with applicable and jurisdictional laws,
regulations, and the organizations policies. The challenge for most organizations is not developing
policies but instead enforcing these policies across a vast number of information repositories and file
systems.
5. Availability - The IGP must maintain records in a manner that ensures timely, efficient, and
accurate retrieval of needed information, as more and more organizations are turning to information
governance and IGP to do more than meet compliance regulations.
6. Retention - Maintain records and other information for an appropriate time (and for no longer),
taking into account business, legal, regulatory, fiscal, operational, and historical requirements.
7. Disposition - An IGP provides for the deletion for records that have no incremental business value
or that create liability for the business.
8. Transparency - The IGP must be implemented in a defensible, understandable, and efficient
manner and be available and understood by internal and external business stakeholders.