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Records and information management: Benefits of records classification

By Dr. Oyedokun Ayodeji Oyewole
15 July 2016   |   2:32 am
Organisations achieve success by realising business goals through strategic resource management. Effective records and information management is a key enabler in achieving business success ...

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Organisations achieve success by realising business goals through strategic resource management. Effective records and information management is a key enabler in achieving business success, as access to records and other documents containing strategic information is the basis of sound decision-making.

Essential elements of strategic records and information management also include the identification of internal information sources or documents that might be relevant to the organisation’s strategic direction. This means understanding how information containers or documents can be described and organised so that they can be retrieved effectively. The process of classification helps describe, organise and control records and information. It creates order in understanding what an organisation does and how it does it. A simple classification tool can facilitate and enhance the capacity of the organisation to share information and knowledge. Information can be organised in different ways for different purposes. In a library, for example, classification is used to organise information by subject to facilitate resource discovery. In this overview, classification is undertaken for the purpose of managing records and other business information according to their business context within an organisation.

Benefits of Classification for Records and Information Management:
A classification system is the set of terms and conventions applied in a particular organisational setting to classify title and retrieve records and other business information. It controls the vocabulary used, generating consistency in the description of information produced by business activities and improving retrieval of that information. The capabilities of classification tools for records management can be extended to assist sentencing and disposal.

The ISO 15489 standard specifies general principles of Records Management and includes a description of classification within an ERM. ISO 15489 calls out eight main benefits as a result of record classification:

Linked Records: An ERM system can show references between records by providing a method of creating links between the records. The linkages allow you to build up a continuous record of activity.

Consistent Naming: The classification system provides the structure and methodology for creating consistent record names. This ensures a correct grouping of related records over time, avoiding gaps that may occur as terminology can evolve or be obsolete.

Retrieve and Identify Similar Records: Classification aggregates groups of documents together; it is possible to quickly identify all records that belong to a specified function or activity.

Security and Access applied to Groups: When records are grouped together, access security can be easily associated with the container that holds a group of records.

User Permissions: User permissions or access controls can be applied to allowed actions that can be performed on groups of records.

Distributed Management Responsibility: Records can be acted on at a group level, because they are aggregated in groups, rather than on individual record level.

Distributing Records for Action. Again, the grouping of records lets us distribute or send all files to someone. In an electronic system, someone could be notified about a set of records and send an electronic link that gives them access to those records.

Scheduling of Retention and Disposition: Classification of a document as a record will immediately associate a retention plan and disposition action for the record. Logically grouping records via classification simplifies this task.

Management in organisations should be more committed and involved in creating and managing records and other business information than ever before. A classification tool is an important means to assist with records management in decentralised and devolved business environments. If the classification tool is new to the organisation, there are some measures that can ameliorate its introduction and encourage its use, such as: Marketing the new tool through organisation’s newsletters and the intranet; Maintaining communication channels with users; Offering support and training to users; Ensuring tools are intuitive to users; and Emphasising from an accountability, evidential or freedom of information viewpoint, the advantages of retrieving all relevant records and, therefore, the importance of the tool.

Users Training
Finally, training in the use of classification tool will facilitate understanding of what it is and how it can assist users. Users need to know how to use classification tool to find the right terms to apply for titling and retrieval purposes. But they do not need a detailed understanding of a business classification scheme or the intricacies of the classification tool.

Dr. Oyedokun Ayodeji Oyewole is the ‎President/Chairman Governing Council at Institute of Information Management (IIM) Africa.

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