Report 6

Records Management in the Public Sector

Training staff in records management

Agencies could do more to encourage staff to maintain appropriate and complete records

All audited agencies provide some staff training on records management. This involves the use of relevant and understandable course content delivered by trainers with appropriate industry experience. However most training is ad hoc or could be improved.

The Commission requires agencies to conduct a recordkeeping training program to ensure their employees comply with their RKP.

Training generally covers the importance of recordkeeping and how to create, archive, protect and destroy records. Insufficient or no training increases the risk that staff may mismanage records and breach the RKP and the retention and disposal schedule.

The Police train staff during induction on the use of its electronic records management system, but not recordkeeping principles generally. Further, they do not have an endorsed training strategy across the agency. However, the Police are developing a three tiered training program covering basic, intermediate and development training on records management. They propose to supplement this with a reporting framework to cover compliance, assessment and annual reviews of training content.

The GC and RWWA only have informal and ad-hoc training on records management. DSD ’s training is comprehensive, but all three agencies do not test staff understanding and knowledge afterwards. BPA provides both comprehensive training and tests staff knowledge.

Health enrols staff to receive records management training on the basis of operational need. However not all staff who have been enrolled for training have completed it (Figure 2).

Figure 2 - Proportion of Health staff who have completed their assigned training

The Public Sector Commissioner’s 2012 State of the Sector Report reported that most agencies (88 per cent) had partially or fully conducted recordkeeping training. While a high proportion of agencies are delivering training to some or all staff, there is still room for improvement across the sector.

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