The IT Records Management Procedure helps manage your company’s IT records consistently and efficiently ensuring safety, availability, accountability and security of the records. The procedure applies to all records managed by IT, both in hardcopy and electronic form. (10 pages, 2125 words)

IT Records Management Responsibilities:

Information Technology Managers is responsible for reviewing classification and retention of records, reviewing record obsolescence, conducting internal audits of the Records Management System, and ensuring that corrective actions prescribed by audits are taken.

The Information Technology Storage Librarian is responsible for maintaining company records, maintaining a records log, and purging or physically destroying records.

The Tech Support Manager is responsible for updating storage medium and format of records when they are still required but in danger of becoming inaccessible.

Top Management is responsible for developing and approving a records classification and retention guide.

All Employees are responsible for ensuring records they generate and use are timely, accurate, and complete and are kept in the appropriate records store or database.

IT Records Management Definitions:

Active – Currently in use; used in the conduct of current business. Active records are often referred to as “production” records.

Archive – Offline storage of records (onto backup tapes, floppy disks, optical disks, etc.); files containing data that are no longer in current use but are kept in long-term storage for possible future needs (to fulfill legal requirements, for instance).

Document – Information and its supporting medium (paper, magnetic, electronic, optical, photograph, or sample). A document is an object commonly found in office systems (a spreadsheet, word processing document, database, etc.), whereas a record is a document that provides evidence of a particular business activity.

Record – In Information Technology, a record is a data structure aggregating several items of possibly different types. The items being aggregated are called fields and are usually identified or indexed by field labels. Generally, a record is data or information of any kind and in any form, created or received and accumulated by an organization in the course of conducting business and subsequently kept as “evidence of activity” through incorporation into a recordkeeping system.

IT Records Management Procedure Activities

Identification of Records
Records Generation
Record Management
Technology Obsolescence
Records Audit

IT Records Management Procedure References

Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
ISO 15289-1:2001-Information and Documentation-Records Management
ISO 15489-2:2001-Information and Documentation-Records Management
ISO 9001:2000 Standard-Quality Management Systems-Requirements, Clause 4.2.4 (Control of Records)
Control Objectives For Information and Related Technology(COBIT)