Record Management Essay

The UK Government's 'Modernising Government' White Paper published in 1999 proposed that all dealings with government should be deliverable electronically by 2008.

The Government’s revision of this target date to 2004, coupled with the introduction of Freedom of Information (Fo I) legislation, sparked a sharp increase in demand within the public sector for ERM and EDRM systems.

An ERM system should be able to capture records created by an organisation's business systems and applications.

The system should capture a record, along with any associated metadata, and categorise it within a classification scheme.

Module 1 provided an overview and first principles, module 2 a set of requirements for EDRMS and module 3 a set of requirements and implementation advice for managing records in business systems.

While modules 1 and 2 represent a condensation of received knowledge, module 3 recognises that electronic recordkeeping does not have to be limited to EDRM.

An Electronic Records Management (ERM) System is a computer program or set of programs designed to track and store records.

The software can be used to manage the creation and maintenance of records within classification schemes, apply retention and disposal schedules, and control access and use.

ERM systems have evolved over the last two decades.

Early Electronic Document Management (EDM) systems, which were developed to manage the increasing use of electronic documents in office environments, included little records management functionality.