You already are a records manager. You became one by law on
the day you began working in Georgia government. Whatever department you work for and
regardless of your job title, each day you create, compile,
index, access, maintain, and/or transmit
government information. Whether local, county, state, or federal, this is the core of
every single government agency function and each individual's personal assignment.
Ever since the day your government service career began, you
have been processing public information with, and on, public records. Your personal
responsibility for records management will not end until your public employment ends.
Until that time, your duty to manage public records will not diminish.
Your specific job description will determine the
variety and nature of the information you are responsible for managing. It will influence
the frequency, speed, physical format
and the equipment and tools with which you will manage
information. Apart from seasonal, and annual (or perhaps even seemingly random)
adjustments to some or all of these factors, your basic role and duties as a manager of
records are unchanging.
It is cut-and-dried and tried-and-true,
managing Georgia's public records comes right down to you!
The day to day business of government consists of receiving,
interpreting, and taking action on information.
In this sense, most of governments daily activity revolves around processing.
The result or by-product of this process is the delivery of a wide variety of public
services.
The Georgia Records Act
(O.C.G.A. § 50-18-90 through §50-18-121) requires agencies of the state to: "Establish
and maintain an active and continuing program for the economical and efficient management
of records..."
O.C.G.A. § 50-18-99.(2)(e)
also requires local governments to formalize this process, "Prior to
January 1, 1984, each [local government] governing body shall approve by resolution or
ordinance a records management plan..."
This plan must include, but not be limited to, the name of
the person or title of the officer who will coordinate and perform
the records management responsibilities of the governing body, each
retention schedule approved by the governing body, and provisions for maintenance and
security of the records.
It is also highly recommended that the local governing body
create a permanent records management advisory committee to provide it
with policy development and program implementation assistance.
Empowered to be a manager of Georgia records, you are
responsible for ensuring that they are used in accordance with stated regulations,
and policies and procedures. It is your duty to safeguard
government records (and the various types of information they contain). Each and every day
you will have to make decisions and take actions relating to their legal and ethical
administration.
You are the force that make
Georgia's records and information laws enforceable. This function is
timeless and enduring. You are stationed on the public's front line
of information management. Without you and your vigilance, systems and safeguards begin to
weaken immediately.
It is important to remember that just as the requirement to
manage government records is fundamental and never-ending. So too is manner in which
information flows into, and out of, government offices.
When we visualize the process of information flow, we find
that most often, information does not pass through the government system as if it were
flash-frozen and moving along a rigidly fixed track or conveyor. Information does not
merely enter in one public entrance door and exit out another unchanged.
The reality is quite different. The way in which data flows
through government workplaces demonstrates the dynamics of information flow likeany other
organizations. In fact, our offices may even be said to be kept in motion by the energy
produced as information cycles through them.
When we view it as a system, we see that public information
is generated/produced, used/consumed, disposed, replenished/re-generated, and frequently
refined in the process of generating new information. The manner that this operates is
rather curious.
Our government information systems appear to demonstrate the
mechanics of perpetual motion! That is to say, "...a device that once set
in motion would theoretically continue in motion indefinitely without receiving any
additional energy from an external source."
Government information is best visualized as a consumable
resource with a life-cycle that exhibits a unique capacity to energize and renew itself.
You and your agency, not some other person or program, are accountable for the proper
operation and maintenance of your part of the system. You are responsible for the
preservation and management of the resource base you maintain.
In order to better help you to understand the fundamental and
cyclical nature of the information life-cycle process, and your place in it, your
government job description is about to be officially changed.
During the period of time you spend reading the next three
paragraphs, you are hereby assigned -- by order of your County Commission -- all rights
and responsibilities for the administration and management of county dog license
application forms. Please use your empowerment ethically and efficiently.
In your new role, you are responsible for both annual sets of
license application records, and for individual documents within them. Each of these has a
physical and informational life-cycle.
Your duty to secure and maintain the physical life-cycle of
an individual dog license application begins, for example, the moment the application for Katie,
a female, mixed breed, black and tan collie is officially received by one of your
subordinate county officers.
You are released from this individual record's physical
maintenance requirement only when Katie's license has expired, the information
contained on it no longer has value to the county, and when, in compliance with the
approved record retention schedule, the application form has been released for disposition
through re-cycling of its paper content.
Although your responsibility for that single document has now
ended, new dog license application forms are accepted by your agency every working day.
Your responsibility for managing the annual set of license application forms has not been
diminished at all. Therefore, the physical management of each year's dog license
application forms is a continual processing cycle of compilation, use, and disposition.
You may have been able to use a retention schedule to dispose of an old year's set of
license applications, but the current year's set is always out there being compiled.
"The beat goes on."
Summary data is collected from each dog license application
form and, compiled with others, creates a different record type containing information
concerning county dog licenses and their administration. You can see from this how
information transfers, or flows, from one individual type of record to another. Since the
new summary record type is created and used for a different purpose as for different
informational needs, the process for retention and disposition will be different than the
application records. Despite some common information, they are, by law, separate record
types and must be managed as such.
A good example of this flow of information into record types
containing summary, or extracted data, is the production of administrative and fiscal
reports. Data from various individual types of records may be compiled, transferred,
tabulated, indexed, summarized, and even totally consumed in the process of producing and
communicating information in these types of records. This is offered as a demonstration of
how, in truth, you are managers of information assets, as well as the records that contain
them.
Assuming that the noun record will continue to be
used to describe a unit of information, regardless of its physical format, and information
technology continues to change and evolve, it is safe to assume that governments will
perpetually have a need to process information. This is why records management consists of
continual efforts to more efficiently administer records creation, acquisition,
maintenance, and disposal. It is why your records responsibilities are tied to your
employment life-cycle.
The Georgia Records Act
assigns your government agency with the responsibility for creating retention schedules
for each individual type of record in its custody. The purpose of a government record
retention schedule is to ensure and protect the legal and financial rights of the State of
Georgia and its citizens.
A retention schedule simply describes and quantifies the
physical and informational life-cycles of government records under your agency control. In
order to create a such a schedule, you must make a records inventory (O.C.G.A. §50-18-94 & §50-18-99).
The inventory will contain the record's physical format and existing volume or quantity,
and an evaluation and description of the records purpose (informational function) and
content.
After completing the inventory, you must fully and accurately
complete a record retention schedule application. Records will not be scheduled for a
retention period longer than is absolutely necessary. Each application must be submitted
to the Secretary of State's Department of Archives and History.
Local government agencies of Georgia's counties,
municipalities, consolidated governments, or school boards must first submit their
recommended retention schedules to their Governing Body for approval by
resolution or ordinance. Following this step, and before they will have the force and
effect of law, local record retention schedules must then be submitted to the Georgia Archives
for
approval by the State Records Committee.
The Georgia Archives, which also serves as staff to the State Records
Committee, reviews the applications and takes the appropriate actions. Only the Committee
has final authority for the approval or rejection of a proposed retention schedule.
The burden of this record retention scheduling responsibility
has been lessened by a process created to eliminate duplication of agency scheduling
efforts. The Georgia Archives is responsible for creating statewide retention schedules for common
records (O.C.G.A. § 50-19-93
§& 50-18-99.(2)(f)). These Common Record Retention
Schedules are published and distributed for use by all agencies.
When applied to your agency's records, the common retention
schedules can greatly reduce your retention scheduling requirements. This because its
common records could already be covered by a schedule, and so applications to State
Records Committee would not have to be prepared, submitted, reviewed or approved for those
records. This reduces the management requirements at all levels.
In order to lawfully dispose of government records, any
records, an approved, applicable, retention schedule must exists. The record retention
schedule used may be an individual agency schedule, or a common records schedule, but
there must be a retention schedule! You are held responsible for the verification
process when it comes to the disposal of public records.
The Georgia Records Act affirms that the agency head has
direct control over that agency's records management program. The agency program activity
required is defined, "an active and continuing program for the economical and
efficient management of records."
This cannot be accomplished without first successfully
meeting other responsibilities. Your agency must not only know what records and
information it has in its custody. It must also know all management requirements and
technical standards that apply to the maintenance and use of its records and information
systems.
Each agency submitting schedules to the State Records
Committee is also responsible for, prior to submittal, the identification and review of,
and compliance with, records and information management requirements in state, local,
and/or federal administrative, fiscal, and legal citations. These can apply to both the
information and records, and to the equipment and systems employed in their use.
Each government agency meeting its obligations assigned by
the Georgia Records Act can expect to benefit from a successful,
economical and efficient records and information management program.
It can also expect to suffer the penalties for the results of
unsuccessful practices. In the worst instances, a list of these results might be described
by many words with "mal-" and "mis-" pre-fixes: mismanagement,
malfeasance, misappropriation, malicious, misconduct, malaise,
misgovern, malpractice, misguided, malodorous, misuse,
and very possibly misdemeanor.
In order to get it right, and to keep it right, maintaining
training in records and information management skills and standards of practice goes hand
in hand with the other responsibilities of the government agencies.
You have a personal and professional responsibility to secure
government information, and their systems from a wide variety of potential threats. You
have to maintain appropriate data and document security and preservation safeguards
throughout the life-cycle of the record series.
The Georgia Records Act requires the
agency to protect against the removal, theft, unauthorized destruction, or loss of
records. This includes the responsibility to notify "all officials and employees
of the agency that no records in the custody of the agency are to be alienated or
destroyed" except in accordance with the requirements of the Act.
All agencies and government units must comply with required
technical codes and standards that apply to government information and document access,
storage, retrieval, delivery, preservation, and disposition. There is a long-standing
legal premise that ignorance of the law is not a defense. This underscores the agency's
responsibility for identifying and following all applicable standards.
Cause to be made and preserved records containing
adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions,
procedures, and essential transactions of the agency and designed to furnish the
information necessary to protect the legal and financial rights of the government and of
persons directly affected by the agency's activities...
An administrator cannot run, dodge or ignore this responsibility without degrading the long term efficiency of agency's operations.
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