Design for record keeping
Plan for record keeping from the start of your project. This helps ensure important information, decisions and transactions can be captured, managed and retained in line with business and legal requirements.
Prepare for record keeping early
Consider record keeping requirements during discovery and planning. Understanding your business, legal and regulatory obligations early helps avoid costly redesign later.
Clarify roles and ownership
The product, system or business owner is responsible for aligning your business needs with the records you need to capture and keep. This can be done by business or project staff such as a business analyst.
You will need to identify or assign an owner (data custodian) for the data your service will collect or generate.
Everyone in your team must create records of what they do (such as design or configuration).
Why record keeping matters
Records help agencies understand what happened, what decisions were made and why. Good record keeping supports accountability, transparency and compliance, while ensuring information remains available to support service delivery, maintenance and future improvements.
Talk to your records and information experts
Consult your records and information management experts at the outset. They will help you define the functionality for your product based on record keeping requirements.
Records might include:
- customer applications and submissions
- approvals and decisions
- correspondence and notifications
- audit logs and transaction histories
- system configuration and design decisions.
Your product, system or business owner is responsible for defining your business needs. The work could be done by business or project staff such as a business analyst. NSW State Archives and Records also gives advice on information management by design.
Know your business needs
Use the Checklist for assessing business systems to: ·
- identify record keeping needs
- define design specifications you need to meet record-keeping needs
- define the information you need to capture to create full and accurate records
- identify what you must do to share, manipulate and/or report on data.
Meet your obligations
It's mandatory for NSW Government agencies to follow the Standard on records management. The NSW State Archives and Records standard applies to:
- physical records
- digital records
- data in systems or digital services.
Remember to document and meet any other data, privacy and information security requirements. See the NSW State Archives and Records for rules, advice and resources about government record keeping.