Design for record keeping

Embed record keeping into your design and build process to align with your business needs and service delivery.

When to do it

You need to know your business needs and any statutory rules that apply at the outset. Then you can be sure to capture, maintain, handle, retain and dispose of records in the right way.

Who's responsible?

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 you need to do this

Records are evidence of transactions, interactions or decisions. We need evidence of our business activities so we can account for our actions. By saving records of our work in our agency's digital repositories, we ensure that those records can be found, understood and used again.

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.

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.

Comply with rules

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.