Recordkeeping in government

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If you work in a New South Wales public office, such as a Government agency, local council, local health district, state owned corporation or university, you have responsibilities under the State Records Act.

Public office employees must make full and accurate records of any actions taken and decisions made as part of their work. This includes any information and data that provides the basis for actions and decisions.

Records are essential for ensuring transparency and accountability in government. They are also important business assets because they hold information that is valuable for managing risks and improving services.

Records can take many forms – for example: emails, briefing notes and drafts, messages sent in Teams, WhatsApp or Signal, financial transactions, diary entries, photos and recordings, and information generated by artificial intelligence.

You will need to take different actions to create and capture records depending on the situation. Some records are automatically captured into a business system or a dedicated records management system. Examples of this include finance systems and case management systems.

Some activities automatically create information that can be saved as a record but a deliberate action is still required to save the record to an official recordkeeping system. For example, sending an email creates a record but business emails must then be saved to an official recordkeeping system.

If activities do not automatically create a record, you will need to create one and manually save it. Meetings, phone calls and discussions are key examples and should be documented through a file note or a follow-up email saved to an official recordkeeping system.

When you manually create records, consider what information is relevant for decision making and accountability. For a meeting, that may include: -when the meeting was held, -the purpose of the meeting, -who attended, -what was discussed, and -any action items arising or decisions made. For a more formal meeting, such as a board or council meeting, formal minutes should be created.

Itʼs important to recognise that many working papers and drafts must be kept as records. At all times, describe the record meaningfully so it can be found again.

Your records and information management team will be able to provide guidelines around naming conventions and security, and advice about the most appropriate systems to use.

General guidance, advice and online training is also available on our website. Search ‘State Records NSWʼ.