General public office recordkeeping FAQ

An ‘official record’ is a record made or received by an agency in the conduct of its business. According to this definition, drafts are records.

However, drafts do not always need to be kept.

We do advise that drafts be kept when there is an identified recordkeeping requirement to retain them. This could be because they document significant decisions, reasons and actions or contain significant information that is not contained in the final form of the document, or both.

The State Records Act 1998 provides a number of means to lawfully dispose of State records. One mechanism for the legal disposal of State records is through approved retention and disposal authorities. Another means is in accordance with the normal administrative practice provisions of the Act which allow for the disposal of certain types of facilitative and duplicate records.

See Normal administrative practice guidelines for more information. 

Yes. Information about government business is increasingly located in social media applications. If this information is needed by your organisation to help perform, improve or report on its operations, or to provide evidence of advice given, then you will need information management strategies to support your social media activities.

However, you do not need to make and keep records of all of your organisation’s social media activities. Social media is a delivery channel for business and decisions to keep information should be based on your organisation’s business needs for particular information. Some general communications and information activities have short-term applications. A basic rule of thumb to apply to information in social media applications is: If you need it, manage it. If you don't need it, leave it.

For further advice see our Strategies for managing social media information.

Yes. In NSW organisations may provide digital images of records as evidence.

The Evidence Act 1995 abolishes the ‘best evidence’ rule and allows for evidence which is, for example, a copy of a document in electronic format, or a version of a document produced by a device such as a computer.

However, there is a requirement under the Act to support the admissibility of this evidence by authentication. For example, providing evidence that the digital output/copy is what it purports to be.

This sort of authentication may involve testing the way a document was produced or kept or some other means of demonstrating that the methods by which you keep and maintain digital information are secure, reliable and well managed. (The National Archives of Australia has a good assessment of evidence law in Australia on its website.)

See Legal admissibility of digital records for more information.

Yes, in many cases records can be managed and stored via cloud services based outside of NSW.

State Records NSW has approved the General authority for transferring records out of NSW for storage with or maintenance by service providers based outside of the State (GA35). This general authority gives approval for the transfer of records for storage or maintenance by service providers based outside the State. However, this permission is given on the condition that an appropriate risk assessment has been made and the records are managed in accordance with all the requirements applicable to State records under the State Records Act. In addition, all other legislative requirements for the management of information should be met before entering any arrangements.

In particular public offices must:

• assess and address the risks involved in taking and sending records out of the State for storage with or maintenance by service providers based outside of NSW
• ensure that the facilities, systems and services (including software products and storage systems) of the service provider conform to requirements in standards issued by State Records NSW
• make certain that contractual arrangements and controls are in place to ensure the security, safe keeping and on-going accessibility of records
• make certain that contractual arrangements are in place to ensure the exportability and return of records and information is addressed
• ensure that the ownership of the records remains with the public office
• ensure appropriate controls are in place to manage lawful, approved deletion or disposal of information and records
• monitor the arrangement to ascertain that the service provider is meeting all relevant requirements.

It should be noted that even if the cloud computing environment is managed wholly within NSW an appropriate risk assessment of the service and the provider should still occur.

For further advice see Using cloud computing services - implications for information and records management.

State Records only regulates recordkeeping for NSW public offices (State government agencies, State owned corporations, universities, local government and the public health sector). We have no power to regulate how long records created by individuals and private organisations should be kept. We can provide general guidance but there is no one source that gives this sort of advice. Some useful sources are the Australian Taxation Office and the Fair Work Ombudsman (for recordkeeping around employees).

Please refer to C2023-04 Deposit of New South Wales Government Publications for more information. 

No. If councils have decided that electronic versions of the minutes of council meet their business needs there is no need to print out and bind the minutes.

If a text message is created or received in the course of official business it is a State record and needs to be managed appropriately.

Section 3 of the State Records Act defines a record as ‘any document or other source of information compiled, recorded or stored in written form or on film, or by electronic process, or in any other manner or by any other means’.

This section of the Act goes on to define a State record as ‘any record made and kept, or received and kept, by any person in the course of the exercise of official functions in a public office, or for any purpose of a public office, or for the use of a public office’.

The Act uses a broad definition for what constitutes a record. This ensures that different formats that come into use as a result of new technologies are governed by the Act.

The State Records Regulation 2024  prescribes guidelines on normal administrative practice.

Part 8 of Schedule 2 of the Regulation addresses SMS (short message service) messages, commonly referred to as text messages. It states in part, that a message includes a message in electronic form and lists examples of electronic messages:

• email
• voicemail
• SMS
• instant messages, such as messages on WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger,
• posts via social media channels,
• facsimiles,
• telephone messages,
• transmission reports.

It states that messages that have continuing value to the public office must not be disposed of.

Messages that may be disposed of include the following:

(a) messages that are ephemeral,

(b) messages that are an identical copy of messages already kept in the public office's business system,

(c) messages that otherwise have little or no importance to the public office, including system reminders or alerts.

The terms ‘continuing value’ and ‘ephemeral’ are also defined in the Regulations at Schedule 2, Part 1:

Continuing value, in relation to a record of a public office, means being of, or having, ongoing administrative, business, fiscal, legal, evidential or historic importance to the public office, as assessed by the public office.

Ephemeral, in relation to a record of a public office, means being of, or having, such negligible or little importance to the public office, as assessed by the public office, that -

(a) only requires the record to be kept for a limited or short period of time, and

(b) means the record has no continuing value to the public office.

You should assess continuing value based on the information contained in the text message and the context in which it was sent or received. It should not be assessed based on the format of the record itself. A robust normal administrative practice policy or policy on managing messages will help clarify responsibilities to staff.

Text messages need to be managed in the same way you manage other business records. They should be captured, maintained and disposed of in accordance with their business value. If a text message has continuing value, you should capture it and store it in a recordkeeping system as soon as practicable. There are third party products that can help you to do this.

When you move text messages from your phone into a recordkeeping system, consider what metadata you might need to create or retain to ensure the records’ authenticity and integrity. 

If a recording is made as part of a public office’s operations or business activities, they are State records. Decisions about how long to keep them must therefore be based on how they are used by the organisation.

If your organisation uses recordings to support short term customer service objectives and to monitor service standards, they only need to be kept for as long as this business need exists – probably a few months. There are specific references to these types of records in the General retention and disposal authority: administrative records and the General retention and disposal authority: local government records.

Local government often records meetings of council to assist in the compilation of minutes - these are covered in the General retention and disposal authority: local government records.

More significant recordings might need to be retained much longer, depending on your organisation’s business needs for them. For example, emergency services call recordings have different retention requirements depending on the agency, the nature of the incident, and whether or not they may be required as evidence. The functional retention and disposal authority for your agency should be checked.

We have recently been asked about the disposal of audio-visual recordings of job interviews. These recordings can be treated as working papers that can be disposed of under the normal administrative practice provisions of the State Records Regulation, as they are primarily a facilitative record.

The retention of the final version of a record is sufficient to meet the recordkeeping requirements of a public office. In this case, the final version of the record would be the report of the interview panel which must be retained for a minimum of 2 years after recruitment is finalised under the General retention and disposal authority: administrative records (GA28, 15.10.1).

NAP covers audio recordings of conferences and meetings used to prepare correspondence, papers, minutes and transcripts etc.

Email messages sent and received in the course of official business are State records under the State Records Act. This includes messages sent and received by Ministers in the course of their official duties: in Section 3 of the Act the definition of a public office includes Ministers. It also includes messages relating to any aspect of official (government) business coming from private email accounts.

The Act defines a record as ‘any document or other source of information compiled, recorded or stored in written form or on film, or by electronic process, or in any other manner or by any other means’ (s.3).

Section 3 of the Act goes on to define a State record as ‘any record made and kept, or received and kept, by any person in the course of the exercise of official functions in a public office, or for any purpose of a public office, or for the use of a public office’.

Section 3 purposely uses a broad definition for what constitutes a record. This ensures that different formats that come into use as a result of new technologies are governed by the Act. NSW public offices, including ministers, should have policies and procedures in place to ensure that the records they create and receive, in whatever format, are managed appropriately.

No.

Objects such as collections of artworks, rocks, plants and water samples, human tissue samples, physical evidence collected by law enforcement offices that are not documents, items that are impounded, showbags with samples, are not State records. Neither are library materials such as books and journals received by public offices, or purchased by them for an internal library.

As objects and library materials are not State records, our permission is not required to dispose of them nor will Museums of History NSW accept them as State archives.