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Hello,
I'd like to acknowledge the traditional
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custodians on the lands that we are
meeting on today.
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I pay my deepest respects to elders past,
present and emerging.
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The State Records ACT and Records
management standards issued by State
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Records NSW create the framework for
records management in NSW government.
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In 2021 we were conscious of a gap in our
framework and that there was no formal
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assessment process to know if records
management was compliant.
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This is the rationale that led us to
develop the Records Management Assessment
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Tool.
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In designing the tool,
we wanted to assist public officers
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understand what best practise or
compliant record keeping looks like by
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showing how the records management
requirements could be implemented into
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organisational operations.
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We also wanted to assist public officers
measure their maturity and compliance
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with the requirements of the State
Records Act and use this assessment
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process to inform continuous improvement
processes.
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And as the regulator of records
management,
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we wanted to be able to assess and report
on the state of record keeping across the
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jurisdiction of the State Records Act.
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The Records Management Assessment Tool,
or RMAT,
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is available for download from our
website in Word or Excel formats.
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The RMAT is also the basis of the record
keeping monitoring exercise.
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Let's look at the RMAT in a bit more
depth.
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The RMAT is a self assessment tool.
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It can be used to assess a business unit
or a whole organisation and it can be
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used at any time during the year.
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We tell public officers that the RMAT
shouldn't just be used for the assessment
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process for the record keeping monitoring
exercise.
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Instead,
use the RMAT as part of the continuous
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improvement process to assess,
monitor and plan the ongoing development
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of records and information management in
the organisation.
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The RMAT assessment process is also a
useful conversation starter between
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records and information management
professionals and then staff in business
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units.
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Undertaking an RMAT assessment is a great
way to find out how well record keeping
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is happening at an operational level.
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Gain perspectives on the organisation,
conformity with requirements and its
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records and information management
maturity.
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Raise awareness of organisational
policies,
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records and information management
responsibilities and records and
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information management services and
identify the challenges,
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barriers and opportunities in improving
records and information management and
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other aspects of the organisation
operations.
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The RAT has 19 questions.
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These cover all the obligations in the
State Records Act,
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the State Records Regulation and the two
standards issued by State Records NSW.
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The questions cover records management,
governance and strategy, the creation,
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management, story and storage of records,
information and data,
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the access arrangements for records
information and data,
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retention and disposal of records,
information and data,
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and the transfer of those records that
are required as state archives to the
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State Archives collection.
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Briefly,
a public office needs to work through the
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19 questions and select one of the five
levels of maturity which best describes
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the current state of maturity,
capability and compliance.
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Please remember that when you are doing
the assessment you are looking at the
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entire records and information management
landscape in your organisation.
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So you need to consider the EDRMS
managing records in M365 and SharePoint
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Managing records in Business systems.
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Emails, hard copy, physical records,
these all need to be included in your
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assessment.
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The maturity levels that you're looking
at are nested,
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so you can use maturity levels to
identify what you need to do as an
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organisation to improve your level of
compliance and maturity and capability.
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Let's take a quick tour of the RMAT.
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These screenshots are from the Excel
version of the RMAT.
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On the left hand side of the slide you'll
see the title page of the RMAT.
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This page allows you to complete details
of when the assessment is being carried
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out.
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You can choose your organisation from the
drop down menu.
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All public offices are listed in the RMAT.
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On the right hand side of the slide
you'll see the three questions that are
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the preliminary questions before you get
to the 19 assessment questions.
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These questions are completed to provide
us with information about your
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organisation and a mandatory when
completing your record keeping monitoring
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exercise submission.
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In the spreadsheet you'll see a tab
called RMAT.
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This is where the 19 questions are based.
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You'll need to work through each question
and select the maturity level that is
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applicable to your organisation.
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As an example,
the slide is showing question 6 on
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Records and information management
responsibilities.
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The question is on the left hand side in
bold and on the right hand side you have
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the five levels of maturity which are
connected to this question.
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When choosing the maturity level,
you need to make sure that your
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organisation has fully met the maturity
level and has documented evidence to
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support the level that you've selected.
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If your organisation is between 2 levels
or you haven't quite achieved all of the
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maturity level,
please select the lower level of maturity.
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Each question of the RMAT also includes
links to further information on the
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question topic and examples of evidence.
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The examples of evidence are are not
prescriptive, they're just suggestions.
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The examples listed also match up with
the examples of compliance suggested in
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the Records Management Standards.
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Importantly,
please make sure you identify evidence
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which is specific and relevant to your
organisation and supports the maturity
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level that you've chosen.
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In the spreadsheet version of the RMAT
you'll see that there are green ticks at
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each question.
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These ticks have been pre populated into
the Excel spreadsheet so that you can see
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how the scoring tab works.
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Before you start your assessment,
Please remember to untick the questions
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so that you can actually tick and
correctly identify your maturity level.
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As the RMT maturity levels are scored.
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This allows for the development of a
score out of five for each question and
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an overall maturity score for the
organisation based on the average of the
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19 questions.
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Baseline is set at baseline.
0:07:08.965,0:07:13.343
Compliance is set at Level 3,
so scores under three are considered
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below compliance,
while scores of three and above are
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considered compliant.
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In the Excel's version of the RMAT,
the results of the assessment
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automatically feed into the scoring table.
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The scoring tab or table includes a
number of visualisations of the results
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of the assessment.
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On the slide,
I've included the bar graph and the
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traffic light report.
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The traffic light report is a useful
report for discussing areas of
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improvement with management as it
provides a quick view of the questions
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and the requirements which are below
compliance.
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They're shown with the red light.
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The report identifies the requirement,
which could be a minimum compliance,
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compliance requirement in a standard or a
requirement in the State Records Act or
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the State Records Regulation,
and then identifies the corresponding
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RMAT question and then the traffic light
which is identifying what the score has
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been in your maturity assessment.
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So green,
green lights obviously are Level 3,
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maturity and above red lights are below
the level of compliance.
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So a level 1 or a Level 3.
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The scoring table also provides a report
by RMAT categories.
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The RMAT is divided into three topic
categories, People and governance,
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systems,
and Business and Information management.
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The categories provide insights into a
public office's capability.
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The slide that you're seeing includes a
small snip from the information
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management category,
which shows the score for each question
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in that category and an overall
percentage for the questions in that
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category.
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So for information management,
that's questions 15 through to 19,
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and in this case there is a score of 48%.
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Looking at the results for the three
categories is another way of identifying
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what are the strengths and the weaknesses
in your records management programme and
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also identifying the opportunities for
improvement.
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One of the questions that we get asked
quite regularly is who should complete
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the assessment.
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As some of the RMAT assessment requires a
high level of records management
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knowledge,
we recommend that the assessment should
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be completed by the person or the team
who is responsible for overseeing records
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and information management in the
organisation.
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The team or this person should have also
an organisational perspective on how
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aspects of records and information
management are conducted across the
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organisation,
including information security and the
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use of the cloud.
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The personal team doing the assessment
will also need to collaborate with key
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staff across the organisation such as
system owners, business managers,
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data custodians and right to know
officers.
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The RMAT assessment should also be viewed
as an opportunity to build awareness and
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communicate between the records and
information management team and the
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business and to get an appreciation of
the ecosystem of records,
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information and data in your organisation
and how well it's supporting business
0:10:36.746,0:10:37.246
needs.
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As the RMAT has now been in use for four
years and being the basis for the record
0:10:44.913,0:10:49.609
keeping monitoring exercises,
it's timely for us to review the tool and
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make sure that the tool remains fit for
purpose.
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Version two of the RMAT was released in
July 2025 and is available for download
0:10:59.376,0:11:00.645
from our website.
0:11:01.525,0:11:06.739
We've updated the RMAT to incorporate the
updated requirements from the State
0:11:06.739,0:11:10.550
Records Regulation 2024,
the revised standard on records
0:11:10.550,0:11:14.093
management,
and the revised standard on the physical
0:11:14.093,0:11:15.765
storage of state records.
0:11:16.165,0:11:21.265
We've also updated the links to guidance
and the examples of evidence which are
0:11:21.265,0:11:22.605
included in the tool.
0:11:23.005,0:11:26.629
Please note that the examples of evidence
are not prescriptive,
0:11:26.629,0:11:28.045
they're just suggestions.
0:11:28.885,0:11:33.539
Another aspect of our revision has been
to provide more focus on the need to
0:11:33.539,0:11:36.925
identify evidence to support the maturity
level chosen.
0:11:37.525,0:11:40.396
As the RMAT is an evidence based
assessment,
0:11:40.396,0:11:45.374
it's really important that when you're
doing your assessment you identify the
0:11:45.374,0:11:50.351
evidence specific to your organisation
which supports the maturity level that
0:11:50.351,0:11:51.245
you've chosen.
0:11:52.365,0:11:57.151
When you look at the revised RMAT,
you'll see that we've moved the examples
0:11:57.151,0:12:02.127
of evidence to another part of the form
so that you have a dedicated column in
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the spreadsheet to list the evidence that
you've used for each question.
0:12:10.805,0:12:14.325
This slide lists the revisions that we've
made to the RMAT.
0:12:14.845,0:12:15.565
Briefly.
0:12:15.565,0:12:20.661
We've strengthened the connection between
questions and their requirements in the
0:12:20.661,0:12:23.085
standards, the Act, and the regulation.
0:12:23.405,0:12:27.846
We've updated the supporting text for
each question so that the connection
0:12:27.846,0:12:31.045
between the requirement and the question
is explicit.
0:12:31.565,0:12:35.525
We've updated maturity levels to better
reflect requirements.
0:12:36.525,0:12:42.974
The revisions that we've made to the RMAT
will not impact your ability to map your
0:12:42.974,0:12:48.568
results from previous assessments and
submissions to the record keeping
0:12:48.568,0:12:54.629
monitoring exercises in 2022-2023 and
2024 to your results in the 2026 Record
0:12:54.629,0:12:56.805
Keeping Monitoring exercise.
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In the revisions,
we've also added an additional question
0:13:04.595,0:13:08.125
to those preliminary questions at the
front of the RMAT.
0:13:08.805,0:13:13.722
This is a new mandatory question which
will need to be completed as part of your
0:13:13.722,0:13:17.365
submission for the 2026 Record Keeping
Monitoring exercise.
0:13:18.045,0:13:23.279
The new question is designed to provide
State Records NSW with an understanding
0:13:23.279,0:13:28.579
of whether the Chief Executive of your
organisation has approved the response to
0:13:28.579,0:13:34.075
the record keeping monitoring exercise as
an accurate and evidence based assessment
0:13:34.075,0:13:38.525
of your organisation current compliance
with the State Records Act.
0:13:43.405,0:13:48.245
State Records NSW has recently released a
new RMAT Guide.
0:13:48.765,0:13:54.041
The guide is designed to accompany the
RMAT and provide explanatory information
0:13:54.041,0:13:57.405
and instructions on how to conduct the
assessment.
0:13:57.925,0:14:02.984
The guide also includes a small section
on information asset registers and their
0:14:02.984,0:14:06.045
value in managing records,
information and data.
0:14:06.445,0:14:12.003
The information asset register can also
be used to provide the evidence base for
0:14:12.003,0:14:13.445
your RMAT assessment.
0:14:14.005,0:14:19.286
We have suggested in the guide that the
public officers may like to create a
0:14:19.286,0:14:24.500
register or inventory of the evidence
that you rely on to support your RMAT
0:14:24.500,0:14:29.644
responses and your biennial record
keeping monitoring exercise submission.
0:14:31.765,0:14:36.801
Turning to the next,
Turning to the record keeping monitoring
0:14:36.801,0:14:42.650
exercises or RMA as we know them,
these actually commenced in 2022 when
0:14:42.650,0:14:48.742
State Records NSW recommence formal
monitoring under section 12 for of the
0:14:48.742,0:14:50.205
State Records Act.
0:14:50.845,0:14:55.759
The record keeping monitoring exercise is
a mandatory requirement for all public
0:14:55.759,0:14:56.259
offices.
0:14:56.725,0:15:00.664
In the monitoring exercise,
each public office is requested to
0:15:00.664,0:15:05.792
provide the results of a recent RMAT self
assessment and to identify the evidence
0:15:05.792,0:15:10.045
that has been used to support the
selection of the maturity levels.
0:15:10.645,0:15:14.759
Public offices may also provide comments
in the submission,
0:15:14.759,0:15:19.285
which provide context and also support
the assessment submission.
0:15:20.285,0:15:26.820
289 public officers participated in the
two 2024 record keeping monitoring
0:15:26.820,0:15:27.605
exercise.
0:15:28.005,0:15:34.725
This equates to 77% of the jurisdiction
or 77% response rate.
0:15:35.645,0:15:40.085
This is up from a response rate of 74% in
2023.
0:15:40.445,0:15:45.285
We're hoping to see an increase in
participation in the 2026 RMA.
0:15:45.965,0:15:51.097
The results of the RMA are reported at
aggregate level or summarised level and
0:15:51.097,0:15:54.605
the report is made publicly available on
our website.
0:15:57.085,0:16:01.179
Turning to next year's record keeping
monitoring exercise,
0:16:01.179,0:16:06.801
the RMA will run during March from the
2nd of March through to the 27th of March
0:16:06.801,0:16:10.965
2026 and each public office will need to
submit a response.
0:16:11.605,0:16:16.808
To begin preparing for the 2026 record
keeping monitoring exercise,
0:16:16.808,0:16:22.165
you need to download and use the new RMAT
to conduct your assessment.
0:16:22.405,0:16:27.405
Make sure that you've downloaded the July
2025 version of the RMAT.
0:16:28.005,0:16:31.575
Make sure you identify evidence to
support the monitor,
0:16:31.575,0:16:36.611
the maturity levels you have chosen,
Complete the three questions at the front
0:16:36.611,0:16:39.990
of the RMAT that includes the CEO
approval question,
0:16:39.990,0:16:42.285
budget and size of the organisation.
0:16:42.525,0:16:47.412
Then you will need to submit your
assessment by the service portal which is
0:16:47.412,0:16:52.365
the log on is via our website during the
record keeping monitoring exercise.
0:16:52.845,0:16:56.249
If you don't have a log on for the
service portal,
0:16:56.249,0:17:01.790
please contact us ahead of the monitoring
exercise so that we can organise a login
0:17:01.790,0:17:02.325
for you.
0:17:03.405,0:17:06.408
From 2026,
state records will be focusing on
0:17:06.408,0:17:11.880
evidence and we will be following up with
any public office that doesn't identify
0:17:11.880,0:17:16.085
evidence in its Records Management
Assessment Tool submission.
0:17:16.565,0:17:20.685
Please don't send us your evidence,
just identify it in your submission.
0:17:21.565,0:17:27.034
From next year we will also be commencing
a process to verify responses provided to
0:17:27.034,0:17:32.244
the record keeping monitoring exercise
and this will involve a sample of public
0:17:32.244,0:17:32.764
offices.
0:17:33.245,0:17:38.374
The verification process is designed to
establish that the information provided
0:17:38.374,0:17:42.991
by public offices to state records in
their submissions is accurate and
0:17:42.991,0:17:47.095
correctly refer, sorry,
correctly reflects the current state of
0:17:47.095,0:17:50.045
maturity and compliance in the public
office.
0:17:50.885,0:17:55.082
As in past years,
we'll be providing scorecards to CEOs of
0:17:55.082,0:18:00.205
public offices and publishing our state
of record keeping a NSW report.
0:18:03.205,0:18:06.951
And lastly,
here's some further information which is
0:18:06.951,0:18:12.465
links links to pages on our website that
you may find useful and also contact
0:18:12.465,0:18:17.908
information for contacting us at State
Records NSW if you have any enquiries
0:18:17.908,0:18:22.645
about the RMAT or the upcoming record
keeping monitoring exercise.
0:18:23.205,0:18:23.705
Thank you.
