What are records and why do we need to manage them?
As a public institution UBC has specific policy-driven responsibilities to manage its records effectively and appropriately. Regardless of format, a record is any document that captures a business transaction. When you write an email, order materials for your unit, write a guideline, or propose a new project for the department, you are generating, using, and storing UBC records. UBC needs to keep these records for future reference or action in a variety of contexts; for instance, if a unit needs to show that they paid for office supplies, a purchase order or receipt could be used as documentation.
How long should records be kept?
Depending on their type, records need to be kept for various lengths of time. Many records fall into the following broad categories:
Transitory: Important temporarily, kept only for as long as they are important.
Operational: Important for years to satisfy administrative, government, audit, or legal commitments and kept long enough to act as appropriate support to operational decisions.
Archival: Important to the history of the institution and kept permanently at the Okanagan University Archives.
Very few records are kept permanently. All records are kept for a length determined by UBC’s Retention and Disposition Schedules (RDS).
Mandated by Board of Governor’s Policy GA4, in 2022, professionals from the UBCV Records Management Office and the UBCO Records Management Program created the UBC Records Retention Schedules to guide units on how long they should keep records and what to do with them after they reach the end of their retention. These schedules have been reviewed and approved by the UBC Office of University Counsel.
Where can records be kept?
The UBC Okanagan Records Management Program is associated with the Campus Archives, and forms part of the UBC Okanagan Library.
Paper records can present space management and security challenges, and we are here to help! To inquire about storing your records, please contact Graeme Clarke, Library Services Assistant—Records Management: graeme.clarke@ubc.ca.
Following the creation of an account, records can be scheduled for pick up and placed in managed storage in our secure vault shared with UBC Okanagan Special Collections and Archives, located in the Commons building.
Who’s responsible for disposition?
According to Section 2.5 of the BoG Policy GA4, “responsibility for Records Management rests with the Vice‐Presidents and administrative heads of unit.” Regardless of retention length or final disposition action, the head of the unit that created the record has responsibility for the destruction or archiving of the record.
The UBC Okanagan Records Management Program can provide services at the conclusion of the records lifecycle. When records are placed into storage with us, we can notify you when records reach their scheduled retention period and can oversee the disposition of these boxes of records. With your approval, we can organize the deletion of electronic records and schedule the destruction of physical records via a secure third-party destruction company. In the latter case, we would observe the records being destroyed on your behalf. We can also organize the transition of records to archival custody for permanent retention.
What else can Records Management help with?
Digital Readiness Projects
The Records Management team at UBC Okanagan can assess and provide advice on improvements to the management of electronic records in departmental shared drives, as well as installations of OneDrive, SharePoint, and MS Teams.
Using the UBC Records Retention Schedule to inform a functional folder structure, this process can result in the development of customized documentation that supports clear naming conventions, filing and disposition rules, and established security profiles.
Community of Practice
If you are involved in recordkeeping as part of your position or are generally interested in records management topics, consider this an invitation to join our Records Management Community of Practice! The RMCoP is hosted via a dedicated MS Teams channel. It provides a space to discuss recordkeeping challenges and successes on the UBCO campus. We host regular meetings throughout the year and keep everyone up to date via an internal newsletter.
For more information on how to join our Community of Practice, please email Graeme Clarke at: graeme.clarke@ubc.ca. We look forward to welcoming you!
Advocacy, projects, and policy development
UBC Okanagan Library participates in the Records Management Steering Committee, which designs and monitors recordkeeping strategy at the University level. As well, the UBCO Records Management Program participates in the Retention Automation Working Group (RAWG), scoped “to develop, operationalize and automate records retention policies for UBC’s systems and applications.”