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We are often asked questions about recordkeeping and social media.

When you send or receive a text or short message service (SMS) message for work purposes, it is a State record. This means it must be captured, maintained and disposed of in accordance with the State Records Act 1998.

Many NSW public offices have accumulated large amounts of data in legacy systems. The purpose of this guidance is to draw together advice and procedures to allow public offices to identify legacy systems, and identify and overcome the barriers to dealing with the data in those systems through migration and decommissioning as a routine component of its information management and technology program.

This guidance provides advice for NSW public offices on planning and performing migration processes so that they can meet the conditions for the destruction of source records, when appropriate.

Information in vulnerable to a variety of risks and threats. Like any other business asset, records, information and data require protection. State Records recommends that records and information management professionals work closely with information security professionals to ensure that records, information and data are secured and protected. This page provides guidance and advice on the key areas and measures for collaboration.

The page provides information and guidance to public offices in meeting their statutory obligations under the State Records Act 1998 for the ‘safe custody and proper preservation’ of State records when they are stored with service providers based outside of NSW.

The standard sets out three principles for effective records and information management. It has been designed to support digital recordkeeping as the NSW Government transitions to digital business processes.

The standard has been reviewed in light of Recommendation 8.4 of the Final Report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and the NSW Government Response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. There are no changes or revisions to the minimum compliance requirements listed in the Standard. However we have made minor amendments (additional text) to the “Examples of how a public office can demonstrate compliance with the requirement” component of the standard at minimum compliance requirements 3.2, 3.4, and 3.5.  Additional text is highlighted in the amended Standard on records management.

This guide provides a checklist against which an existing or new business system may be assessed to determine:

• whether the business the system supports is subject to any recordkeeping requirements
• how well the business system is currently functioning  or will function as a recordkeeping system
• what action may be required to enable the business system to meet recordkeeping requirements.

Sentencing of records is an activity that should be part of every NSW public offices' Records Management Program.

This case study describes a pilot project to determine whether SharePoint 2010 could meet Council’s document and records management needs as well as introduce improvements to Council’s information management practices.

This guidance provides strategies for public offices to consider when configuring Microsoft 365. To achieve compliance with the Standard on Records Management and the State Records Act 1998, public offices will need to assess Microsoft 365 with the business systems checklist.

The strategies provided are not exhaustive and current at the time of publication of this advice. 

We recommend NSW public offices to use this guidance in assessing or understanding the records and information management capabilities of existing or future Microsoft 365 environment.

Information security is the preservation of the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information. This page answers a number of questions about information security in relation to records and information management.

This case study describes a project to implement SharePoint 2010 as the Police Integrity Commission’s document management system.

This document form metadata scheme establishes record types common to most organisations in the NSW public sector. This is a modified version of the same scheme in the Australian Government recordkeeping metadata standard (D21). In addition, some specific document forms for NSW government, councils, public health services and universities have been defined.

Public offices use a wide variety of equipment and software in creating records of official business. Some of the digital formats are text, images, videos, CAD files, databases and websites. These records have to be managed and be made accessible for as long as they are required, regardless of the file format or the technology used when they were originally created. 

Under s14 of the State Records Act 1998, it is the public office’s responsibility to ensure that the information remains able to be produced or made available for the minimum authorised retention period irrespective of changing technology.

One of the strategies to ensure that records remain accessible or usable over a period of time is the use of sustainable file formats. This guidance lists recommended file formats for records creation.

The purpose of this section of the guidelines is to examine staffing needs for back-capture and business process digitisation programs.

Public schools in NSW are responsible for creating and managing records relating to school administration. By creating and managing records effectively, schools will be able to meet their legislative responsibilities as well as their administrative responsibilities to teachers, students and parents.

This page contains links to rules and guidance that will assist schools in making and keeping records appropriately.