Creating records is an essential part of everyday business. Records provide evidence of work carried out, and help an agency conduct its business in an efficient and accountable way.

Knowing what records to create involves:

• knowing the requirements of legislation and your agency’s business including its policies, procedures and directives
• using work process analysis to identify what records are needed to document business or work processes. A good tool for doing this is the Australian Standard AS 5090 – 2003, Work process analysis for recordkeeping
• assessing risks associated with not creating records

Records can either be created as part of a business process, such as writing a letter or email, or as a deliberate action after the event, such as writing minutes or creating a note for file. It is important that your agency has procedures in place to ensure records are created routinely by staff, as part of everyday business.

Following their creation, records need to be captured into an agency’s records management system. See Capturing records for more details.