When you create a record you are documenting your business. A record can be a range of different things: a map, written report, email, film or sound recording. The format of the record you create doesn’t matter. What is important is that evidence of your activities is recorded in a way that supports your agency’s business needs. For further details see Creating records.

As well as creating records, it is essential that staff in your agency capture or save them into your agency’s records management systems. This action will ensure that records:

• can be proven to be genuine
• are accurate and can be trusted
• are complete and unaltered
• are secure from unauthorised access, alteration and deletion
• can be found when needed
• are related to other relevant records

For further details see Capturing records.

To enable your records and other information sources to be found and managed over time, you need to add descriptive information about their content and context. This descriptive information is called metadata. For further details see Describe records using metadata.