7 - Records and archives

Summary

Introduction

As discussed in previous chapters, s. 46 of the FOIA requires that the secretary of state at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) issue a code of practice on managing records. At the time of the Act's passage, this duty fell to the Lord Chancellor, and the preface to the s. 46 code contains his explanation as to why such a code was felt necessary:

Freedom of information legislation is only as good as the quality of the records and other information to which it provides access. Access rights are of limited value if information cannot be found when requested or, when found, cannot be relied upon as authoritative.

In many authorities, this link between records management and the FOIA has been recognised in the bringing together of the corporate responsibilities for both in one person or team: the FOI officer may also be the authority's records manager, or at least work alongside them. As well as these obvious connections between records management and the FOIA, the latter has implications for historical archives and vice versa. In many cases, exemptions can only be applied until the point that a record becomes a ‘historical record’. Records preserved for future historical research remain subject to the FOIA, and archivists responsible for their care need to understand the implications of that for their work.

FOI officers need to understand their authority's approach to records manage - ment. They may even be responsible for it, or involved in developing it. They also need to know whether records are likely to be retained in historical archives preserved by their authority, and what the implications are for FOIA compliance.

What is a record?

The official definition of a record can be found in the international standard on records management, ISO 15489. A record is: ‘information created, received and maintained as evidence and as an asset by an organisation or person, in pursuit of legal obligations or in the transaction of business’.

In essence though, most of those words could be deleted. One word in that paragraph sums up what a record is: evidence. Records are evidence of the fact that you paid for a service; that you fulfilled your part of a contract; that your boss told you to do something; or that you did it.