About Records Management at BYU-Idaho
Records management is the systematic and administrative control of records, regardless of media, throughout their life cycle to ensure efficiency and economy in their creation, use, handling, control, maintenance, and disposition. Good record keeping helps to keep records reliable, secure, and trustworthy.
The benefits of good record keeping include:
- Legal compliance and safety of vital organizational records.
- Improved staff productivity with higher quality of service and faster retrieval of documents.
- Reduced storage costs through elimination of unnecessary and duplicate documents and an efficient, cost-effective retention and disposal system.
- Permanent, historical records are easier to identify and preserve.
See the official Records Management Policy to understand important roles and responsibilities regarding record keeping.
Your management of records begins by following the Campus Retention Schedule(CRS) that is designed to help department offices effectively organize, retain, and dispose of records. The CRS describes important documents considered records and specifies how long they need to be retained for legal or administrative reasons. As with most organizations, BYU-Idaho creates numerous records and maintaining all of them can be cumbersome; the schedule specifies which items are important so unimportant items can be routinely discarded.
Not every document or item created at BYU-Idaho is a record. Such items may help in administering certain tasks, but they can typically be routinely discarded. A record at BYU-Idaho is any information or data in a fixed medium of a legal or official nature that may be used as evidence of the University's business transactions, activities, organization, or history that is created, received, recorded, or legally filed in the course of fulfilling the University's mission.