Records Management Policy

The Criminology Research Council's Record Management Policy is compliant with the Records Management Standard AS ISO 15489, which has been adopted by the National Archives of Australia to assist in determining what types of records are to be archived, destroyed and contained within a records management system.

Section 24 of the Archives Act 1983 provides that Commonwealth records can be destroyed:

• as required by specific law
• with the permission of the National Archives using a Records Authority
• in accordance with normal administrative practice (NAP).

NAP allows staff to routinely destroy records that are not needed as evidence of the CRC's business and that do not need to form part of its corporate records. The kinds of documents that the CRC's NAP covers are:

• facilitative, transitory or short term items such as:
  • informal communications that do not support or contribute to the business of the CRC
• rough working papers and/or calculations such as:
  • routine or rough calculations
  • working papers and background notes that support the development of drafts
  • spreadsheets or word processing documents that have been incorporated into correspondence or a separate final document
  • system printouts used to verify data or answer ad hoc queries that are not part of regular reporting procedures and not required for ongoing use
• drafts not intended for further use or reference such as:
  • drafts in either paper or electronic form of reports, correspondence, addresses, speeches, planning documents etc. that have minor edits for grammar, spelling etc.,
  • drafts that do not contain significant or substantial changes or annotations
  • drafts that have been assessed as not required to document business activities
• copies of material retained for reference purposes only such as:
  • copies of records made for reference purposes, or to support the development of other documents, including summaries or extracts of records held in the CRC's records management system
  • duplicates of agency producers, manuals, guidelines, plans etc., other than master or authorised copies
• published material that does not form an integral part of the CRC's record such as:
  • promotional or advertising material received by the CRC
  • external publications.