An individual staff member is identified as holding operational responsibility for records management and has appropriate corporate responsibility, access to resources and skills. The Act specifically requires an authority to identify the name and job title of the individual in their authority, who is charged with overseeing the implementation of the plan on a day-to-day basis. Normally, this will be the Corporate Records Manager or similar, rather than a director or other senior manager.
This individual will normally be the Key Contact for the PRSA Team for purposes relating to the agreement and implementation of the RMP. For example, any engagement around the development of the RMP is likely to be with this individual.
The Keeper will, therefore, require evidence to be submitted confirming the name and job title of the person responsible for the day-to-day operation of the authority’s RMP, as part of that RMP. The Keeper will expect an authority to name an individual, rather than simply a job title.
All staff members who create records should be made aware of the organisation’s records management programme. However, in this element, the Keeper requires the name of the individual, who has the operation of the records management programme, as a specific objective in their work plan.
The Act indicates that a single individual should be identified. However, in some cases an authority may have more than one records manager, for example, in the case of a job-share or Corporate/Clinical administrative division. In these circumstances, references in this guidance to ‘the individual’ can be taken to read ‘the individuals’.
Evidence
The RMP must supply a name. Neither a job title alone (i.e. ‘Records Manager’) nor a collective body (i.e. ‘Finance Department’) is acceptable under the terms of the Act.
Evidence of compliance may take the form of covering letter carrying the senior accountable officer’s signature, and identifying the person responsible for implementing the RMP (see under guidance for element 1).
Evidence of compliance might also take the form of the formal job description of the role, showing clear responsibility for day-to-day records management in the authority.
If the individual has annual objectives relevant to the implementation of the RMP, or of information governance generally, please supply these (redacted as appropriate).
The Keeper will require evidence that the individual identified at element 2 has access to relevant training opportunities.
If the individual identified at element 2 is a professionally qualified records manager, and/or is a member of a relevant professional body, this should be included under this element.
If the authority has a Records Management Policy, and if that Policy has a ‘roles’ section, the responsibility of the individual named at element 2 should be supported.
If the authority has formally allocated responsibilities to each of the elements in their RMP (many have done this, but it is not compulsory), then the Keeper would expect this individual to be responsible for various elements, such as instigating the review of the RMP (element 13).
