Records Management Application (RMA)
A software application or system designed to manage records throughout their lifecycle — declaring, classifying, retaining, and disposing of them under a retention schedule while maintaining metadata, access controls, and audit trails.
A records management application (RMA) is software whose core purpose is to manage records in accordance with recordkeeping requirements. It captures and formally declares content as records, classifies them against a file plan and retention schedule, protects their integrity, restricts access, captures metadata, maintains audit trails, and carries out disposition when retention periods expire.
The term comes from the U.S. Department of Defense’s 5015.2 standard, which defined functional requirements an RMA must meet and against which products were formally certified. That certification long served as the de facto federal baseline — but in NARA Bulletin 2022-01 the National Archives revoked its endorsement of DoD 5015.2 in favor of the technology-neutral Universal ERM Requirements developed under FERMI.
In practice “RMA” overlaps heavily with ERMS. The distinction worth keeping is that an RMA enforces lifecycle controls and defensible disposition, rather than merely storing files — the hardest part being reliable capture at the point of creation.