Records Management (RM)
The discipline of controlling records throughout their lifecycle — creation, use, maintenance, and disposition — to ensure they are authentic, findable, properly retained, and defensibly disposed of.
Records management (RM) is the professional discipline and set of practices for controlling an organization’s records across their entire lifecycle — from creation or receipt, through active use and storage, to final disposition. Its purpose is to ensure records remain authentic, reliable, findable, and usable for as long as they are needed, and are disposed of in a defensible way once they are not.
Records management answers the practical questions every organization faces: what do we have, how long must we keep it, who may access it, and when and how do we dispose of it? It rests on tools like the retention schedule, the records inventory, and appraisal, and it is a core pillar of broader information governance. Done well, records management reduces legal and compliance risk, controls cost, and preserves institutional memory.