What are the day-to-day responsibilities of a records management officer versus a records liaison in each department?

A records management officer (sometimes called a records manager or agency records officer) and a records liaison work toward the same goal — trustworthy, well-governed records — but at different scopes. The officer owns the program enterprise-wide; the liaison applies it inside a single department. Titles and exact duties vary by organization, so treat the split below as a common model rather than a fixed rule.

The records management officer (program-wide)

This role sets direction and accountability for the whole organization. Typical day-to-day work includes:

• Developing and maintaining records policies, retention schedules, and procedures.
• Coordinating with legal, IT, privacy, and leadership on governance decisions.
• Overseeing the lifecycle from creation through disposition, including approved destruction and transfer of permanent records.
• Responding to audits, legal holds, and discovery requests at the program level.
• Training, advising, and supervising the liaison network.
• Reporting on compliance and program health to management and, in government, to oversight bodies.

In federal agencies this person is often the designated official accountable to the National Archives for the agency’s recordkeeping.

The records liaison (department-level)

The liaison is the program’s local point of contact — usually someone embedded in a business unit who carries records duties alongside their primary job. Typical day-to-day work includes:

• Identifying records created by the department and applying the correct retention schedule.
• Organizing, labeling, and filing records so they can be found and retrieved.
• Flagging records eligible for disposition and routing them per policy (never destroying on their own authority).
• Acting as the first contact for staff questions and for legal-hold or FOIA-type requests touching the unit.
• Reporting issues, gaps, and volumes up to the records officer.

How they work together

Think of it as policy versus practice. The officer defines what must happen and why; the liaison ensures it actually happens with the real records on the ground. Clear escalation paths, shared schedules, and regular training keep the two roles aligned.

For broader context on building this kind of governance structure, see the information governance topic hub.