Introduction

Intranet managers need to be conversant with a number of compliance matters where ignorance of local and international legislation and regulation is not acceptable as a defence. The commentary on these topics provided in this chapter should be regarded as being for the purposes of illustration only. Legal advice should be sought for the specific jurisdiction in which the intranet is being operated.

Records retention policy

A ‘record’ is evidence of an activity or decision and demonstrates accountability. It is not possible to define a record in terms of a particular category of documents, or by the age of the item. A comment in a blog or on a wiki could indicate that an action has taken place, and so becomes a record of that event having occurred. The use of social media in this example is deliberate: in the world of records management there is no such thing as a distinction between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ content.

A ‘controlled document’ is one in which the revision history is important, such that employees need to be aware of which version (not always the latest version) they should be using.

It is important to distinguish between ‘records’ and ‘archives’. A record has a limited and defined life, which may range from seven years, in the case of financial records, to five years after the withdrawal of a product from the market. An archive is a collection of records that have a long-term and often indeterminate life. All too often the terms ‘record’ and ‘archive’ are used synonymously, which is incorrect.

The issue about the extent to which information that is available on an intranet needs to be regarded as a corporate record is often overlooked because of a concern about the sheer volume of the content and the range of file formats involved. Often a document management system is used to manage corporate records, but such a system will rarely be used for the entire intranet, collaboration spaces and social media messages.

Increasingly, videos are used to illustrate the way in which particular activities should be performed – for example, using a forklift truck to load a vehicle. In due course the video might be updated and the previous version deleted so that the ‘correct’ version is available on the intranet.