UW System Guidelines
The UW System provides these guidelines as a source of direction for each institution to use in administering its records management program. These guidelines apply to all employees of the UW System and its institutions that create, use, or manage records in the course of their duties.
Your role in records management
All Employees
- Most employees throughout the UW System create records in the course of their duties. In order to facilitate effective university operations through efficient records management, employees must:
- Be conscious that the records they create are the official property of the UW System and the state of Wisconsin.
- Maintain complete and accurate records of activities conducted in the course of their work.
- File those records in accordance with office file plans, or in the absence of filing plans, in a manner that provides for practical access to the records.
- Be aware of the general and departmental records retention schedules relating to the records they create, making sure that they comply with those schedules.
- Store records in appropriately secure locations.
- Be sure that they are filing and storing electronic records in accordance with UW policies and retention schedules.
- Know which records in their office are vital records and comply with office policy on ensuring the security of those records.
- Cooperate fully with their supervisors and department heads in ensuring that their offices are managing records appropriately.
- Dispose of confidential records appropriately and ensure that confidential information is not released to unauthorized parties.
Department/Office Heads
- Responsibility for effective records management in departments and offices is vested in those who administer those units. Department/office heads must:
- Ensure that their offices are complying with state and university records laws, and with general and departmental records retention schedules.
- Make their staff aware of UW System and campus records management policies and procedures.
- Ensure that the records produced by their offices in the course of their business activities are appropriately identified and managed.
- Regularly review and approve retention schedules for their offices that have sunset.
- Ensure, with assistance from campus records officers, that all records created by their offices are appropriately scheduled.
- Identify their offices’ vital records and make staff aware of their existence and location.
- Dispose of confidential records appropriately and ensure that confidential information is not released to unauthorized parties.
Campus Records Officers
- Each component campus of the UW System must appoint a records officer. That officer has the responsibility for coordinating records management activities across campus and providing campus employees with records management and archival advice, expertise, and assistance in order that the campus carry out an effective records management program. Campus records officers must:
- Implement the records management program for their component campuses.
- Utilize archival and records management expertise in appraising records for their legal, administrative, and/or historical value.
- Notify department/office heads when records retention schedules for their offices have sunset and must be renewed.
- Maintain the official campus file of retention schedules and distribute office copies of general and departmental schedules to the appropriate offices.
- Submit new and amended retention schedules and schedule renewals to the Public Records Board.
- Assist campus departments and offices with understanding and complying with state and UW System general schedules.
- Provide educational/informational sessions for campus employees and other interested parties on records management issues.
- Advise campus administrators on records management policies.
- Coordinate activities with fellow records officers on other campuses in order that the high quality of UW records management be standardized across the UW System.
Information Technology Staff
- Responsibility for the development of electronic recordkeeping systems and for the management of records in electronic form is based in cooperation between records management and IT staffs. The IT staffs for the UW System and its component campuses have the primary responsibility for ensuring the optimal performance of recordkeeping systems. IT staff must:
- Create and maintain, in consultation with campus records officers and other staff, electronically-based recordkeeping systems as well as recordkeeping systems for electronic records.
- Ensure that these systems contain metadata that describe records appropriately and that conform to the requirements of general and departmental records retention schedules.
- Ensure that these systems are secure and that their records disposition procedures conform to the requirements of general and departmental records schedules.
- Undertake no electronic records-related initiatives (including digitization projects) without consulting records management staff.
- Be responsive to records management concerns when approving, installing, or upgrading document management systems.