ASSESSMENT OF RECORDS MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AMONG THE ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF OF UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

Records management seeks to efficiently and systematically control the lifecycle of records that are routinely generated as a result of activities and transactions. Most universities are continuously deploying integrated records management as a means of improving the decision making as well as service delivery quality. It is also generally recognized that at the core of the numerous complex university problems, is a poor capacity for records management. This research thus, attempted to fill this gap by using two satellite campuses (Kumasi and Mampong) of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW) as study-survey institution.The study reviewed literature on the concepts of records, their forms as well as the life-cycle of records. It further outlined the benefits and challenges of records management. The study purposely sampled 80 administrative staff comprising senior members, senior staff and junior staff from the two satellite campuses. Flowing from the quantitative nature of the research strategy, structured questionnaires were used as the sole data collection instrument and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data.The major findings of the study revealed that the administrative documents are stored in both manual and electronic forms. This leads to quick decision making, saves office space and promotes good corporate governance. It was further indicated that there were insufficient resources in terms of professionally trained records managers, training-starved administrative staff and office space. Therefore, it was recommended that management of UEW should embrace the records management function to ensure its effectiveness, and also professionally trained records managers should be employed.

The University of Education, Winneba (UEW), like other higher educational institutions in Ghana, is semi-autonomous. This is because it receives a portion of its funding from the state, students’ fees and stakeholders. As a result of these activities, the University generates large volumes of physical and electronic data and documents on a daily basis. Undoubtedly, these documents and data are of high importance and as such need to be strictly preserved. Universities are legally bound to retain and preserve documents as a record of their activities and proceedings.

Institutions create records to support the activities they carry out. However, if these records are not managed properly, they will not provide the necessary support and information might be lost causing problems for the institution. To provide an efficient and effective administration that ensures that institutions run as smoothly as possible, there should be proper management of records. International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 15489 (2001) explained records management as the field of management responsible for the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of records, including the processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of an information about business activities and transactions in the form of records.