Prospen Africa’s Basic Registry, Records, and Archives Management Course seeks to capacitate registry officials and records management practitioners to be proactive in their approach to managing records. Thus, they should learn to develop and implement tools and instruments that seek to gain control of records from creation until disposal. A file plan, a disaster plan, information security plan, and an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution are critical tools that can serve this purpose; hence they are the focus of this Basic Registry, Records and Archives Management Training course.

According to Michael Jackson (not the musician, but an expert in Systems Thinking), “a system is a complex whole the functioning of which depends on its parts and the interaction between those parts”. As an example of a system, an organisation’s recordkeeping system should consist of all resources, policies, procedures, and guidelines around which filing is organised. Unfortunately, records management efforts in most organisations have remained stagnant over the years. This can largely be attributed to the fact that records management practices have been characterised by a “collector’s approach”, thus, records management practitioners are sitting idle awaiting for records to be transferred to their custody when no longer required by the creating business unit. This reactive approach has compromised the quality of recordkeeping systems within organisations. In all operations and functional areas, the standard of continuous improvement and learning is becoming the norm around the world. Records Management should not be any different.