Records, Accountability and Democracy
A Contribution Culminating From Forty Years of Practice Nigel Carruthers-Taylor After more than forty years of using, designing and implementing document and records management systems for some of the most highly governed organisations in Australia, I find myself with an opportunity to put down in writing something I have always believed, and something many records managers know but often forget: that records management is not merely an administrative discipline. It is, at its deepest level, a cornerstone of democracy . It is the mechanism by which a society insists that power must be visible, that decisions must be traceable, and that those who govern must be held accountable - not just today, but in the years and decades to come. I have watched this profession evolve from the age of paper files and metal filing cabinets through the era of early electronic document management systems, through the explosion of enterprise content platforms, and now into the age ...