Records are practices, not artefacts: an exploration of recordkeeping in the Australian Government in the age of digital transition and digital continuity
University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.Good record keeping is of critical importance to organisations, governments and societies at large, however the language of records management with its inflexible and dominant view of managing records as artefacts - the passive and objective by-products of business activity - tends to be the only lens through which the documentary reality of organizational life in the recordkeeping disciplines is examined. A more user-centric and holistic view is needed to produce better recordkeeping outcomes in organisations.
This study applied a practice theoretical approach to explore the perspectives about records held by various professions employed across four different Australian Government agencies. The study also explored the influences of organizational culture and professional background on these perceptions. Using comparable sites, semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis were carried out. This approach to the study is significant as it is the first study to use a practice theoretical approach to explore the everyday social practice of record keeping by those outside the recordkeeping disciplines in a contemporary public sector setting and it is only one of a few comparative case studies of record keeping practices.
The findings show that there is no one accepted definition of record, rather what is considered a record will differ in each organizational setting. Each agency (or ) creates its own ‘shared practical understanding’ of records in their particular context. Site-specific cultural-discursive, material-economic and socio-political arrangements (the , and ) actively shape records and record keeping practices and the various affordances of records emphasised in that site. Additionally, across the Australian public sector and records creators do not find the language of records management accessible or useful. Creators of records also have their own internalised thresholds which they use to make judgements about records identification and capture.
This study has demonstrated that records are active social practices, not simply passive and objective artefacts. Conceptualising records as social practices, in which humans and objects play an equal role, presents a paradigmatic shift for the recordkeeping disciplines that have privileged the artefact over the human elements of practices. The use of the practice theoretical approach provides a framework to produce significant and novel insights for researchers and practitioners in the recordkeeping disciplines
