Governance, Law & Compliance
Recordkeeping
Maintaining logs, decisions, evidence, and documentation needed for oversight or compliance.
Example
Logs preserve important inputs, outputs, approvals, and changes for the required period.
Why it matters
It preserves evidence needed to investigate issues and demonstrate what happened.
You'll hear it
“Can we find the records from before that change?”
Can you control it?
Yes
Yes. An organization can put recordkeeping in place through its policies, processes, records, training, or oversight structure. Individual users may participate without controlling the entire program.
Common questions
- Should every conversation be kept forever?
- No. Keeping unnecessary information can create privacy and security problems; follow the applicable retention rules.
- Are backups the same as organized records?
- No. A backup may preserve data without making the relevant evidence easy to find or interpret.
- What makes records useful months later?
- Clear dates, context and consistent organization help someone understand them after memories of the event have faded.