We do it later....

Dear all...

Record is created daily upon transactions, while decision is made, or when introducing policy. It is disseminated to others through various means; email, letters, memos, through bulletin or notice board. One record which is purposely created is then disseminated to many, it is such a one to many distribution. Hence it becomes many....every single person related to that particular records has that particular record sent to them in a manner proliferated through communication technology.

The question remains, which records is original? Which one do we need to keep? Is the attachment we received through email is the one that a person need to keep? or the one sent by the sender need to be kept?



Many times, we feel obliged to keep anything sent through email to our inbox. We keep almost everything, with one clear understanding "I WILL DEAL WITH IT LATER" or I WILL DISPOSE IT LATER or IT IS BETTER TO KEEP IT FOR NOW RATHER THAN SEARCHING IT LATER or OH! I AM NOT SURE TO KEEP OR TO DISPOSE.....I WILL DO IT LATER".....most of the time, we opt for the last one as we are not sure of whether to keep or not to keep. After some times, we have accumulated enough space in our email, storage area, file rooms, records center filled with records and files to the extent that we need more spaces. 

Our email's inbox is filled with all the emails from many years, our file room and storage also face similar situation. No space is enough for records. It keeps on taking up space.....WHY?

When an agency or an organization or a person does not do control process of records and salvaging the only available space and storage to keep records, when we don't decide and do appraisal of records that we need to determine which one is to be kept for long and which is to be disposed of IMMEDIATELY and AFTER SOMETIME, then we would be having problem of not enough space to keep our works, our documentary, our records and our valuable evidence of transactions......

We face overflow of records when space is scarce, more so it is EXPENSIVE to acquire at any given time.....this occur because we have the attitude of doing it later, thinking of that the need does not arises at the moment.

When we have the attitude of "WE DO IT LATER", we would face later the consequences of not having and doing it now.....hence, appraise the records according to records retention schedule....do not practice the popular cultural norms and concept of "Mana tau....."-the attitude of thinking that make individual to rather keep everything on the belief that it could be useful later (tomorrow, next month, next year, next decade)