How long should I keep sefa documents and records?

sefa has inherited large volumes of records from the merger. Most of these records need to remain accessible over time and those having archival value must be transferred to National Archives Repository for permanent preservation.

A large percentage of them, however, often have no enduring business or historical value, and must be destroyed. Some have exceeded their useful business life and sefa is still paying to store them at an off-site storage facility, resulting in fruitless expenditure.

Some still have business value, but sefa is unable to access them, resulting in knowledge management risk.

The records need to be properly identified and managed to enable easy retrieval and use of information, as well as compliance with archival legislations.

In order to facilitate the disposal of records, the DRM Section has embarked on a project to list all the inactive records. This will include the ones stored in the document storerooms and workstations whilst ensuring that our offices are neat and the document storerooms are optimally used to ensure security of documents and records.

The current status of safe guarding information at sefa needs some improvements. Let’s work together to change the situation.

In records management terms disposal means you either :

1) transfer records to an archives repository (generally called archiving)

or 2) destroy them.

Send your comments and questions to the Records Manager at matshedisod@sefa.org.za or Ext. 9695