Assessment of records management practices among the administrative staff of technical university of mombasa

Abstract

Records management seeks to efficiently and systematically control the lifecycle of records that are routinely generated as a result of activities and transactions. Most universities are continuously deploying integrated records management as a means of improving the decision making as well as service delivery quality. It is also generally recognized that at the core of the numerous complex university problems, is a poor capacity for records management. This research thus, attempted to fill this gap by using the Technical University of Mombasa as study-survey institution. The study reviewed literature on the concepts of records, their forms as well as the lifecycle of records. It further outlined the benefits and challenges of records management. The study purposely sampled 80 administrative staff comprising senior members, senior staff and junior staff from the University. Flowing from the quantitative nature of the research strategy, structured questionnaires were used as the sole data collection instrument and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data. The major findings of the study revealed that the administrative documents are stored in both manual and electronic forms. This leads to quick decision making, saves office space and promotes good corporate governance. It was further indicated that there were insufficient resources in terms of professionally trained records managers, training starved administrative staff and office space. Therefore, it was recommended that management of Technical University of Mombasa should embrace the records management function to ensure its effectiveness, and also professionally trained records managers should be employed.